Retired too Soon?

Here is what they are catching in the Pacific coming up from Columbia:

That would be a kind of submarine. A drug runner's submarine. Here is the caption that came with the picture:

"Photo released by Guatemala's Defense Ministry on Sunday July 11, 2010. Guatemala's soldiers and sailors escort a drug smuggling submarine captured last Friday July 9 off Guatemala's Pacific coast and arrested four Colombian men on board."

That thing was 57 feet long and carrying 5 tons of cocaine.

Now, I bring this up because this thing was working its way north to the US of A. Oh, it would most likely come ashore somewhere in Mexico and the goods then transported across the border which our great Secretary of Homeland Defense is as secure as it has ever been. At the same time other senior administration officials (David Axelrod) claimed that no one had done more to secure the border than the current Administration. Yeah, just the thing you want to hear knowing all along that the border is as porous as a screen door on the submarine.

This brings to mind two rants that need to be made. The first is the bald face lying the Administration is doing regarding the poor status of the southern Border, of course the northern one is no better. Any enemy of this country can bring in whatever toxic chemical, biological or nuclear weapon right over the border. Who is going to catch them? And proof that the border is still very porous and so easy to get across unmolested is that drug lords are hauling 5 tons of cocaine at a time to the border. They feel the hardest part of the journey is not the crossing the border, it's getting from Columbia to Mexico. This submarine is proof that they are going to great lengths to get their product up to Mexico. Because this was not the only one of these captured. There have been hundreds.

The second rant is the part of about how this was discovered. By the DEA. Now at one time we had a once proud fleet of ASW aircraft and ships. The aircraft were P-3 Orion and S-3 Viking aircraft (my old Jet). The Navy owned more than 400 P-3's and they were stationed all round the US coastline (there were two main bases on each coast and one in Hawaii but they deployed detachments to many places). The S-3's numbers were vastly lower and their duty was mainly carrier based anyway but when we did Caribbean deployment we were always tasked with anti-drug missions. In later years we would deploy a squadron to NAS Key West for this function and a few times the Wings would send aircraft to South America again for the drug interdiction mission.

Today, all but a few of the S-3's are in the great desert graveyard while the P-3's are fast joining them their wings are tired and in need of replacement. There are a mere 100 or so remaining and are as we speak preparing to retire to the desert also. The Boeing P-8 will take its place however there will not be nearly enough of these to cover all the operational demands and that leaves these submarines almost a free pass to Mexico.

Until someone actually gets serious about the border or deploying surveillance aircraft to the waters off South America we will be at risk of not just the drugs but of way worse an import. PresBO wants amnesty and he will keep the borders open as a political weapon to gain support for that. Meanwhile anyone or anything can be brought across.

What the hell are we doing?

BT: Jimmy T sends.