Found: A Drug Catapult at the U.S.-Mexico Border | Hacker News Reader

Found: A Drug Catapult at the U.S.-Mexico Border

atlasobscura.com

154 pointsbcaulfield133 comments

The Mexicans should educate themselves about siege weapons. There is a much superior design that could launch heavier projectiles over a greater distance without sacrificing firing rate.

From what I understand, the latest in non-chemical ballistic drug delivery mechanisms are capable of launching a 90kg brick of cocaine over 300 meters. Outdated drug catapults can't really compare.

Old school tech can do more than 90kg. Here's a car being launched by trebuchet https://youtu.be/-wVADKznOhY?t=1m48s

Not sure it make 300m though

The blend of Reddit meme and HackerNews fact-based replies is just right in this thread.

For anyone out of the loop, lots of references are being made to the https://www.reddit.com/r/trebuchetmemes/ sub.

The culture change on hackernews is certainly speeding up, references like this used to be attacked nearly immediately by the hackernews community.

I'm guessing these didn't get modded down, because they're actually relevant and maybe interesting. Even if it's not interesting, it's certainly bikeshedding which is generally popular here :)

Reddit is decaying at an accelerated rate nowadays & many are looking for a good alternative. I know that's why I came here.

That is nice, but not exactly easy to do in secret near the border.

Wall or no wall, much of the border is unguarded at any particular time. And if Age of Empires taught me anything, it's that trebuchets can be packed up and moved before the other player---err, before the DHS and DEA even notice

You must be thinking of the trebuchet. It's a classic design; I wouldn't call alternative designs outdated as much as unsuitable for their purpose.

Can't escape Reddit no matter where you are.

Selection bias. The cartels using trebuchets aren't getting caught.

Interesting theory there.

The trebuchet being a infinitely superior war machine is NOT fake news

Like looking at planes that return from battle and placing extra armor in the places where there AREN'T bullet holes :D

More likely the well capitalized one's with sound business plans aren't. About twenty years ago, I heard someone describe the difference in the drug trade then and in the 1970's as the difference between some hippies with a boat and the green shipping container every Tuesday.

Forty-seven pounds is not even hippies with a boat. They moved tonnes in fifty pound bails.

Would the contents be intact though?

As long as the container holds. It is not like they are launching the whole lab and staff with it.

The trick is that you want your payload to be intact on impact. :3 Staining the Arizona desert with marijuana mulch doesn't help anyone except the jackrabbits.

Time delay air cushion or parachute could resolve those problems pretty cheaply.

This may come as a shock, but the drug dealing world is not full of rocket scientists.

The drug dealing world is resourceful. I would be shocked to the point of incredulity if the primary obstacle to implementing basic improvements casually mentioned in HN comments was simply that they didn't have anyone they could consult on the matter.

They're not going to be developing in-house nuclear weaponry, no, but cartels can and do find intelligent, experienced and competent people who can help optimize their supply chains.

I don't think it's a matter of them not realizing there are superior designs; I think it's a matter of superior designs not being worth the extra cost or somehow having an unintended result.

Resourceful only gets you so far... at some point you need a team of engineers with stable jobs over a long period of time. I'd say the line is roughly between the junky subs we see now, and researching, developing and fielding a stealthy modern sub. It's not impossible, but it's not like finding a chemist who can teach a whole bunch of people who to follow a recipe. You're talking about specialized skills, and people who have those skills and have put them into practice tend to be watched.

They've been known to kidnap "consultants" :(

One cartel had a large-scale meshnet.

You're not going to find a specialist in "Whole sub designs and manufacture" anymore than you could kidnap one person who would teach you how to build the space shuttle. You'd need to kidnap teams of specialists, which I would assume might draw international attention.

True. I recall reading that they kidnapped people to build their meshnet.

That must have been a terrifying and hopeless situation to be in.

Indeed :(

They were also co-opting local ISPs to identify activist bloggers.

All driven by the US drug war.

Insane. I don't doubt that legalizing drugs would have relatively short-term impacts as some people who would have otherwise never tried them, try them, and some of those become hooked. How anyone can look at that, and compare it to the insane and eternal war we've chosen instead, and find the war a better choice is baffling to me.

Yes, it's been a disaster for several South and Central American countries :(

Or perhaps the superior designs are better at preventing detection and have yet to be discovered by the opposition.

Rocket scientists are well educated. There are lots of smart people who aren't. Generally speaking most people are smart. What one believes about other people's intelligence says more about the believer's intelligence than the believee's.

Except that we're talking about applications normally associated with rocketry, so I wasn't being facetious, but literal.

They are doing quite well with submarines, which seems hard, and drones, which may be off-the-shelf.

https://www.google.co.nz/amp/www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-new...

https://www.google.co.nz/amp/www.ibtimes.com/mexico-drug-tra...

The distance between the subs they have now, and the type described in the post I replied to is the distance between a Model T and a Ferrari LaFerrari.

I would be interested into some more details. Disclaimer: I am not a drug lord.

Surely autonomous subs would make sense to hard to reach markets like the UK?

Another technique is to get a diver to bolt on (or otherwise attach) a container full of drugs to the hull of some regularly scheduled cargo ship and use another diver to detach it when it arrives at the destination.

No but thankfully rocket scientists have publicly demonstrated that it works, and car manufacturers ensure the parts are available worldwide at rock bottom prices (with native language schematics and instructions!).

I suspect they don't gain any tangible benefit from firing further.

Jacked Rabbits :-)

Now you're making me think of Dylan, the stoned rabbit from The Magic Roundabout...

This sounds similar to "Dropping an egg from a plane at a few hundred feet". Maybe similar technologies could be involved in the payload?

There's been cases of people trying to use "air cannons", sometimes mounted out of modified vehicles, to send drugs over the border: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/2-teens-fac...

but I'm more endeared by the fact that the state of the art in short-range ballistic drug transport is looking more and more like the IRA's improvised mortars (up to and including mounting them in modified vans): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrack_buster

And could be useful against a wall...

I love the ingenuity of drug dealers. Not as sophisticated as the drug submarine though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco-submarine

There's lots of money to be made thanks to prohibition, which means that the criminal organizations involved can afford illicit submarines and tunnels and aircraft.

So cool.

Love the following engineering problem and fix: "The newer models pipe their exhaust along the bottom to cool it before venting it, making the boat even less susceptible to infrared detection"

The cat and mouse between these guys and the naval/Coast Guard units of the involved nations might in the far future see the introduction of full-blown diesel-electric, liquefied oxygen-bearing, water-cooled exhaust submersibles. Battery-powered and make the legs of the run only at night. Diesel plant is fed stored oxygen, gas expansion powers compressor-free air conditioning. Metal-oxide-based CO2 scrubber is regenerated from diesel generator heat while engine is run during day-time to recharge, as the smugglers stop and snorkel stationary to avoid wake-detection. Noise-isolating mounts reduce detectable range of running diesel generator. At or near the destination port, a disguised tender trans-loads the shipment, and resupplies diesel/food/reverse-shipment-goods. Between those technologies and operational discipline, it would be a big PITA to detect.

It's a good thing these future submarines would be immensely more expensive, and narcos are not known as good employers guaranteeing solid operational secrecy, as such an unusual setup would bound to get disgruntled/prideful operatives blabbing/boasting. By the time they get around to it, involved nations will probably litter the nearby ocean floors with a SOSUS-style dragnet, and that will likely put this smuggling route out of reach of all but nation-state-grade narco-cartels willing to spend about multiple billions in R&D and $1B US per construction unit to upgrade to military-grade diesel-electric submarines with their more advanced acoustic signature mitigation systems and protocols.

You also have to consider that the US at least would be strongly inclined to bomb that kind of thing out of existence... it would after all be a huge potential threat if used for something other than smuggling drugs. We're not trying to fight the cartel subs like we would an invading military, and if we did, they'd have no chance. The payoff stops being worth it when fucking up means you lose the sub and the cargo without warning.

The US Navy is already involved a fair amount, as the article described the torpedoes getting detected by their acoustical signatures. That is not US Coast Guard-built skills, equipment, and expertise, so I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out the military is involved way more than we are let on.

This presents an interesting operational challenge for the US Navy. Say they are authorized to engage and terminate without warning any submarine operating within US territorial waters that is not a registered civilian submarine broadcasting its presence, or another US military submarine. Just how would US naval underwater assets know who each other are without compromising their mission if it involves staying undetected? The closest approximation I can think of is encrypted sub ID and anticipated operating theater within the next 24 hours, using a Gertrude-like system or some other two-way submarine communication (and there aren't any good current choices for systems in that field).

There's additional (comparatively) low-cost actions that can be taken to avoid intercept such as:

Make it autonomous (to avoid the cost and complexity of air conditioning and crew oxygen).

Use an ADS-B/Mode-C receiver, FLIR camera, and AIS receiver to detect any nearby aircraft or vessels. If there's something nearby, dive.

Monitor VHF and UHF airbands (and frequencies used by military tactical voice/data systems), and if there's any strongish signals there, assume that's a nearby aircraft, and dive. You don't need to know what is being transmitted -- just presence is enough.

An uncrewed system means that endurance can be made very long -- so it's feasible to dive and stay down (with every noise-generating system shut down) indefinitely, multiple times, as evasive action. This application is latency insensitive -- as long as you can be assured that the cargo is still proceeding nominally, everything is fine.

I think it was the Beatles that invented the drug submarine

Makes me wonder how a modern catapult or spear thrower would look like and be able to do with our current material science and engineering.

Modern mass launchers are canons, guns, and rail guns.

Rail guns maybe, but cannons and guns rely on explosives and play in a very different field than the things mentioned by OP.

Is being propelled by the release chemical potential energy qualitatively that much different than by gravitational or elastic potential energy?

It's certainly much louder, which matters a lot in this application!

Energy is energy at the point of impact, but the ballistics are definitely way different.

I think rockets are the real modern mass launchers. They can throw thing so far they'll never fall again.

You can shoot pumpkins almost a mile with air cannons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmSyrGsqmg8 .Trebuchets doesn't go quite as far, around 2000-2500 feet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv3yhlQOAWY

I wonder how much is moved by drones?

Not much I would reckon. The catapult is probably a more efficient device for getting the drugs to the other side.

Having to fly a drone back and forth takes time. Unless they have a very large drone capable of carrying large quantities of drugs, I don't see the benefit.

Multiple small drones, single control point, flying in formation? Would be a sight to see heh

which could probably be knocked out by a simple jammer

Fallback to pre-programmed route on signal loss? :D

> Having to fly a drone back and forth takes time

Time by whom? Self driving drones already exist right? Just set up a flight plan, get about 20 of them and you now have a fleet of carrier drones.

The problem is weight. The heaviest thing there's really a market for are cameras and those still have pretty short flight times so any narco-drone would have to be a custom build so it's more expensive. That still would only get them a pretty short distance from the border because of battery capacity and power draws.

Are there any open-source DIY drones out there yet?

Edit: heck yeah there are! http://aeroquad.com/content.php

Erm. There are thousands. They were originally all DIY.

Check out http://diydrones.com

What would be the point of a drone?

RC airplanes have existed for decades and can be built larger and carry non-trivial amounts of cargo, relatively speaking.

Ease of operation for untrained pilots.

Cartels are using drones for aerial surveillance in some areas to scout clear paths for foot smugglers, but I haven't heard of them using them to transport drugs. They do use manned ultralight aircraft, though.

I wonder if they had a catapult to send the money over to the other side.

And what happens when the drug and the money collide just above the border?

Higgs Boson?

Or a very rich and very high border patrol!

10 points for Gryffindor.

You should have posted this right under the GP, not the parent.

No, the CIA takes care of that part

Western Union does that

The wall just got 100 feet higher.

Local child with protractor assists re-calibration...

Shoot, trial and error would be fine.

Clearly the cartels need to set up a "punkin chunkin"[1] contest where the winner takes home some cash and the cartel gets their device. Then every year they get an additional 'chunking' machine and they can drive them back and forth along the border periodically sending their payloads several thousand feet inland.

[1] https://www.punkinchunkin.com/

I just hope that I'm never kidnapped by a cartel because I think there are a lot of rather low tech (but tech) means for them to circumvent border control. I'd never ever want to associate with these groups, but I imagine it's a bit of a nightmare trying to prevent movement of desirable and valuable goods (drugs, objectively have value according to most news reports on seizures, street value estimates are quoted). Seems like decreasing demand might be a higher ROI investment than trying to prevent said smuggling.

One thing that worries me is the potential for wildlife to be abused as a means of smuggling.

Wouldn't a ballista with hollow projectile filled with the stuff work better and be mobile or should I stop giving them ideas?

Ballistas are no more (or less) mobile than catapults, are harder to maintain and have a lower payload if you use them for transport. They have a good precision and piercing power, but much less payload, even if you include the entire bolt.

Walls don't work to stop contraband; good economic policy does.

I disagree. Walls stop physical objects from passing through it. Good economic policy has the primary function of building the national economy––economic policy has no role in curtailing contraband.

Counterexample: the lack of regulations around pharmaceutical prices in the US leads to illegal imports of identical pharmaceuticals from Canada.

It's not lack of regulating prices that causes it... it's the proliferation of intellectual property laws in America that were written to protect corporations. This is what creates the need to get knock-off drugs.

Canada has intellectual property laws as well.

Wouldnt a Lastensegler drone design be far more efficient?

The technology question should probably be:

Would it work with people?

Would you put your brain inside a robotic trebuchet?

It's going to take quite a wall to stop people from catapulting over it, onto an airbed-like structure.

Just wait till they hear about drones.

Making Trump's wall even more pointless!

Quite the opposite. He claims to want to secure the border. Anybody who has had their gentiles fondled by TSA might be suprised that you can get stuff over the border but not on a plane.

The point is that the border could be a lot stronger.

Is it really that surprising that it's harder to secure thousands of miles than it is to secure a few airport gates?

Once we see actual "security" (rather than a theater production) at an airport gate in the US we can more intelligently answer that question.

I wonder how the gentiles feel about being fondled.

Probably the same way my phone felt!

Trump's wall reminds me the Maginot Line

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line

The Germans simply flew over it...

No, they went around it. The forest next to it was considered to be impassable by tanks (it wasn't).

Largely (wasn't impassible) because of the Belgians' reluctance to create and man a significant defensive barrier against German aggression.

They also went around. But the maginot line was designed without air warfare in mind, and the germans easily bombed the lines behind the maginot line.

Planes existed and bombed things prior to the Maginot Line being built. It was also protected against aerial attack, which is kind of intuitive as the French were familiar with just how much explosives could home from the air after ww1 (though generally by by heavy artillery).

The Germans went mostly through Low Countries, violating the neutrality of Netherlands and Belgium, not just Ardennes forest. The Maginot line did not extend to the Belgian border because when building it, the French did not want to offend Belgians.

Trump does not seem to hesitate offending anyone, so from that point his walls should be more effective...

> The Germans went mostly through Low Countries, violating the neutrality of Netherlands and Belgium, not just Ardennes forest.

Would be pretty interesting to see Mexicans reroute to come through canada. I say it in joking, but if you fly to canada and cross over into the US, whats the difference?

It would require more financial resources from each individual, reducing the number of people that could make it across. From a pure threat/security perspective it's a win.

Or simply fly directly into the US on an education or tourist visa[0].

0: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/03/homeland-sec...

I mean yeah, we really should just leave the border wide open since after all, if you can't stop border shenanigans 100% you shouldn't bother at all. Might as well remove all our border patrol agents as well since a non-zero number of people still get through despite their presence.

While at it, might as well remove the door from our homes. It doesn't stop a determined burglar picking the door lock or breaking it open anyways so why bother?

Or, just keep it being the border as it was before?

So leave the fence as it is?

Yes.

But shouldn't we be tearing down the wall instead? And building bridges to make it easier for people to travel?

There already is a tall wall in some parts. According to a border patrol agent the Mexicans just showed up with long ladders. Shortly border patrol had collected so many ladders that they had as giant pile at their station. They soon have up at even collecting the ladders.

I don't think giving up on securing the border is the right thing to do either. But doing something super expensive that was tired and didn't work doesn't seem like a good idea. Maybe we could instead try to innovate. Maybe small, autonomous drones that patrol the border might be a approach worth trying. I also heard that they are just lacking the resources to process people who were caught in a timely manner and they ended up staying for years. That sounds worthwhile addressing as well before we spent tons of money on a wall. Or we might even stop the war on drugs which would undermine the Mexican cartels, make Mexico saver and reduce push effects for illegal immigrants.

$21 Billion for a wall is a lot.

Penn & Teller did a show on Immigration. Tthey got a bunch of Mexicans to build a wall. And yes, after it was built, they asked the workers to try to get across it.

The wall slowed them down by about 2 minutes. Which isn't really worth it.

Any wall built along the border will likely be similar in efficacy. And even if the wall is perfect, tunnelling under it won't be a problem.

TBH, You'd probably be better off increasing detection along the border. Leave it open, but make sure you catch everyone $21 billion will buy a lot of equipment that can be hidden, and a lot of border patrols.

I think it would be interesting if the internet were around 50+ years ago so we could hear everyone respond to news of the Berlin Wall being constructed with "LOLOLOL ever heard of a ladder?"

Walls do work. Not 100% because nothing is, but they absolutely do. Ask Hungary how it's been working out for them: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_border_barrier

The Berlin Wall worked because it was backed by fear and guns. The Soviets had no problem arresting and torturing or outright shooting anyone who tried to cross. I think you understand what I'm trying to point out here.

How about Hungary's current wall?

The Berlin was was built in a densely populated area, was patrolled regularly, had frequent guard towers, and, was ~100 miles long.

Are you really claiming that's a good comparison to a wall 1000 miles long, through desert and unpopulated areas, which won't* be manned continuously along it's length?

As for the Hungarian border wall, yes, it has helped. But again, EU population density is a lot higher than the southern US desert. It's not just the wall that stops people, it's the frequent patrols, and repairs to the wall.

Given the inability of the US to prevent tunnels between the Mexico / US border, I'm skeptical that a 1000 mile wall will work.

> which won't* be manned continuously along it's length?

> It's not just the wall that stops people, it's the frequent patrols, and repairs to the wall.

Correct, the wall is but one part of a solution. As far as patrols go, sounds like a fantastic jobs program.

> As far as patrols go, sounds like a fantastic jobs program.

i.e. a way to throw money away doing nothing productive.

Either the people involved will be highly trained / paid well, and therefore bored. Or, they won't be paid well, and will be susceptible to bribes from people wanting to cross.

A good jobs programme results in something which creates more jobs and economic activity over time. This wall wall will hinder economic activity (though generally the kind that is less desirable).

Land mines, attack dogs, shoot-to-kill and a totalitarian regime make walls more effective. Not that these options are totally unrealistic at the moment. Calling up the national guard would seem a step this way.

$21 Billion for a wall is nothing for a country as large and successful as the USA. It's pretty much pocket change that could get lost under a sofa cushion and not be missed. Our federal budget for 2015 was $3.8 trillion. Spending half a percent on a wall is not a problem. $21 Billion is about 0.1% of our GDP.

Note that even Mexico has a GDP of $1.3 trillion (in US dollars), so they can in fact pay for the wall. Even for Mexico, the wall is kind of affordable.

Walls are cheaper than highways. Notice that we have numerous highways running across the USA.

Dealing with these people is costing us 3 to 6 times as much EVERY YEAR as your figure of $21 Billion. If the wall were flawless, we'd get a payback in just 2 to 4 months.

I agree on the detection though. In most areas, the proper physical barrier is probably a fence every half mile for a couple miles, for a total of 5 fences.

>...we really should just leave the border wide open...

It isn't, hasn't been, won't be, and everyone perfectly well knows that.

In 2016 the US spent about $0.75 on CBP for every $1.00 we spent on NASA. Illegal immigration across the border reached new long-term lows, and so did the number of immigrants living in the country illegally. There is no border crisis.

Falsely promoting a crisis is unpatriotic, it undermines the culture and institutions that we collectively refer to as "the country." It's a betrayal, a dereliction of duty.

It's a talking point to make you angry. The wall is really a fence which is really an idea. Ideas keep people distracted and that way no one cares that the CIA funnels weapons and money into many Central/South American countries and then funnels drugs out of those same regions; regardless of whether it's a D or an R in the <insert any branch of government here>.

Hm, there is already quite a lot of fencing in place. 930 kilometers of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico%E2%80%93United_States_b...

I was expecting a trebuchet

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