6/22/2023 0 Comments Define hemispheric defense zoneThe Task Force is responsible for the detection and monitoring of vessels and aircraft transporting illicit drugs through the Transit Zone. The interdiction effort in the Transit Zone is coordinated by the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force South (JIATF-South), a national asset located in Key West, Florida. The distances these vessels can travel without support are allowing traffickers greater flexibility when planning potential drop locations. The production quality and operational capabilities of these vessels has allowed traffickers to move more product with greater stealth. In response, drug traffickers have used new and innovative methods to transport drugs to the United States, including the development and enhancement of low-profile, fully-submersible and fully sub¬mersible vessels. Coast Guard has acquired new equipment and developed capabilities to use armed helicopters, over-the-horizon cutter boats, and non-lethal vessel-stopping technologies. Such craft are small, very fast, nearly invisible to radar, and difficult to see in daylight. The number of go-fast boats involved in smuggling has increased substantially in the past few years. A fishing vessel operation can last up to six weeks, while go-fast operations run normally one or two days. In the Caribbean, high-speed go-fast vessels, hauling as much as two metric tons of cocaine at a time, leave Colombia's north coast for delivery points in the eastern Caribbean, or hug the Central American coastline in their track north to points along the Central American and Mexican coastlines. Typically, in the eastern Pacific, fishing vessels carrying multi-ton loads of cocaine depart Colombian and Ecuadorian Pacific coast ports for delivery points along the Central American or Mexican coast. At 804 metric tons, this represents a 34% decrease when compared to the 1228 metric tons that moved in FY2009, and a 46% decrease compared to the 1494 metric tons that moved in FY2008 - a clear reminder of how strongly our data is impacted by our counterdrug awareness in the transit zone. Although this represents a six percentage point increase from the FY06-FY09 average removal rate of 24%, this figure should be tempered by the year’s anomalous CCDB documented movement. Interdiction forces removed 244 metric tons in FY10, yielding a 30% (244/804) removal rate and meeting the national target. In FY2010, the Consolidated Counterdrug Database (CCDB) documented 804 metric tons of primary cocaine movement through the Western Hemisphere Transit Zone (WHTZ). The target for FY10 was 30%, with an annual incremental increase of two percentage points through FY15. The national interdiction goal, as set forth by the National Drug Control Strategy, establishes a removal rate of 40% of the documented flow of cocaine destined for the United States by FY2015. Transit Zone interdiction is a team effort that relies on the successful execution of several steps in an interdiction continuum, including the collection and dissemination of actionable intelligence, the detection and monitoring of suspect vessels, and the physical interdiction of those vessels. forces rely on international partnerships to closely coordinate enforcement operations with the interdiction forces of many Western Hemisphere and European nations in order to deny drug traffickers the use of air and maritime routes. The Transit Zone includes the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the eastern Pacific Ocean. Illicit drugs coming to the United States from South America pass through a seven million square-mile area called the Transit Zone, roughly twice the size of the continental United States.
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