Schneier on Security

Contrarian • September 19, 2015 11:39 AM

@LuckyLurchiano

I can see a market for these vessels in Colombia.

No way. Far too conspicuous.

For discreet “special” deliveries, submarines are already used.

Being aboard of these things must be horrible.

The two-men crews of the crude WW2 German “Seehund” subs were kept going with very liberal doses of Pervitin [amphetamine], even more than in other services. Their missions lasted several days, and the probability of making it back alive was by no means close to one.

I would expect similar conditions to prevail on the South-American ships.

The wiki article also describes a towed container, but I wouldn’t be surprised that active unmanned torpedoes are being actively considered. No volume needs to be wasted for accommodating human beings. Going slow improves endurance and resistance to detection.

The two essential problems are propulsion and navigation.

How available are good inertial platforms to civilian buyers? If you don’t have access to exotic air independent propulsion technologies, you would need to have a snorkel, which you’d equip with GPS.

The snorkel would limit the dive depth, but you could compensate for the worsened stealthiness to a point with detectors for S and X band marine radar, and an AIS receiver, allowing the sub to keep clear of any activity in the neighborhood. You could also navigate in the wake of a noisier ship to get through any fixed sonar networks. A few engineers who were laid-off from some defense contractor would be enough to pull this, but tinkerers would probably be more resourceful.

You could land the unmanned vehicle anywhere on the CONUS continental shelves, and retrieve them later when the coast is clear. Maybe it’s done already. It looks a lot less risky than sending human mules with a few hundred grams of poison stashed in their bowels through extremely controlled points.

Is the shit that is smuggled in really nastier than the shit that is peddled by big pharma? Preparations such as Oxycontin, Ritalin, Zyprexa and many others bring in tens of billions, much of it paid by the public purse, to their manufacturers.

Big pharma settles its little differences with patents and court proceedings, which is a bit more civilized than drive-by shootings, and doesn’t require the wide population surveillance and control apparatus of the so-called “war on drugs” and “war on terrorism”.