The Colombian navy on Wednesday announced its first seizure of an unmanned “narco sub” equipped with a Starlink antenna off its Caribbean coast.  

The semisubmersible vessel was not carrying drugs, but the Colombian navy and Western security sources based in the region told AFP they believed it was a trial run by a cocaine trafficking cartel.

“It was being tested and was empty,” a naval spokeswoman confirmed to AFP.

Manned semi-submersibles built in clandestine jungle shipyards have been used for decades to ferry cocaine north from Colombia, the world’s biggest cocaine producer, to Central America or Mexico.

But in recent years, they have been sailing much further afield, crossing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The latest find, announced by Admiral Juan Ricardo Rozo at a press conference, is the first reported discovery in South American waters of a drone narco sub. In May 2024, Italian police announced the seizure of a small remote-controlled sub likely intended to transport drugs as part of an international drug trafficking network.

The Colombian navy said the drone semisubmersible was owned by the Gulf Clan, Colombia’s largest drug trafficking group and had the capacity to transport 1.5 tons of cocaine.

The Gulf Clan is one of several cartels recently designated as foreign terrorist groups by the United States.The group’s “primary source of income is from cocaine trafficking, which it uses to fund its paramilitary activities,” according to the U.S. State Department.

A video released by the navy showed a small grey vessel with a satellite antenna on the bow.

This is not the first time a Starlink antenna has been used at sea by suspected drug traffickers.

In November, Indian police seized a giant consignment of meth worth $4.25 billion in a vessel steered remotely by Starlink near the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands.

It was the first known discovery of a narco sub operated by Starlink.

Floating “coffins”

Cocaine production, seizures and use all hit record highs in 2023, the U.N. drug agency said last month.

In Colombia, production has reached record levels, fuelled by surging global demand.

Rozo said the use of autonomous subs reflected the traffickers “migration toward more sophisticated unmanned systems” which are hard to detect at sea, “difficult to track by radar and even allow criminal networks to operate with partial autonomy.”

Juana Cabezas, a researcher at Colombia’s Institute for Development and Peace Studies, told AFP that powerful Mexican drug cartels, who operate in Colombia, “hired technology experts and engineers to develop an unmanned submarine” as far back as 2017.

She pointed out that drone vessels made it harder for the authorities to pinpoint the drug lords behind the shipments.

“Removing the crew eliminates the risk of captured operators cooperating with authorities,” agreed Henry Shuldiner, an investigator for the U.S.-based InSight Crime think tank, who co-authored a report on the rise of narco subs.

Shuldiner also highlighted the challenge of assembling crews to sail makeshift subs described as floating “coffins.” The journey can be deadly: In 2023, a “narco sub” with two dead bodies and nearly three tons of cocaine aboard was seized off the coast of Colombia.

A near record number of the low-profile vessels were intercepted in the Atlantic and Pacific in 2024, according to the report.

In November last year, five tons of Colombian cocaine were found on a semi-submersible en route to faraway Australia.

Colombian law punishes the use, construction, marketing, possession, and transportation of semi-submersibles with penalties of up to 14 years in prison.

Though commonly spotted off the coast of Colombia, narco subs have been intercepted across the globe in recent months. 

Just last week, the Mexican navy seized 3.5 tons of cocaine hidden in a semisubmersible vessel off the Pacific coast, while releasing video of the “narco sub” being intercepted.

In March, Portuguese police said forces had confiscated nearly 6.5 tons of cocaine from a semi-submersible vessel off the remote Azores archipelago that was bound for the Iberian peninsula. In January, a suspected narco sub broke in two pieces as a fishing boat was towing it to a port in northwest Spain.