Go Coast Guard!
Posted on 09/30/2008 2:44:19 PM PDT by gandalftb
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Midgett and U.S. Navy maritime patrol aircraft teamed up to interdict a stateless, self-propelled, semi-submersible vessel Wednesday with seven tons of cocaine aboard approximately 400 miles south of the Mexico-Guatemala border.
The 60-foot, self-propelled, semi-submersible (SPSS) craft was detected by a U.S. Navy aircraft. The aircraft vectored Midgett to the location of the SPSS whereupon the Coast Guard quickly commenced a boarding of the stateless SPSS. The Coast Guard boarding team located 295 bales of cocaine, valued at more than $196 million, in a huge forward compartment. The SPSS became unstable and began to sink during the transfer of the bales of cocaine from the SPSS to Midgett. The condition of the vessel made it unsafe to tow and Midgett's crew sank the vessel as a hazard to navigation.
Wednesday's interdiction follows a daring nighttime boarding and seizure of another SPSS on Saturday in which the Coast Guard boarding team, embarked aboard the USS McInerney, surprised an SPSS with four suspected smugglers using the cover of darkness to take positive control of the SPSS. The smugglers attempted to throw the boarding team into the sea by reversing the SPSS engines suddenly, and attempted to scuttle the vessel, but the boarding team compelled the smugglers to comply with orders to close the scuttling valves. Seven tons of cocaine were seized from the SPSS and the USS McInerney took the SPSS in tow.
"I'm proud to tell you that over the past five days, Pacific Area Coast Guard units, with the help of our U.S. Navy and interagency partners, seized more than 14 tons of cocaine with a street value of more than $383 million from two self-propelled, semi-submersible vessels in the Eastern Pacific Ocean," said Adm. Thad Allen, Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard.
(Excerpt) Read more at piersystem.com ...
http://themaritime.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/us-coast-guard-and-us-navy-interdict-two-semi-submersible-vessels/
Ahoy there:
Semi-submersibles are operating up and down the W coast and the Caribbean. They can bring in anything, coke, heroin, illegals, weapons, explosives, nukes, etc.
They wouldn't be building them if they weren't getting through.
Al Qaeda's on the phone, they have dinero.....
$196 million? Use it to help bail out Wallstreet!
The only historical equivalent I can think of is the Civil War ram or the CSS Hunley. Those things must be floating coffins when the weather picks up.
Speaking of which, why not just ram them and leave?
Only 6,804,000,000 left to go? Get cracking DEA, so we can give Wall street a boost.
Definately check out the boarding videos. Who said the Coast Guard was boring? Geez, the semi-sub has no flat deck, running about 15 knots, won’t stop, our boarding team jumps aboard on the run and tackles the smugglers. Awesome!!!
Yeah! $196 mil is just belly button lint to Wallstreet. But it would be a start!
There’s an idea. Legalize drugs for a couple of years, sell them slightly below street value at safe, well lit locations. We’ll have this debt paid off in no time!
I guess the narcotraficantes have yet to find another go-to guy like Ludwig “Tarzan” Fainberg, the russkie who almost sold them an ex-soviet “Kilo” class sub, complete with crew, for $5.5 mil before being nabbed in the nineties.
They don’t even need crew, and can be programmed to simply motor to a series of GPS waypoints.
I would suspect the crew is there to discourage any would be opportunist who came across the vessel and helping themselves. And of course to transfer payment upon delivery of cargo.
Swing 'em from the yard arm. Arghh!
Sell it in France!
“Think first then type.”
No sense of humor, eh?
Since nobody else thought it was funny I’d say it was a ignorant comment or a very bad joke.
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