The Rise of the Narco-Sub
How cartels turned the ocean into a stealth battlefield, and why the U.S. just blew one up.
“It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well-known narcotrafficking transit route,” President Trump declared on social media Saturday.
Two men were killed in the first known American military strike on a “narco-submarine”—technically a semi-submersible vessel that rides just above the surface—in a six-week campaign that has seen the U.S. military destroy at least seven vessels, killing 32 people.
In another first, two survivors were pulled from the wreckage. Trump said they would be returned to their home countries, Ecuador and Colombia, “for detention and prosecution,” according to his Truth Social post, which included a 29-second video of Thursday’s strike. (see above)
Trump’s claim about the narco-sub raised serious doubts about the intelligence driving these lethal strikes. Without providing evidence, the president claimed that U.S. intelligence “confirmed” the destroyed vessel was loaded with “mostly fentanyl.” Narco-subs are used almost exclusively to move tons of cocaine and, to a lesser extent, marijuana, while most fentanyl is produced and trafficked overland from Mexico. Even the largest fentanyl seizure in DEA history would not come close to filling the cargo hold of a typical narco-sub.
Thursday’s attack, which sources told The New York Times was carried out by a Special Operations aircraft in the southern Caribbean, was the latest turn in a long and mostly invisible conflict at sea in which billion-dollar navies chase boats built in jungle clearings, and the line between drug smuggling and national security threat has blurred beyond recognition.
Cartels once dreamed of buying Soviet submarines; now they build their own. Over the past two decades, Colombian engineers working for drug traffickers have quietly created a shadow navy of narco-subs capable of carrying up to ten tons of cocaine—and crossing oceans to reach Spain and, more recently, Sierra Leone and Australia.
Today’s vessels range from hand-built semi-submersibles to fully submersible vessels to remote-operated “drone subs,” part of a global arms race between traffickers and the forces trying to stop them.
In the 1990s, rumors circulated that Colombian cartels had built a working submarine. U.S. Joint Interagency Task Force–South (JIATF-South), which detects and monitors illicit air and maritime drug trafficking, dismissed the idea, nicknaming the phantom craft “Bigfoot.”
Colombian authorities began uncovering cartel submarine projects in 1993, long before the United States confirmed their existence. In 2000, police raided a warehouse in Bogotá and found a half-built, 100-foot submarine with Russian-language documents scattered across the floor. Police chief Gen. Luis Ernesto Gilibert described the workmanship as “advanced and of high quality.”
Bigfoot emerged in 2006, when the Coast Guard intercepted a 49-foot handmade semisubmersible carrying four men, an AK-47, and three tons of cocaine about 100 miles off Costa Rica. The vessel, captured intact, now sits on display outside JIATF-South headquarters in Key West.
Made from fiberglass and wood, these self-propelled semi-submersibles (SPSS) can be built for as little as $530,000.
More than 270 submersibles and semi-submersible vessels have been detected over the past two decades, according to a report by Colombia’s Centro Internacional de Investigación y Análisis Contra el Narcotráfico Marítimo (CMCON).
“Because of their ability to elude radar systems, these subs are almost impossible to detect,” David Kushner wrote in The New York Times Magazine. “Assembled in fewer than 90 days, they are now thought to carry nearly 30 percent of Colombia’s total cocaine exports.”
To counter the growing threat from semi-submersible vessels, Congress passed the Drug Trafficking Vessel Interdiction Act of 2008. The law made it a felony to operate any unflagged submersible or semi-submersible on the high seas with the intent to evade detection, regardless of whether drugs are onboard. Anyone interdicted aboard such a vessel in international waters can be prosecuted in the United States.
In 2010, Ecuadorian police — aided by the DEA — discovered a 100-foot fully submersible fiberglass submarine hidden in mangrove swamps near the Colombian border. It featured a conning tower, periscope, and air-conditioning, and could carry ten tons of cocaine as far as 2,000 miles. The DEA called it “a quantum leap in stealth.” It was captured before its maiden voyage.
Rear Adm. Joseph Nimmich, then the commander of JIATF-South, recognized its significance immediately: “If you can carry ten tons of cocaine, you can carry ten tons of anything,” he told The New York Times.
Beyond cocaine, officials saw a darker possibility: narco-subs could serve as prototypes for smuggling weapons of mass destruction or inserting operatives—just as intelligence agencies, including the CIA, had used them to slip agents ashore undetected.
It was an early recognition that the line between criminal enterprise and strategic threat was blurring.
There has long been speculation that Colombian traffickers acquired semi-submersible technology from Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers as early as 2006. The Tigers’ naval wing, known as the “Sea Tigers,” built and operated “human torpedos,” semi-submersible and low-profile craft for suicide missions packed with explosives. Colombian authorities have reported at least one case in which Tamil crew members were captured aboard a semi-submersible operating between Colombia and Mexico, according to CMCON.
That warning gained urgency in 2019, when Spanish police captured what they described as the first narco-submarine to cross the Atlantic. The 65-foot vessel, built in the jungles of Guyana or Suriname, sailed nearly 4,800 miles from Colombia to Galicia carrying three tons of cocaine worth $121 million. Two Ecuadorians were arrested; a Spanish crewman fled. Investigators estimated the sub cost $2.7 million to build and could have survived two transatlantic voyages, evidence that cartel engineering had achieved true global reach.
Since the capture of “Bigfoot,” the U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted several more semi-submersibles as part of routine law-enforcement actions, boarding them, seizing drugs, and making arrests.
Narco-sub technology continues to advance.
In November 2020, Colombian authorities, aided by the DEA, seized a rare, fully submersible, battery-powered narco submarine capable of carrying six tons of cocaine. Built at a cost of about $1.5 million, the vessel featured twin electric motors powered by ten tons of batteries, giving it a 12-hour submerged endurance and the ability to travel roughly 30 nautical miles underwater. It was designed to be towed most of the way by a larger ship, then complete its final approach under its own power before being scuttled.
In 2022, Venezuelan authorities announced the seizure of an abandoned and empty fully submersible narco-sub on the banks of the Aracua River near the border with Colombia. Some semi-submersible drug trafficking vessels have reportedly been produced in clandestine shipyards in northeast Venezuela.
No fully submersible vessel has been caught trafficking cocaine in the Pacific, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, suggesting that they are evading detection.
The newest frontier: unmanned vessels. Colombian authorities say traffickers are now focusing on drone semisubmersibles — “vehículos marinos no tripulados” — designed to boost endurance, range, and cargo capacity while cutting operating costs for transoceanic smuggling, according to a 2025 CMCON report.
In July 2025, the Colombian Navy announced the seizure of an unmanned narco-sub equipped with a Starlink antenna. According to the Colombian Navy, the drone semi-submersible was owned by the Gulf Clan, Colombia’s largest drug trafficking group, and had the capacity to transport 1.5 tons of cocaine.
Until September 2025, interdictions remained law-enforcement actions. Then everything changed.
The shift to lethal military strikes has drawn sharp criticism. Appearing Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., questioned the legal basis for destroying suspected drug boats. “No, they go against all of our tradition,” Paul said. “When you kill someone, if you’re not at war—if it’s not a declared war—you really need to know their name at least. You have to accuse them of something. You have to present evidence.”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro raised more urgent concerns Saturday, accusing the U.S. government of “murder” over a September 15 airstrike he says occurred in Colombian territorial waters and killed three of its citizens, including a lifelong fisherman. Trump responded by accusing Petro of “strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs” in Colombia and announcing that he was cutting off all U.S. payments and subsidies to the country.
The “Bigfoot” display in Key West once symbolized law-enforcement ingenuity, a trophy from the cat-and-mouse game between smugglers and interdiction forces. Today, it looks more like a relic from a different era, before the drug war slipped beneath the surface and the United States began treating fiberglass boats as wartime targets.