The Colombian Navy seized an empty, unmanned narco-submarine equipped with a Starlink antenna off its Caribbean coast. Photo / AFP
The Colombian Navy seized an empty, unmanned narco-submarine equipped with a Starlink antenna off its Caribbean coast. Photo / AFP
The Colombian Navy has announced its first seizure of an unmanned narco-submarine equipped with a Starlink antenna off its Caribbean coast.
The 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 bya 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 submarine.
Asked if it was operated using Elon Musk’s Starlink, the spokeswoman confirmed that the semi-submersible “had that technology” but said the Navy “was still studying how exactly it operated”.
A video released by the Navy showed a small grey vessel with a satellite antenna on the bow.
The Navy said it had the capacity to transport 1.5 tonnes of cocaine.
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 US$4.25 billion in a vessel steered remotely by Starlink tech near the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands.
It was the first known discovery of a narco-submarine operated by Starlink tech.
Drug traffickers are maximising technology to illegally import drugs. Photo / Getty Images
Going further afield
Rozo said the use of the satellite technology 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.
“Their idea was that it could ... pass through the Pacific and then automatically unload the drugs so that people could collect them and put them on other unmanned submarines,” she said.
She also pointed out that drone vessels made it harder for the authorities to pinpoint the drug lords behind the shipments.
A near-record number of narco subs were intercepted in the Atlantic and Pacific in 2024, according to the US-based Insight Crime think-tank.
In November last year, 5 tonnes of Colombian cocaine were found on a semi-submersible en route to Australia.
Colombian law punishes the use, construction, marketing, possession, and transportation of semi-submersibles with penalties of up to 14 years in prison.
Insight Crime quoted crew members as describing narco subs as “coffins” and said two crew members were found dead from inhaling engine fumes aboard a vessel found crossing the Pacific by Colombian authorities in 2023.
