So, we Now Have the "War" in "Drug War"

Operation Reciprocity is a go ... just have your get out of jail free card

Well, I was wrong Tuesday afternoon.

I mean, we have been doing a bit of shooting at drug runners. A bit.

Like many Sailors of my generation, I spent roughly a year of my life in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific chasing drug runners around. At some point around the turn of the century, we started shooting out their engines or even boarding their semi-submersibles.

As such, even with the new deployment we discussed a bit last week, when word came out, I thought we were just picking up old habits.

Well, that was not this.

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have some new ROE.

This is new, significantly new. I also don’t think this is a one-off.

President Trump pretty much made that clear.

I remember as a JO how frustrating it was just watching all this poison go through the Caribbean simply because we didn’t have enough LEDET to go around.

Make a different argument, define things differently…you can get different results. I’m here for the arguments. I think those importing poison into the USA to kill tens of thousands is worth a warhead or two.

This makes things a whole lot more interesting…and dangerous. Considering that in 2024 over 50,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, and in 2023 over 80,000, things are dangerous already.

I am quite comfortable putting this in the same category as a truck carrying arms to Al-Qaeda west of the Khyber Pass, or a group of people planting an IED in Al-Anbar.

This is a good mission. As with all things, we need the right intel and mistakes will be made…but this is a good mission. Good strike. Well done.

One thing I cannot figure out is what weapon, fired from what platform, was used. If it were a Reaper UAV (which is what it looks like), where was it flying out of? US possessions are in the northern Caribbean. I’m pretty sure we could fly armed aircraft out of GTMO and Puerto Rico, but that’s a long haul for a UAV to reach the Southern Caribbean for anything beyond a one-off operation. Maybe we have a secret squirrel base nearby? Don’t know, don’t want to know if we do. I’m not sure that is sustainable if we want this to be an ongoing campaign.

Maybe this is just a brushback pitch. If so, no major issues. If a sustained campaign, we need our planners to see what is needed.

The Caribbean and Eastern Pacific are big bodies of water. Been there, got the caffeine addiction. Being able to switch on Master Arm would make it a bit sportier of a deployment than what they were for decades.

As you can review in my post linked to above from last week, we have quite a bit of kit in the Southern Caribbean right now. Once again demonstrating their superb multitool utility, the task group we have down there includes a large deck amphib, USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7), with her air wing of helicopters and F-35B (though I cannot find out what exactly is embarked). None of them have great legs, so you would have to be in the right place at the right time.

The most cost-effective way to take out one of those cheap drug boats would be the handy-dandy 5” main gun, but again, the Caribbean is big and we only have three DDG as part of the group. We can assume their helo det is fully equipped, IYKWIM.

It appears that the strike was by a missile, you can do such strikes by helo. Perhaps a DDG embarked helo if not one of the Iwo Jima’s. In theory they can carry Hellfire AGM and other toys that can do the job.

One would think this would be perfect for the LCS and her 57mm pea-shooter, but alas there is only one down there and it is a LCS, ahem.

So we have this big maritime area that needs something to patrol for drug boats. You know, standard large area reconnaissance. We also need something that carries weapons as per ROE.

Hmmmm…an aircraft that can conduct patrol and reconnaissance in the maritime domain. A Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft. We could give it an acronym, MPRA or MPA if you want to be efficient because, really, “Patrol” and “Reconnaissance” are the same thing.

Wait…I think we have such things that can do their own search, locate, track, and attack…for hours on end. VS is gone, but we still have VP, however…

Back in the day, the old P-3C Orion could carry AGM-65 Maverick as it was well proven on many occasions that large Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles like Harpoon are overkill and not really designed for small, low RCS boats. So, they gave it the ability to fire the Maverick.

It is good to have a diverse set of tools in the toolbox. Wars and their tactical requirements rarely match your carefully crafted peacetime vignettes that less than unbiased briefers use to force-mode accounting requirements.

The P-3C’s replacement, the P-8A, cannot carry Maverick or other suitable weapon for small craft. The usual suspects decided to play budget games with the accounts and swivel chair tacticians and decided that it was not a capability that wold be needed. Oops.

Just because your soft-handed staff weenies tell you all you need is a flat-head or Philips-head, does not mean you will never need a hex.

Old lessons become new lessons. Time to fix that, again.

If this is not a one-off strike and we no kidding want to go kinetic against drug smugglers at sea, we can’t do it in an effective way with armed drones. We are not always going to have land bases nearby because we can’t cover all that sea with what few overworked and under-maintained ships we have.

Almost all our allies get itchy when we start making things go boom from their territory—so that leaves GTMO and Puerto Rico.

Problem is, we no longer have the proper set of tools to do the job. The Cult of Efficiency under-armed the P-8A, so it is not as effective as it should be. As such, a multi-platform kludge would have to be put together if this becomes an ongoing mission…a highly inefficient kludge that <checks spreadsheet> makes the mission less efficient and more costly than it needs to be. Again.

Over to you NAVAIR, again.

Speaking of costs going up, for the bad guys, the cost of doing drug business just went up too. How will the drug producers try to regain access to our markets?

Will they fight back? We’ve impacted the people smuggling business by closing our borders. That pissed off one set of cartels. Now we are blowing up product coming out of South America, pissing off another set of cartels.

Will they take this sitting down? We’ll see.

In the end, it is about time we got serious. It appears that you can just do things.