OT: narco subs

[95th Rifleman]

Originally Posted by ShadoWarrior

I'm currently reading the latest Clancy novel and was struck by a thought. IRL, the Columbian narco traffickers have been using small diesel-electric subs for a number of years now. Why doesn't the US government just task the USN with stationing a LA-class attack sub or two off the coast of Columbia and blow the damn things to hell? I would think that it wouldn't take too many losses of quarter-billion dollar cocaine cargoes before the cartels gave up using subs. If we're waging a "war on drugs", then why the hell aren't we really fighting it? I'm sure that the sailors would love the target practice, and the PR from doing it would be great.

You want to use a Los Angelese class attack submarine to hunt little narco subs? That's not just a waste of resources, but it's also stupid.

It's not exactly easy to find these subs so you'll need multiple subs patroling an extended area. Then you get to engaging the subs, the drug traffickers are criminals so you can't just "blow them to hell" and not expect some serious political fall-out. An attempt to arrest and seize the cargo has to be made, otherwise it's state-sanctioned murder and that opens a whole can of worms.

Then we get to cost, a mark 48 torpedo costs around 3.8 MILLION dollars per unit! It's designed to take out military-grade capital ships. The Harpoon missles only cost around 1.2 million but are designed for targeting surface ships.

So you want the USN to task up to 3 of it's best anti-ship sumarines to destroy narco subs with torpedos that cost nearly 4 million per unit? factor in the cost of keeping these ships on station, the political fall-out and mess a state-sanctioned execution (because that's what your sugesting) will cause.

The PR would not be great, it would be an international bloody disaster. Imagine the PR coup nations like China and Iran will make of it. Hell you'll get folks claiming these where "research" or "recreation" subs and because a mark48 torpedo won't leave much evidence to prove otherwise there will be no way of really proving the kill was carrying narcotics, sewater does bad things to cocaine so getting evidence will be next to impossible.

Worst case scenario will see a demand for the sub captains to be put on trial for murder. America will never give up said captains of course, but the international community would have a field day.