Midget subs a threat?

Discussion in 'World Events' started by fedr808, Jan 15, 2009.

  1. fedr808 1100101 Valued Senior Member

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    Ive been readin up on all of those midget subs the US has caught trying to smuggle cocaine. And are these tiny subs even a threat? As far as i have been able to gather, they use mainly diesel engines, a little radar, radio, no weapons, and are able to submerge for a maximum of 8 hours. I personally don't think they are a threat at all considering none have ever made it to the US, but anyone have an alternate opinion?
     
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  3. draqon Banned Banned

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    got a picture of the midget sub?
     
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  5. fedr808 1100101 Valued Senior Member

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    most were scuttled but here's one.

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  7. draqon Banned Banned

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    doesnt look that bad, I bet they get the job done
     
  8. John99 Banned Banned

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    kind of primitive.
     
  9. draqon Banned Banned

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    oh yeah? well imagine this...they welded it themselves, no processing plants, no big funds, and built it fast.

    Can any company beat that? oh noees.

    Anyways, google images: submarine cocaine

    and boy...you will see the subs they home-made, amazing

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  10. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    I wonder how many sank during their voyage across open Atlantic waters? We won't ever know those facts will we. Yes, great job, if you really want to commit suicide or don't value your life very much!

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  11. John99 Banned Banned

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    i can make one too, with hte right financing.
     
  12. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Making one is one thing but getting people who know how to pilot them is another. Like anything a good crew is hard to find and if there's a mechanical problem who's going to repair it?:shrug:
     
  13. Xelios We're setting you adrift idiot Registered Senior Member

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    Quite a few of them make it to the US, they're usually unloaded just off the coast and the coke is transported the rest of the way on speed boats. Coast Guard says up to 340 tons could have made it through in 2008. They're impossible to detect with radar or sonar and lead insulation on the top makes them very hard to detect with infrared sensors.

    They must be effective, or drug smugglers wouldn't be using them.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco_sub
     
  14. draqon Banned Banned

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    we are talking here about concealing their work as well...

    so lets sum it up:

    1) little engineering skills
    2) no one to help you
    3) home-brewed-welding
    4) gathering of metal scraps
    5) extremely low budget
    6) limited time (Boss wants that cocaine with Jose in USA immedeately)

    ...and you can do it John?

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  15. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    Dragon:

    so lets sum it up:

    1) little engineering skills

    Billions in drug money buys you the best engineers.

    2) no one to help you

    Billions in drug money buys you the best crews.

    3) home-brewed-welding

    Billions in drug money buys you the best welders and systems.

    4) gathering of metal scraps

    Billions in drug money buys you the best metals right off the shelf.

    5) extremely low budget

    Billions in drug money buys you the best.

    6) limited time (Boss wants that cocaine with Jose in USA immedeately)

    They already have to plan for lead time for shipments anyway, so they plan for the lead time to construct subs for shipments.
     
  16. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Take off with a cargo plane loaded with coke instead of a regular cargo of bananas and drop the load off before you land somewhere. Just parachute it out. When you land and nothing is there , what can they do?
     
  17. fedr808 1100101 Valued Senior Member

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    Well ive gotta say no.

    A. many of these submarines are discovered by the airplanes of the coastguard that are using infrared detectors. These aren't sophisticated nuclear driven sub marines, they are diesel and crude batteries. And diesel makes a lot of heat.

    They are not impossible to detect with sonar nor radar. US radar is incredibly sophisticated even coming out of world war two it was ahead of its time. The gun operators on world war II used to aim their guns by shooting a test shot and with radar they could tell where it landed miles away. Now the fact is that they will not be detected by ship born radar because they are not aiming the radar downwards. But a downwards looking radar on a plane will see those subs easily.

    Also, I know a whole lot about sonar systems. There are three main kinds of propulsion. Fuel cell/ battery propulsion is the quietest by far in the world if built properly, but it needs to be recharged by diesel, nuclear is pretty quiet and is hard to detect, Diesel is extremely noisy form of propulsion. Literally it is like playing a game of hide and seek, and your friend that is hiding is coughing loudly every two seconds. Trying to detect a diesel submarine is extremely easy. Diesel submarines also cannot operate under water for extremely obvious reasons.

    And depending on whether the drug sub is using radar, an ESM mast on a warship, submarine, and aircraft, will tell where the submarine is.
     
  18. fedr808 1100101 Valued Senior Member

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    No offense buffalo, but compared to modern submarines, their best really sucks comparatively speaking. They can't even submerge for very long, 8 hours vs. several weeks to months for a US submarine.
     
  19. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    But they are very comprable to WWII subs of that size and class.

    And still money buys the best there is, it is just you can't buy advanced technology that is classified as top secret as most of the operation systems on the big government boats are.

    There is still a lot of difference between what a government can do and a illigal civilian enterprize is capable of.

    But all in all they are not that primitive.
     
  20. Search & Destroy Take one bite at a time Moderator

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    They probably have two ex-submarine building 55 year old Russians, a Venezuelan engineer, and a team of Colombian motorcycle repairmen.
     
  21. Xelios We're setting you adrift idiot Registered Senior Member

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    Most every news article about them, and even the US Coast Guard, seem to disagree with you. Fiberglass is all but invisible to radar and the articles I've read suggest they give off very little to detect by sonar. Active sonar is almost useless on fiberglass and passive sonar has trouble detecting the small engines running at well below full power from any respectable distance. Most of the subs that have been caught were sighted the old fashioned way by patrolling aircraft, but every official comment I've seen says a lot of them have gotten through. :shrug:
     
  22. fedr808 1100101 Valued Senior Member

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    As far as active sonar goes that makes sense, because the active sonar as well as radar are tunned for larger ships than those subs, but as far as passive goes i think it's a mistake. Diesel engines make an incredibly large amount of noise. You can run it at an inkling of it's normal power and a seawolf would still pick it up. Now it might be the fact that no US attack subs are in the area, which would explain why passive systems cant pick up the midget subs.

    Passive sonar is a very tricky system to operate. The reason why is because there are so many factors to be included. IT is incredibly vague and none specific. ie, a fishing boat estimated to be 10 nautical miles away can actually be a several hundred foot destroyer at 30 nautical miles away. Another factor is ambient noise. The best American and Russian submarines may be capable of going 10 to 20+ plus knots max speed, but at those speeds there is so much noise from the water running over the hull, the noise of the enemy sub or ship would be drowned out. Ideally you want to be going 3-6 knots for your passive array to pick up anything. Now when the coastguard's ships are travelling 20 knots+ at a time, they would not pick up anything.

    Now there is one thing these subs have going for them which is that they have enough energy on fully charged batteries to operate an electrical drive which if built right (which we can assume they aren't) can be the quietest thign on the planet. But considering how crudly they are built, theyll still give off enough sounding to be detected.

    Now here's another question, how are our planes able to find so many? I mean seriously, they are supposedly very hard to detect, and there thousands of nautical miles for them to search. How do they manage to get that lucky so very often? At the very least these planes are atleast dropping sonar buoy's.

    Also Buffalo. These subs are built at around the cost of one million dollars total on average. They are not spending as much money as you are saying. And even world war II submarines were superior to these. World war II subs had passive sonar, torpedos, a snorkel, could dive to 180 meters compared to the drug subs 50-100 meters.

    These are very crudly built submarines
     
  23. superstring01 Moderator

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    It's not very PC to call them "midget" subs. "Little" subs is the preferred term in the sub community.

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