Authorities believe an empty container spilled on to the deck of a 70-foot pleasure ship in Baltimore.
Once on shore, the letterbox in a nearby storage building became a platform for a nest of armed, remote-controlled drones to search for drugs. Once an operator got on the remote control board, he was able to take control of the drones, which had been fitted with infrared cameras. What the ships’ crew saw was the stark outline of a narco sub as it dragged its anchor underwater and dragged out the letters.
“Amazingly, at that time of night, the submarine that they were looking for, it was actually below the surface,” said Eddie Enge, the manager of the NOAA station on the Patapsco River, in an interview with WBAL News Radio, in Baltimore. “No one thought it was one. I talked to the experts that we brought in to work on it and they agreed.”
According to Baltimore’s WBAL TV, the unmanned vessels, known as Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs), autonomously cruise at depths of up to 500 feet and have the ability to search more than 40,000 square miles in a single day, find them within 15 seconds and return in less than a minute. But when they get there, the products they find can be as frightening as what could be hiding in the bowels of the ocean.
At 6,500 pounds, the “USS Wasp” is almost too heavy to lift.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Enge said, “yes, that does get carried into the cabin and then as the robotic system is streaming its images back to the surface, those images are transformed into the human eye into blurry mixtures that we can’t make out. So in essence, you are looking at our smugglers, but they look normal.”
Well, almost human.
“It’s very cool for a day, for a short period of time, but then it’s back to work,” said Enge.
“What’s coming out the other end is a mixture of people, some fear and some weaponry.”
Other UUV’s have been spotted inside U.S. warships and in Alaska’s waters. This is the first time they’ve been detected inside a U.S. river.
