What Is A Narco Submarine And Where Do They Come From?

According to Guinness World Records, the smallest submarine ever made is just 4mm, or 0.157 inches long, and was created in 1999 by the German company MicroTEC as a mini medical device. By contrast, the largest submarines are those of the formidable Russian Typhoon class, that are in fact some of the biggest warships ever built at almost 600 feet long.

One type of submarine that you may not have considered, though, is the narco submarine. These subs have a connection to narcotics, being used in the illicit trade around the world. Often, they are only semi-submersible submarines — designed to hide just beneath the surface and requiring apparatus to 'breathe' in order to do so — rather than the fully submersible submarines more commonly known and used in the military. The crucial differences between submarines and submersibles aside, these vessels are important tools for narcotics smugglers, and constant headaches for the authorities trying to apprehend them. 

Small, subtle, ocean-going vessels have been an effective transport for smuggling narcotics for decades. As Patrick Griffin put it in the U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings, "The narco-sub fleet was developed to replace the cocaine speed boats of the 1980s and 1990s, trading speed for stealth as a consequence of the Coast Guard's upgrades in radar and interception capabilities." 

According to Griffin, the vessels now known as narco submarines first began surfacing (pun intended) in the late 1980s, and have developed in three main forms: fully submersible vessels that are usually limited to depths of around 30 meters, semi-submersibles that attempt to conceal themselves but must have an exhaust above the water level, and a torpedo-like variant that can be towed or attached to the hull of larger ships. "Narco-torpedoes are uncrewed and collected by couriers once they reach a coordinated pickup point," Griffin said. 

The New York Times pointed out in 2012 that such subs represented a "new challenge faced by the United States and Latin American countries as narcotics organizations bankroll machine shops operating under cover of South America's triple-canopy jungles to build diesel-powered submarines." It's even been reported that the Colombian cartels recruited engineers from the Russian Navy in order to design and build the vessels.

Unsurprisingly, smuggling narcotics internationally has always been a hazard-laden business, and although nautical narcotics became more sophisticated it didn't become any safer for crews. Speaking to the Daily Mail in 2023, Hernando Mattos of the Caribbean National Navy said those on the vessels would earn up to $75,000 for one of the perilous journeys, but it would be hard-earned even on a relatively smooth trip.

In 2024, BBC News went aboard what it described as "the first submarine known to have brought cocaine all the way from South America." It took the vessel almost a month to reach Spain, the outlet explained, and the occupants were subjected to awful claustrophobic conditions for the duration. "For food they had energy bars, cans of sardines, the toilet was a bag in the corner, and that was it, they had nothing else," the report said. 

The journey was endured only for the occupants to be apprehended on arriving in Europe. A bounty of around $126 million worth of cocaine was aboard.

Narco submarines pose an ongoing danger, despite some success by authorities. In 2024, the British Royal Navy declared that patrol vessel HMS Trent, in tandem with the U.S. Coast Guard, captured a semi-submerged narco sub that was carrying a huge haul of cocaine worth approximately $201 million. This was part of a wider operation comprising "eight drugs busts in seven months," stopping nearly $1 billion of narcotics. 

There is also potential danger besides narcotics. In 2007, the Los Angeles Times quoted "a senior U.S. military official involved in the war on drugs" as bluntly stating, "there could be five tons of anything on board these things." While not overt attack submarines like those wielded by the U.S. Navy, a huge potential threat remains, and national assets to combat the problem are not limitless. 

After apparently restricting around 10,000 leads to 3,500 workable cases, "due to low resources," the Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association reports, "the U.S. Coast Guard can only interdict around 10% of those cases with the help of partner nations."

In the 2024 report, the Spanish National Police put the reality to BBC News, "They are very hard to detect. In fact, in more than twenty years of traffickers using submarines to reach Africa and Europe, these two are the first we've seized."