Nacro Subs

This story in the Houston Chronicle on the captured narco submarine in Ecuador last year is an interesting read.

The only narco submarine ever captured — a 73-foot-long camouflaged vessel capable of carrying at least 7 tons of cocaine while cruising stealthily beneath the ocean's surface — sits raised on concrete blocks in a South American seaport.

Its belly is caked with grime. Its hatch is open.

Many of its secrets are no more.

In the seven months since the game-changing discovery of the submarine, built by drug traffickers in a covert shipyard deep in the Ecuadorean jungle, naval experts from multiple countries have studied the vessel.

Their conclusion: It is the "real deal" — fully capable of making multiple journeys to North America.

"There is nothing amateur about it," said Jay Bergman, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's chief of the Andes region. "It is everything it is supposed to be. It is a bona fide long-range, fully submersible craft."

The article notes the submarine could submerge up to 50ft and make 20 knots for short periods of time on batteries. It is quite remarkable what can be built in the middle of a jungle these days.