Remember the drug smugglers' submarine that was captured by Ecuadoran police last year? The 75-foot boat was capable of shipping about 9 tons of cocaine. Jim Popkin of Wired wrote a detailed look at its design after reading a report by the US Navy:
The hull, they discovered, was made from a costly and exotic mixture of Kevlar and carbon fiber, tough enough to withstand modest ocean pressures but difficult to trace at sea. Like a classic German U-boat, the drug-running submarine uses diesel engines on the surface and battery-powered electric motors when submerged. With a crew of four to six, it has a maximum operational range of 6,800 nautical miles on the surface and can go 10 days without refueling. Packed with 249 lead-acid batteries, the behemoth can also travel silently underwater for up to 18 hours before recharging.
The most valuable feature, though, is the cargo bay, capable of holding up to 9 tons of cocaine—a street value of about $250 million. The vessel ferries that precious payload using a GPS chart plotter with side-scan capabilities and a high-frequency radio—essential gadgetry to ensure on-time deliveries. There’s also an electro-optical periscope and an infrared camera mounted on the conning tower—visual aids that supplement two miniature windows in the makeshift cockpit.
You can view several pictures
Link via Nerdcore
The War on Drugs has made it worthwhile to invent new classes of submersibles!
I swear the War on Drugs will be the reason somenoe invents the teleporter. The drug cartels will be beaming drugs right into people's living room and we'll still be spending billion a year trying to stop it.
My boyfriend actually came up with this idea a few months ago and mentioned it to a former DEA agent and he said "you should keep that idea to yourself, son, because that one might actually work"