Narco-subs tech a twist we need for maritime defence

Render of the SSN-AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine. Picture: BAE Systems

Narco-subs are semi-submersible vessels drug lords have used for at least a decade to smuggle drugs to Europe or across the Caribbean.

They sit just below the water with small chunks of the vessel above it. One intercepted by the Colombian Navy in November 2024 shows they’re capable of sailing to Australia from Colombia, more than 12,000km.

The small, crewed sub was about 5400km from Colombia when it was intercepted about 1900km southwest of Clipperton Island, an uninhabited French coral atoll in the Pacific. Maps found on it indicated the narco-sub was on its way to Australia.

This was the third such vessel seized by the Colombian Navy in that part of the Pacific. It looks like criminal gangs have established a new direct and covert maritime smuggling route to Australia. The incident has implications for counter-drug smuggling strategies: cocaine is up to $240,000 a kilogram here, six times higher than the US price for the product.

Colombian authorities working with dozens of other countries have seized 225 tonnes of cocaine in the space of six weeks, a global record for any single anti-narcotics operation, finding some of that haul on a “narco submarine” travelling on a new drug trafficking route to Australia. Picture Colombian Navy

But it also has implications for our navy and long-term security. It demonstrates the democratisation of technology. You don’t need to be a state to design and build systems for long-range, undersea operations. As the narco-subs show, relatively small investments are delivering rapid and large improvements in underwater capabilities. They can take advantage of huge amounts of unclassified research and development in artificial intelligence, battery efficiency, autonomous navigation and materials.

The new players don’t just include drug lords; the Houthis have been shutting down maritime trade through the Red Sea using cheap weapons acquired from Iran and produced themselves.

Fortunately, it’s not just bad guys we’re seeing in this new world. Enterprising companies here and across the democratic world are pushing the boundaries of real-world performance, whether it’s start-ups supplying Ukraine with weaponry, including uncrewed surface vessels to sink Russian warships, or Australian companies developing large, uncrewed submarines that can operate in the open ocean fully submerged, not semi-submerged like the narco-subs.

Our defence officials talk about the huge distances involved in military operations in our region. But they downplay the proliferation of uncrewed systems we’re seeing in Ukraine and the Red Sea as far less relevant to us. The interception of the Colombian narco-subs highlights that modern energy and propulsion technologies mean small, cheap systems now have very long ranges.

It’s relevant to our military strategy. The 2024 National Defence Strategy recognised that distance no longer protects us. But it didn’t draw out a key point made in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review: uncrewed long-range undersea warfare capabilities are critical for our defence force. Beyond one project with a US company, we’re failing to acquire them or learn how to protect our forces from them.

Navigating a semi-submersible narco-submarine across the Pacific would be gruelling work. But the drug lords probably won’t need to convince human crews to undertake that uncomfortable work. Uncrewed narco-subs each carrying a payload of cocaine travelling from South America to Australia will get cheaper and more reliable in the next five years.

From a military perspective, it’s possible to have large numbers of cheap uncrewed subs, about the size of these narco-subs, packed with high explosives sitting off a major port. They’re no more complex than an electric vehicle and can have lots of common components and systems of an EV. By the mid-2030s, when AUKUS is meant to be delivering our first nuclear-powered submarines, those small uncrewed underwater systems will have proliferated in the thousands.

The narco submarine that was travelling on a new drug trafficking route to Australia. Picture Colombian Navy

If the Chinese military is smart enough to keep applying advances in navigation, battery technology and manufacturing from EVs to defence systems, then before our stealthy nuclear-powered submarines even get out to sea they’re going to need to clear a path through loitering Chinese uncrewed subs first. That’s assuming these haven’t already launched hundreds of small flying drones that have punched a lot of holes in our AUKUS subs tied up at the dock.

Some analysts have suggested that technology is making the oceans more transparent, rendering submarines, nuclear-powered or otherwise, obsolete. It’s hard to know whether that will be the case.

But we know the emergence of the new species of small autonomous vessels will make the oceans very crowded. And those are likely to be the biggest threat to the ships and submarines that are at the core of our defence acquisition plans.

Drug lords, Houthis and creative Ukrainians are showing what’s possible in the world of maritime technology and warfare. Our navy needs to convince government ministers and senior bureaucrats to get out of their way and let them get the autonomous underwater capabilities that Australian companies can provide.

There’ll be little point in spending $368bn on eight large nuclear-powered subs or six frigates for more than $45bn if they can’t leave port safely or, if they do make it to sea, defend themselves against lethal systems that even drug lords can create and use.

Michael Shoebridge is director of Strategic Analysis Australia. Anthony Bergin is a senior fellow at SAA and expert associate at ANU National Security College.