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The Evolution of the Mexican Navy Since 1980

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EO4, Mexican Navy, 1993. Photo Credit: Bill Larkins, licensed with CC BY-SA 2.0.

This article is a part of our 2021 Series on Caribbean Maritime Security. Read the Series Introduction at this link.

On the 1st of December 2018, Mexico inaugurated President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Within only a few days of beginning his term, he had clearly established his security and defence priorities: tackling the country’s internal violence and scrapping all “unnecessary” defence expenditures. This announcement had a tremendous effect on the Mexican defence establishment, which was already planning several key modernizing projects.

One of those projects is the procurement of eight light, multi-purpose frigates, co-developed with the Danish shipyard Damen. Though, this acquisition is just one of several projects intended to better equip the Mexican Navy with capabilities appropriate for the maritime challenges of the 21st Century. However, proposed overhauls of the Mexican Navy risk coming to nothing amidst political landscape disinterested in maritime defense issues.

To better understand the Navy’s current state, it is important to first explore its doctrinal evolution over the last 40 years. To this effect, this article draws from informal interviews with retired Mexican captains and admirals, assessing their thoughts in light of Mexico’s naval doctrine evolution since 1980. The group identified three main doctrinal evolutions since 1980, the first taking place at the beginning of that decade, the second starting in the middle of the 1990s and the last, which is still ongoing, beginning in the wake of September 11, 2001.

A Constabulary Navy (1980 - mid 1990s)

After the Second World War, the Mexican Navy focused on building a constabulary force to conduct coastal patrols, fisheries control and limited search and rescue (SAR) operations. Platform-wise, Mexico relied on decommissioned US Navy vessels that formed the backbone of the fleet for decades. The sudden discovery of large oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico, which occurred at the same time that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) came into existence, started to change this constabulary focus. The first evidence of this was the acquisition of the ARM Cuauhtémoc, a Spanish-made tall ship that would serve as the navy’s training vessel as well as a tool for naval diplomacy. The acquisition of Cuauhtémoc sent a clear message that the Mexican Navy was ready to look outward.

The arrival of the ARM Cuauhtémoc was followed by the introduction of six Uribe-class offshore patrol vessels (OPV) from 1981 to 1982, also bought from Spain. These vessels were intended to boost the navy’s maritime presence in Mexico’s recently demarcated three million square kilometer exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The OPVs were lightly armed but capable of embarking helicopters, which helped the navy as a capability multiplier for ocean patrol missions. Integrated air and naval operations helped the navy gain confidence and laid the groundwork for subsequent growth.

Towards International Cooperation (mid 1990s – 2001)

Although Mexico and its naval forces had prioritized sub-state threats before, the end of the Cold War reinforced their focus on naval policy relating to non-state actors and trans-national crime. For example, the fight against drug trafficking at sea became, and still is, a cornerstone for U.S.-Mexico maritime security cooperation. Bilateral security and defence cooperation between both countries reached new heights during this decade, and the Mexican Navy has played a key role in maintaining security ties with the United States ever since.

Subsequently, the Mexican Navy decided to increase its naval shipbuilding efforts and to focus on domestically developed offshore patrol vessels. Building on the lessons of the Uribe-class the Mexican government built four Holzinger-class OPVs in local shipyards during the first half of the 1990s. At the same time, the navy acquired two Bronstein-class and four Knox-class frigates from the United States, all part of the Cold War glut of US Navy vessels. The vessels were outdated by international standards but helped the Mexican Navy maintain a modest ocean-going capability.

During the second half of the 1990s, the navy was also investing in its personnel by sending more personnel to attend training in US Navy and US Coast Guard schools. Though mostly academic, this foundation of security cooperation between the United States and Mexico was important for the current doctrinal stage, which came in the wake of the 2001 attacks on the United States.

Speeding Up Internationalization (2001 – Present)

After the attacks on 11 September 2001, the Mexican Navy came to the consensus that it had more to worry about than maritime drug trafficking. Specifically, it became increasingly concerned with the possibility of a terrorist attack on offshore drilling platforms in the Bay of Campeche, and in response to this perceived threat, the navy acquired two Aliya-class corvettes from Israel. They were the first Mexican vessels capable of launching anti-ship missiles, which was a major step in conventional naval capability. The two Aliyas were part of the Navy’s overall patrol scheme in the zone, also comprised of interceptor boats, Raytheon-made Sentinel coastal radars and a special operations base located on an oil platform. The Navy also continued to build offshore patrol vessels like the Oaxaca-class OPV. By the end of President Vicente Fox’s administration in 2006, the Mexican navy could call on a fleet of modern OPVs and limited anti-surface warfare capabilities.

Fox’s successor, President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), took office and aggressively used the Mexican military to attack the growing power of the drug cartels. These measures included the Mexican navy’s marines who were generally regarded as the most efficient, respected, and reliable force in the military. The crackdown on the cartels also drew the Mexican Navy into closer cooperation with its US counterparts. In his book A Tale of Two Eagles, Craig Deare argues that during this period is was the war on organized crime that allowed the United States-Mexico security and defence relationship to reach new levels. Cooperation was most evident in intelligence sharing and in the United States’ actions assisting the Mexican navy to invest in new platforms, like maritime surveillance aircraft.

Simultaneously, the Mexican Navy has continued to invest in patrol vessels, for instance the aforementioned Oaxaca-class and a new class of Stan Patrol vessels built in Mexico under license from Damen Group in the Netherlands. Eventually this project led to the most ambitions Mexican acquisition, the multipurpose SIGMA 10514 frigate. The SIGMA 10514 project would not have been possible without building on some of the earlier Mexican shipbuilding programs like the Oaxaca-class. For the Mexican Navy, the SIGMA-class is a strategic bet on the country’s national defence in the 21st Century. Initially envisioned as a class of eight vessels, construction has been halted after only the first, ARM Juárez, has been launched.

Final Thoughts

The SIGMA project has been suspended since December 2018, with only one ship operational. All other naval construction has also been halted, breaking with what has been a near constant period of acquisitions since the 1990s.

The future of the Mexican navy is at a crossroads. The doctrinal evolution that started in the 1980s, both in terms of organizational culture and capabilities, has yielded a modern-thinking navy with moderately capable vessels but, a lack of interest in the navy and maritime affairs by the current administration may halt or even begin to reverse some of that hard-won progress. Nonetheless, even while naval construction is halted, decades of evolution in service culture and doctrine should survive a temporarily hostile political climate.

A clear sign that the Navy is still on the same strategic path that began 40 years ago, would be its participation in multinational naval drills and exercises, such as UNITAS, RIMPAC or Trade Winds. If the Navy does not take part in those exercises, and the shipbuilding program remains halted, the Mexican Navy will have a hard time to keep the pace of its strategic doctrinal evolution.

Time will tell.

Arm the Coast Guard with More Drones in the Caribbean

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A crewmember from the US Coast Guard Cutter Stratton launches a Scan Eagle UAS during testing. Source: Defense Visual Information Distribution Service

This article is a part of our 2021 Series on Caribbean Maritime Security. Read the Series Introduction at this link.

In February, a P-3 ‘Orion’ maritime surveillance aircraft identified and tracked a suspicious vessel suspected of trafficking cocaine and vectored in a US Coast Guard cutter to make the interdiction. The Coast Guard seized the vessel and found more than 3,300 pounds of cocaine aboard. US Customs and Border Protection, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, operates P-3s and other aircraft from Naval Air Stations in Corpus Christi, Texas and Jacksonville, Florida. From these bases they help provide domain awareness over the maritime approaches to the United States in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. Operations, like the one in February, are often lauded as interagency triumphs – with multiple agencies working together to secure America’s borders. However, they also highlight the lack of maritime surveillance assets within the US Coast Guard itself, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the Caribbean where the Coast Guard is forced to rely on interagency cooperation for aerial maritime surveillance. The Coast Guard urgently needs to invest in its own family of unmanned systems that can provide it with the maritime domain awareness that it relies on other agencies for.

The US Coast Guard is responsible for law enforcement and policing in the territorial waters and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of the United States, this encompasses eleven specific missions. The Coast Guard also routinely deploys forces globally in support of the Department of Defense and other national priorities like ‘freedom of navigation’ exercises, including to the Strait of Taiwan or its long-standing patrol force in the Persian Gulf. But within the Western Hemisphere alone, the Coast Guard is responsible for policing over 4.2 million square miles of water and nearly a hundred-thousand miles of coastline. In this vast expanse, by far the most vulnerable points are the Caribbean and East Pacific approaches to the United States. The US government’s Drug Enforcement Agency estimates that as much as 80% of the cocaine leaving the Andean region in South America travels by maritime means, with approximately 90% of it eventually landing in Central America before crossing over the US-Mexico border on its way to US consumers. Illicit narcotics, however, are not the only issue the Coast Guard needs to address, US partners in the region are increasingly concerned about illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing. This has lead the Coast Guard to deploy cutters to support operations across Latin America from Ecuador to Argentina, to deal with the threat. Of all the regions where it operates, the Coast Guard is perhaps most important in the Caribbean where it works with dozens of smaller partners to address trans-national issues like narcotics trafficking, providing the maritime capacity that oftentimes smaller nations lack.

US Law enforcement agencies have long identified the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, often referred to as the “transit zone,” as ideal for interdicting illegal shipments, whether the cargo is drugs, weapons or trafficked humans. Maritime narcotics shipments are almost always made in bulk, and the further they travel from their point of origin, the more valuable they become, making seizure in the transit zone much more costly to traffickers than seizures in South America. Additionally, ocean interception represents a low-risk area for interdiction – that is to say that once assets are detailed for interdiction traffickers are not likely to resist capture. But before shipments can be interdicted in the transit zone they need to be found – and searching for go-fast boats and semi-submersibles with surface vessels is nearly impossible, primarily because the vessels are difficult to see. Radars mounted on law enforcement vessels are limited to the horizon by the curvature of the earth. Also critical is loiter time – manned platforms are limited by fuel constraints and eventually by the limits of human endurance. If you want to monitor large areas of the ocean you need to be up in the sky or using a fleet of networked sensors.

Analysts often lament how poorly resourced the US Coast Guard is compared to the other military services. Though considered an ‘armed service’ the Coast Guard is not part of the military, instead, since reforms following 9/11 it has resided in the Department of Homeland Security. It has just over 40,000 active-duty guardsman and a fleet of cutters and aircraft. In part because of this small size the Coast Guard relies on surveillance and detection from other agencies like Customs and Border Protection (CBP) aircraft, a barrage of high-altitude balloons or US military assets including high-end weapon systems like B-1 ‘Lancer’ bombers and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. While certainly effective, these platforms were designed to fight the Soviet Union and are far more expensive than what is required to track smugglers, the B-1 costs over $60,000 an hour to operate and the destroyers cost nearly a billion dollars per vessel. CBP operates a fleet of maritime patrol aircraft and large unmanned platforms that are much more cost effective. However, these assets are all based in the continental United States and the Coast Guard operates globally. The Coast Guard needs in-house assets that are effective at maritime surveillance and detection, and that can operate wherever the Coast Guard is deployed.

Thankfully, putting unmanned aerial assets on every medium and large cutter is a goal of the current Commandant, Admiral Karl Schultz, and investing in unmanned systems is a part of the service’s strategic plan. Such a move will significantly improve the maritime domain awareness of Coast Guard units at sea and help mitigate their dependence on assets and support loaned from the military and other agencies. But the current Coast Guard program for ship-based UAS is contractor owned and operated while the Coast Guard looks for a permanent solution and experimentation is ongoing. Two new types of UAS look particularly promising for the Coast Guard – vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) UAS, and unmanned surface vessels (USVs). Both of these technologies were successfully demonstrated last year, VTOL UAS was operated from a cutter during a deployment as were two different unmanned surface vessels, each with a mission endurance as long as 30 days.

Ultimately, what is needed is a family of systems that can provide the Coast Guard with an organic and layered maritime surveillance network. Realizing this for the Coast Guard will free up CBP and military assets for other missions more in line with their respective institutional priorities and further empower the Coast Guard. These platforms are desperately needed in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific where the Coast Guard is the lead agency in intercepting illicit narcotics traffickers but also in the fighting against IUU fishing and maritime crime. In setting acquisition priorities for the Coast Guard it would be wise to remember Roger Barnett’s assertion in his book Navy Strategic Culture that “…the most difficult problem in naval warfare is finding the adversary.” Investments in unmanned systems will help support Coast Guard missions not just in counter narcotics but across their 11 statutory missions around the globe, it all starts with domain awareness.

The Caribbean Test Case for the Coast Guard’s Tri-Service Commitment

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Caption: United States Coast Guard Cutter Stone heads toward the South Atlantic for its maiden patrol.
Source: DVIDS

This article is a part of our 2021 Series on Caribbean Maritime Security. Read the Series Introduction at this link.

In December 2020, the three US sea services—the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard—released a new tri-service maritime strategy, Advantage at Sea: Prevailing with Integrated All-Domain Naval Power. The document leaves no doubt that competition with China and Russia are the primary focus of the strategy and, ostensibly, all three of the services that drafted it. Yet the strategy leaves unanswered questions about one of the Coast Guard’s largest missions in some of its most frequented waters: counter-narcotics in the Caribbean.

How the Coast Guard aligns with the strategic priorities of a tri-service strategy might not seem like new territory. The three sea services coalesced around a shared strategy less than 15 years ago in 2007’s A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower (and later its shorter-lived refresh). It is best understood as roughly split between two visions of the sea services’ raison d’etre. As described by Peter Haynes in his 2015 book, Toward a New Maritime Strategy, part of the strategy reflects the conventional blue water Navy approach to questions of seapower, a traditionalist perspective guided by the intellectual history of Mahan (and Corbett). The other half is dedicated to a much different vision of what sea services do—a view Geoffrey Till has described as post-modernism. Naval post-modernism emphasizes shared responsibilities to protect collective benefits from the maritime commons, leveraging sea control in support of humanitarian missions, diplomacy, and the promotion of good order at sea. It was a high water mark for the role of maritime security in US maritime strategy.

Intellectually, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower was a boon for the Coast Guard, situating maritime stewardship as a core strategic issue for the sea services. Which meant that implementing the strategy in practice augured relatively few hard questions for the Coast Guard, full as it was with maritime law enforcement responsibilities after 9/11.

Advantage at Sea forces a deeper reckoning for the Coast Guard. The document moves the three services closer to the traditionalist camp, something the Navy’s and Marine Corps’ individual concepts and strategies tend to reinforce. And in its own recent writings, the Coast Guard has shown greatest energy on emerging regions and issues that are driven by strategic competition, such as the Arctic and illegal, unreported, unregulated (IUU) fishing. Indeed, the novel deployment of a USCG cutter to the South Atlantic this winter came about, not because of an interest in narcotics trafficking, but because of the growing concern over Chinese distant-water fishing activities. Word counts are a crude measure of importance, but the impression from a quick review is also instructive. Compared to 33 mentions of China, 16 of Russia, 5 of the Arctic, or 4 of the (Indo-) Pacific, the Caribbean is mentioned only once in the new tri-service strategy, and it’s a photo caption at that. The document nods to other threats—Iran, North Korea, terrorism, transnational crime—and offers an offhand reference to narcotics. Yet the balance of the strategy tilts far from the Caribbean and far from an interest in non-state actors, drug traffickers lower still.

Meanwhile, the domestic political context that has historically promoted a focus on narcotics is also in flux. The war on drugs is at a 40 year trough, given the greater public interest on rehabilitation and criminal justice reform. The result may be that not only is narcotics trafficking no longer seen as a strategic issue for the Coast Guard’s national security mission set, it may also be losing salience as a core strategic law enforcement function for the service.

Despite the move from A Cooperative Strategy’s non-state focus, Advantage at Sea’s discussion of day-to-day competition opens the door for the Coast Guard to play a critical role in great power competition. The strategy describes competition as a contest over the international order, and so we can think about threats to the order as on a continuum. At the high end, rival great powers have the capacity to upend the system in an acute effort to overthrow it—major power war. This is the domain of the Navy and the Marine Corps. But at the low end, even some non-state threats, such as pirates and terrorists, can undermine the system’s benefits when they rise to a level that threaten its core tenets—including the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence and the free flow of maritime commerce. Constabulary and maritime security missions, and therefore the Coast Guard, are thus instrumental to a type of competition with China and Russia that is focused on the health of the international system. The questions for the Coast Guard then become how strictly the service chooses to align with the vision of the new tri-service strategy, and how integral narcotics trafficking in the Caribbean is to the overall health of the international order.

To be clear, the Coast Guard will never fully abandon the Caribbean counter-narcotics mission. Doing so runs afoul of the Coast Guard’s law enforcement responsibilities to the American public, and US political conditions are unlikely to change so much that ending interdiction at or beyond the US border becomes politically desirable. Just as police can deprioritize narcotics arrests without abandoning them entirely, so might be the Coast Guard’s trajectory. Moreover, maritime insecurity is an intersectional problem, with actors and crimes moving across categories and space with ease. Indeed, even the narrative on the recent USCG cutter deployment to the South Atlantic is muddier than it first appears. While on its way south to counter IUU fishing, the ship made news interdicting a suspected drug runner near the Dominican Republic.

Strategy is about hard choices—the missions, capabilities, or regions from which a service must divest in order to focus finite resources on the missions, capabilities, or regions it finds strategically important. Advantage at Sea augurs questions for the Coast Guard that A Cooperative Strategy did not. How important does it weigh its strategic commitments, as outlined in the tri-service strategy, against its regular constabulary responsibilities? And among those constabulary commitments, how have changes in domestic politics shaped the relative importance of the drug mission compared to other constabulary functions, like countering illegal fishing or conducting search and rescue?

The question here is one of overall balance of effort. The question is whether the Caribbean drug mission is still fundamentally strategic in its level of importance for the United States and, if not, whether the Coast Guard should consider options for downsizing its Caribbean counter-narcotics footprint in favor of servicing other, more strategically important missions. If the Coast Guard takes the shift to great power competition as its guiding principle, then it seems like such a reprioritization is in order. The result is a Caribbean test case for the Coast Guard’s commitment to the tri-service strategy.

The Elusive Prey: ‘Narco Submarines’ In The Caribbean

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Photo Credit: Todd Huffman, licensed under CC BY 2.0

This article is a part of our 2021 Series on Caribbean Maritime Security. Read the Series Introduction at this link.

Laura was small, but she wasn’t innocent. ‘Laura’ was the name given to the first Narco Submarine, discovered abandoned near the Caribbean island of San Andrés, by Colombian authorities in 1993. This unusual vessel was constructed from two fiberglass sailing boat hulls glued together, one on top of the other, to form a submersible pressure hull. It had a deep keel to keep it stable and compensate for the tall radar mast which also acted as the snorkel when it was running submerged. Clearly it was a somewhat experimental vessel and the, undoubtedly, unique design has not been seen since. Yet, Laura ushered in the age of the ‘Narco-Submarine’ throughout Caribbean smuggling routes.

Narco Submarines are drug smuggling boats which attempt to use special design features to help evade detection. Some are ‘true submarines,’ meaning that they can operate completely submerged, but most are just extremely low-profile vessels (LPVs). This is enough to make them extremely hard to see or detect on radar and their continued use is a testament to their effectiveness.

Nearly 30 years after ‘Laura’ the Caribbean remains a major cocaine smuggling route. Narco Subs have become a major means of transporting drugs and have spread from the Caribbean to the Pacific, and even across trans-Atlantic routes. The most recent Narco Submarine incident reported in the Caribbean occurred on February 19, 2020. Panamanian forces interdicted a LPV near Bocas del Toro at the northern tip of Panama. While, in many ways, typical of so-called Narco Submarines the vessel was unusually large, with two marine diesel motors and carrying 5 metric tons of cocaine. The increased payload appears to be part of a recent trend. Despite this notable case, today, the vast majority of reported Narco Submarines are on Pacific smuggling routes.

Why are Narco Submarines less common in the Caribbean than the Pacific?

Recently Narco Submarines have become more common in the Eastern Pacific, while “Go-Fast” vessels have tended to predominate Caribbean smuggling. Go-fast vessels (GFVs) are just power boats (or up-engine fishing boats), whose lack of stealth is made up for by their extreme speed . Go-slows are similar again but, as the name implies, have less speed. Go-fasts are much cheaper than Narco Submarines and are easier to source because they are commercially available. They can also blend in with local fishing fleets and do not require special boat handling or navigations skills to operate (often times they are crewed by local fishermen). However, they are much less optimized for their illicit role than Narco Subs, which are custom-built for trafficking cocaine. The intuitive view is that, overall, Narco Submarines are better for smuggling. Despite this, in the Caribbean Go-Fast boats and Go-Slow boats appear more common. Despite their lack of stealth they still retain some advantages over Narco Submarines.

One factor is distance. Trips from Colombia to Caribbean islands, or Central America are much shorter than trips from Colombia’s Pacific Coast and there are intermediate stopping points where traffickers can rest or refuel. Traffickers using Go-Fast boats usually load the boat with barrels of extra fuel and about 0.5-1 metric tons of cocaine. The boat then makes a run for it, hoping to spend as little time at sea as possible. Sometimes to reduce the chance of detection they stop and drift during the day, pulling a blue plastic tarpaulin over the boat to act as camouflage. Also, larger fishing vessels can act as mother ships, towing one or more Go-Fasts (or Go-Slows) which increases their range.

Another major factor in why Caribbean trafficking routes see fewer Narco Subs may be the relative difficulty in setting up the clandestine boat yards to manufacture them. Narco Subs are usually custom built in remote, jungle shipyards near rivers giving them discrete access to the ocean. Colombia’s Pacific coast is relatively uninhabited, there are very few settlements and virtually no major infrastructure, so such sites can usually stay unobserved (or at least unreported). Because the Pacific coast is more remote the Colombian government has less control over it and the adjacent areas than other parts of the country, leaving drug smuggling organizations more of a free hand. Additionally, much of the land on the Pacific coast is not privately owned. This means that there are fewer land owners who might object to Narco Subs being built on their land. By comparison Colombia’s Caribbean coastline is much more populated and better policed. It also has fewer river outlets to allow Narco Subs sea access.

Beyond Colombia: Venezuela and the Caribbean Islands

Not all Caribbean Narco Submarines are built or launched from Colombia. There have been attempts to build smuggling vessels on Caribbean islands, and Narco Submarines have been found in several other South American countries like Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela. Increasingly, Venezuela is becoming an permissive environment for cocaine traffickers and may be a launch point for Narco Subs.

A Narco Submarine found in Venezuela in October 2019, and seized by the Maduro Government, was unusually compact. It could be carried on a boat trailer, pointing to a different modus operandi to the Pacific Coast where Narco Submarines are built on the coast.

The Maduro regime frequently interdicts aircraft suspected of trafficking cocaine and makes a show of displaying destroyed aircraft, often publicly placing the blame on Colombia. But it seems likely that some Venezuelans are also involved in these aspects of the drugs trade and it is suspected that other traffickers are permitted to operate by the Maduro government, and last year the US Department of Justice charged Maudro himself with a “decades-long narco-terrorism and international cocaine trafficking conspiracy.” Whether Narco Submarines are operating from Venezuela in any number, and the degree of government involvement, remains to be seen.

Why we might see an increase in Narco Submarines in the Caribbean

Drug trafficking organizations are run as businesses and make pragmatic decisions when choosing smuggling methods. Profit and risk are weighed, and routes are optimized as much as possible. While they generally maintain diverse means of smuggling, one method can proliferate as others wane. So, the advantages of Narco Submarines may become more compelling if the relative profitability of Go-Fasts, or other means, declines.

The most conspicuous reason why this might happen is due to increased law enforcement pressuring the go-fast routes. Since April U.S. Southern Command has been conducting ‘Enhanced Counter Narcotics Operations’ in the Eastern Pacific. This has significantly increased U.S. law enforcement presence and brought down Navy assets with advanced capabilities, in addition to U.S. Coast Guard cutters. Local navies and law enforcement, plus European navies supporting their Caribbean territories are also persistently active. If this increased enforcement makes the easier to detect Go-Fast and Go-Slow vessels untenable, traffickers may increase their use of Narco Subs in the Caribbean.

Traffickers may also be attracted to the increased payloads observed in Narco Submarine incidents in 2020. Versions of Narco Submarines, which typically carry 1.4-1.6 metric tons of cocaine are now being intercepted with 2-3 tons and some larger models are carrying 5-6 tons. It is possible that this increase in cargo-size is the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on other means of smuggling such as air travel and shipping. It may also be influenced by the increased law enforcement activity.

Only time will tell how this confluence of factors impacts the relative distribution of Narco Submarines and smuggling routes between the Pacific and the Caribbean. But an increase in Caribbean activity, specifically an increase in Narco Submarines is not only possible, it may be coming,

Venezuela, Illegal Fuel and Maritime Security in the Caribbean

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Source: Voice of America News

This article is a part of our 2021 Series on Caribbean Maritime Security. Read the Series Introduction at this link.

Fuel smuggling in and out of Venezuela is quietly eroding regional security and threatening environmental catastrophe. In an effort to avoid US sanctions imposed on Venezuela, oil tankers are increasingly going “dark” by turning off their automatic identification systems (AIS). By not reporting their position, the vessels effectively vanish on the high seas. The Greek-owned VL Nichioh went dark as it approached Venezuelan waters. Nine days later, the vessel showed back up on AIS steaming towards Asia but with an extremely low freeboard. Between the vessel going dark, a low freeboard, and heading towards the far east, the VL Nichioh had all the telltale signs of being actively involved in Venezuelan illicit fuel smuggling. But either for lack of assets, willpower or a smoking gun, the vessel was allowed to travel unimpeded by international authorities.

This fuel smuggling, usually crude oil leaving Venezuela and refined fuels entering, helps to prop up the Maduro regime in Venezuela. The import of refined fuels like gasoline helps alleviate a crippling shortage and puts off some of the pain chronic domestic mismanagement is causing in Venezuela. Exports of crude help validate Venezuela’s partnerships with China, Russia and Iran and likely help pay for their support to the regime as well as bringing in much-needed foreign currency.

Production Woes

Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world and yet the worst economy of all Latin American countries. Oil represents up to 99% of Venezuela’s exports and 25% of the GDP. Thanks to government subsidies and hyperinflation, fuel costs an estimated at 0.00000002 cents per gallon - in other words, a single dollar could theoretically buy five billion gallons of fuel. Free gasoline has been a flagship of the Maduro regime in order to maintain the loyalty of businesses and the military during the economic meltdown.

The demand for government-subsidized fuel and increased sanctions have resulted in a severe fuel shortage – Venezuelans who grew up in a country where oil was regarded as a birthright now wait up to a week to fill their car with government-subsidized fuel. Oil production in Venezuela has dropped more than anywhere else in the world in the past four decades. US imposed sanctions have severely limited Venezuela’s ability to import fuel or the necessary parts to repair failing refineries to stave off the shortage. In order to help alleviate Venezuela’s latest production woes, on February 11th 2021, Iran initiated a second round of airlifts to help restart the 955,000 barrel per day Paraguana Refining Complex in western Venezuela. This follows the restarting of the 310,000 barrel per day Cardon Refinery last year, which partly alleviated acute gasoline shortages. Due to Iran’s help, Venezuela’s fuel production increased by 20% to date when compared to 2020 and is expected to increase an additional 15% in 2021.

Ecological Disaster

The increased production has not been without grave ecological consequences. The state-owned oil giant, Petroleros de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) was responsible for more than 46,000 oil spills between 2010-2016. For example, last year massive oil slicks washed ashore on the beaches of Morrocoy National Park from a spill originating from El Palito refinery but initially speculated to be from an oil tanker. The spill was estimated to constitute 26,000 barrels, the largest in the area in 20 years. Even worse, nearly a quarter of the Venezuelan population lives around Lake Maracaibo, which is severely polluted by poorly maintained PDVSA oil pipelines and wells. The lake has a permanent black tide that coats the shore, fishermen, and their catch in crude oil. At sea, PDVSA owned floating storage and offloading vessel, FSO Nabarima , is reportedly in poor condition and listing as much as 25-degrees. Permanently riding at anchor, it threatens to spill it’s 1.3 million gallons of crude oil into the Caribbean, more than five times what was spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989. As Venezuela attempts to reignite its oil oil-based economy, further disasters may occur on a more frequent and grander scale threatening to disrupt livelihoods and ecosystems in the Caribbean.

Insecurity

The average Venezuelan earns 72 cents per day and lost 24 lbs in 2017. In search of a better life, more than 5 million refugees have fled Venezuela, with an 8000% increase since 2014 stemming from Venezuela’s collapsing economy and the exodus shows no signs of stopping. With its infrastructure in a state of decay, a major ecological disaster due to fuel smuggling could displace millions more. The fallout of ecological disasters such as Lake Maracaibo and the El Palito refinery threatens the livelihood of fishermen as well. Fishermen from Lake Maracaibo are forced to throw back half their catches because of oil pollution; the remaining catch is cleaned with gasoline and then sold to unsuspecting customers. Struggling Venezuelan fishermen have resorted to piracy in order to feed themselves and their families, reminiscent of the struggling Somali fishermen that resorted to piracy nearly a decade ago when they could no longer make a living. And it’s not just fishermen, the Venezuelan Coast Guard and National Guard engage in piracy as well. They have also been implicated in brazen murders at sea related to fuel smuggling and extortion. Venezuela accounted for more than half of all robberies at anchorages in the Caribbean between 2016-2019.

Despite the gravity of the situation, US Southern Command has not deployed local assets to counter fuel smuggling, though it has significantly bolstered its force strength to tackle narcotrafficking. In 2020, President Trump announced, “We’re deploying additional Navy destroyers, combat ships, aircraft & helicopters, Coast Guard Cutters…doubling our capabilities in the region… We must not let narco-terrorists exploit the pandemic to threaten American lives.” Due to effective counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean, trafficking routes have shifted to the Eastern Pacific in recent years. In 2017, 84% of documented cocaine from South America transited through the Eastern Pacific.

Source: Voice of America News

The Middle and Far East Connection

In order to assist Maduro’s government, Iran defied US sanctions placed on both Tehran and Caracas by sending a flotilla of tankers to deliver millions of barrels of refined oil to the stricken nation. A day after fuel arrived in Venezuela from the Iranian tankers, the US Navy conducted a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) off the coast of Venezuela. The US Navy has since sailed two additional FONOPs outside Venezuelan territorial waters including one by the USS Pickney and another by USS William P. Lawrence, timed the day after another tanker carrying Iranian fuel arrived in Venezuela.. FONOPs have been used as means to combat Venezuela’s excessive territorial water claims but the timing of the FONOPs with the arrival of the Iranian tankers suggest they have also used a means to dissuade the tankers from arriving.

The FONOPs, however, did not deter Iran from sending its largest flotilla to Venezuela in December 2020 with ten tankers. Like the previous smaller Iranian flotilla with five vessels, the Iranian ships turned off their AIS in an attempt to obfuscate their business and avoid US sanctions.

Despite strict sanctions levied against Venezuela, crude oil exports have nearly tripled with most of the crude headed to China. Asian flagged vessels engaged in exporting Venezuelan crude oil not only turn off their AIS, but also mask the origin by adding additives to the fuel, in a process known as oil doping, and engaging in ship-to-ship fuel transfers. These acts help further obscure the origins of Venezuelan oil in an attempt to avoid US sanctions.

Conclusion

While the US continues to devote significant assets to counter-narcotics missions in the Caribbean, fuel and crude oil smuggling in and out of Venezuela is an overlooked threat. It helps prop up the Maduro regime financially and helps paper over crippling domestic supply issues in Venezuela. At lower levels, the illegal fuel entering and leaving Venezuela is a driver of maritime insecurity and has led to murders like the killing on the San Ramon. Further, it is an already-unfolding ecological disaster likely to worsen. US Southern Command should prioritize enforcing fuel sanctions on Venezuela in order to better secure the region. Much like how the renewed focus on counter-narcotics has forced smugglers to avoid Caribbean routes, a focus on maritime fuel smuggling can force the Maudro regime to abandon their dangerous and illicit practices. The ecological and maritime security consequences are simply too high for anything less.