Memo to Southern Sailors: 'Some of You May Die'

A Shift in the Caribbean Battlespace?

Assuming cartel bosses aren’t stupid, their next step might be to trade speed for something slower but more deceptive.

“Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make,” the villainous Lord Farquaad says in the 2001 animated film “Shrek.”

Memo to sailors in the lower Caribbean: Dude might as well be talking to you.

U.S. Southern Command is bombing drug boats because Washington hasn’t accrued sufficient gumption to go in and bomb Nicolas Maduro himself, pretender to the throne of Venezuela. Which is the transparently obvious goal of the entire enterprise.

Voluntary Reporting Regime Announced for Cruising 'Hot' Waters

The voluntary reporting deal struck between Dietmar Petutschnig of Ocean Posse and America’s military leadership is designed to help U.S. forces distinguish friend from foe. It is also an acknowledgement by both parties that the risk of Caribbean cruisers being killed in a drone strike is not zero.

“Recreational sailors could become collateral damage in an environment where accurate vessel identification is increasingly difficult,” said Petutschnig, founder of the Ocean Posse, an association of more than 1,500 long-distance cruisers.

“Warships and patrol aircraft operating at high speed often have only minutes to decide if an unknown radar contact is innocent or hostile.”

The worst example of the U.S. Navy’s ability to screw up happened back in 1988, when the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner, killing all 290 people aboard. Iran Air Flight 655 was traveling down an established air corridor, it’s Airbus transponder pinging away, when the two missiles struck.

The U.S. paid off the familes—$62 million—but never apologized. In a service that ends the career of any captain whose ship goes aground or gets a scrape on its topsides, the fate of the Vincennes skipper was downright baffling. He was awarded a medal for the period involved—the Legion of Merit.

As suggested, SOUTHCOM is conducting two operations simultaneously. It is hitting boats operated by drug cartels, the overt enemy, while maintaining the fiction that the Maduro government is also a major player in the trade.

Like the Navy’s recent sparring partner on the Red Sea—the Houthis—the various drug cartels are expert at asymetrical and covert operations. While opponents of the Trump administration bemoan the extra-judicial killings of the drug boat crews, most of whom are poor fishermen, the cartels are likely more concerned about the loss of product.

Houthis Are Using an Off-the-Shelf Simrad Boat Radar; Marines Take the Hint

Put yourself in the position of a drug lord for a moment. Fast open boats, powered by multiple outboard motors, are being picked off like duckies at a carnival shooting gallery. Sailboats and motoryachts are not so easily disguishable as smuggling craft. You can bet the cocaine trade has already begun the transition from speed to deception with the knowledge that many monohulls and most catamarans look alike from the air.

There is also the potential for tactical misdirection, as Petutschnig suggested in his announcement earlier this week when he mentioned “the potential for malicious false reports labeling legitimate cruising yachts as suspected drug-running vessels.”

Then, there was the rather ominous suggestion that everyone get the equivalent of an ID card with photos of their boats “from an elevated angle.” To wit, cruisers should:

Update their vessel’s public wiki page on MarineTraffic.com (free account required) with current photos—ideally taken from an elevated angle and showing people on deck for scale—and complete vessel details. SOUTHCOM has been briefed that this crowdsourced platform is a recognized open-source reference for legitimate cruising boats.

Presumably, this will allow the drone operator to use AI to determine whether to pull the trigger with you in the crosshairs. (And hope that SOUTHCOM doesn’t have intelligence that a cartel happens to be using a Beneteau 44 just like yours.)

Which begs the question: Instead of filing float plans, posting aerial photos of your boats and all that other stuff, why don’t you just get off the battlefield?

That would be the conservative play, like leaving the hurricane belt during hurricane season. As I said to a reader with whom I was discussing the topic: “If I find myself in a dangerous neighborhood, and I’m in a car, I’m going to drive until I’m somewhere else.”

That’s the beauty of having a boat. A boat can go. But I have a feeling most cruisers in the lower Caribbean won’t. Petutschnig was asked why not.

“Warm waters in winter have a special attraction,” Petutschnig said. “I wish I had a crystal ball—but with so many military assets in the region the possibility of ‘accidents’ increases drastically. The tempo points to activity over the next 30 days. And to top it off, there are thrill seekers who want to be close to conflict and witness the front lines.”

So, maybe it's best if we just get it over with—invade Venezuela. You know we want to.

That way, cruisers can get back to their pot-luck suppers and piña coladas. The Navy can get back to figuring out how to stop China from invading Taiwan. Drug runners can get back to their old cat-and-mouse games, and the Venezuelan people can learn new and novel ways to suffer.

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