If there’s one constant to Mexico’s ongoing narco saga, it’s that the cartels stop at nothing to get America high. Their arsenal of border-skipping smuggle tech – million-dollar narco subs, cans of coke-stuffed jalapeños, weed catapults, dune buggies, elaborate, climate-controlled tunnels, and on and on – would almost seem hilariously inventive if they didn’t also come saddled with the blood of untold thousands of innocent civilians caught up in an entrenched battle to which they have little to no sway. And now, the stakes are quite literally just getting higher: Cartels are manning ultralight aircraft with increasing aplomb in bids to move goods under existing air-traffic radar.It’s a stealth bit of smuggle-craft that comes with great risks. It always has – ultralight drug planes aren’t entirely new, in large part because border patrol agents have historically been “trained to look down and at the fence”. So it’s only now that enough hard numbers (if those are real things in the narco wars) have been crunched that cross-border drug enforcement is realizing that making any sort of dent in the northbound flow of product is more and more imperative on looking up. In 2011 alone, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol sniffed out some 223 flights. That’s a two-fold bump over 2009 – enough, apparently, to goad CBP into awarding New York-based defense firm SRCTec a cool $100 million-contract to develop a trove of “new sensors” capable of detecting ultralights.As Danger Room reports, according to the government’s original ask for ultralight detectors the sensors are meant "to counter ‘the high-priority threat presented by small, low-flying aircraft transiting across United States borders.’" They must also be desert-proofed, built “tough to withstand extreme weather conditions” and fit to pick off two-dozen narco planes at a scant 33-feet above ground level and at a 20-kilometer range over the Southwest’s hilly and mountainous stretches. And the easier they are to haul across this unforgiving terrain, the better.A look over Arizona’s ultralight highway (via Tammy Leitner)Nighttime is most active for the new winged narco pilots. That ultralights have small frames that can be difficult to distinguish from a truck, the craft have a way of appearing and vanishing from radar screens in the dark, if they aren’t buzzing low, slow, and entirely without detection.They’re also quite cheap. And cartels like that – these kind of ultralight craft can be homebrewed for as little as $3,000. Something built to airlift bigger loads will go for about $30,000. Using data from the U.S. Department of Health, when you consider that fetching rates (again, we should take any numbers in this game with the biggest grains of salt) for 250-pounds of cheeba could top $400,000 and something to the tune of $16 million wholesale for a comparable haul of cocaine, well, it all kind of makes sense. As Tony Crowder, director of the Air and Marine Operations Center at March Air Reserve Base, told the Los Angeles Times last year, “There are indications of larger amounts of activity.”So it’s not like SRCTec’s cushy $100 million contract comes right out of the blue, or anything. But the only thing is that nobody has any clue as to how CBP plans to pull it off. Per Robert Beckhausen at Danger Room:The agency can't legally shoot down ultralight planes just for carrying weed and blow. The ultralights don't even have to land, either. Instead, the ultralights often fly low, and then drop their dope — in packages that can weigh up to 250 pounds — at a pre-planned location for an awaiting pick-up crew. Even if the government detects the aircraft, the pick-up crew on the ground is likely to be long gone by the time Border Patrol agents arrive. But if they can be tracked, then it gives agents a little more time to stop the shipment when it hits the ground."Next up, cartel drug drones.Reach this writer at brian@motherboard.tv. @thebanderson
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