In war on drugs, skirmishes won

CLEARWATER - In Clearwater Friday, the U.S. Coast Guard's commandant declared progress in the war on drugs.

Admiral Thad Allen placed the value of 2009's intercepted narcotics at more than $5 billion. He admitted that's only about 23 percent of the estimated flow headed for the United States, but said "We're starting to see shifts in price and availability. We are making a difference."

The admiral conducted his news conference at Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater, with three aircraft in the background.

Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection (CPD) airplanes have a wide variety of technology used to detect smugglers. A much smaller Coast Guard helicopter sports a gun capable of disabling the engines of go-fast boats.

In recent years traffickers have employed "semi-submersibles": fiberglass vessels that are mostly underwater, becoming nearly invisible to radar on ships.

"We have found in recent years that they have had to adapt to our tactics, rather than having us adapt to theirs," Admiral Allen observed.

The military aircraft are now used to detect the semi-submersibles. The Coast Guard and CPD also have plans to deploy unmanned aircraft after tests later this year.