Budget Cuts Could Pull Navy Out of The War on Drugs

U.S. Coast Guardsmen unload 3,500 pounds of cocaine in

 Miami March 16, 2012. The crew seized the cocaine from

a 35-foot vessel in the Caribbean

 Sea as part of Operation Martillo.

 US Coast Guard Photo

USNI News
U.S. Navy frigates will stop patrolling for drug runners by April because of forced sequestration budget cuts, a Navy spokesman told USNI News on Monday.

On Saturday, U.S. 4th Fleet was informed by Navy leadership it would suspend deployments of two ships—part of the Joint Interagency Task Force South’s Operation Martillo—by April because of the 1 March sequestration cuts, said the 4th Fleet’s Cmdr. Cory Barker.

“The cancellation and deferment of ship deployments to 4th Fleet is unfortunate,” Barker said. “We will remain hopeful that Congress will act so we can recover and continue those missions.”

Currently the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates USS Gary (FFG-51) and Thach (FFG-43) patrol the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific looking for drug runners  using either high-speed “go-fast,” boats or slow-moving, hard-to-detect drug submarine-like craft to smuggle hundreds of tons of cocaine and other drugs from South America into the United States.

With the frigates out of the picture, the amount of drugs entering the country will increase, U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Robert Papp told USNI News following Tuesday’s State of the Coast Guard address.

“We already don’t have enough surface assets down there to interdict all of the drugs that are smuggled from South America into North America,” Papp said.

“If those [frigates] go, we don’t have enough platforms to put Coast Guard Law Enforcement Teams on. We would be down to the point where we would only be using Coast Guard cutters and we don’t have enough [of those] to meet the demand JIATF South has for us.”

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