By Ann Roosevelt
U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) finds that one of its strongest needs is for more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR)–particularly persistent, broad area surveillance to achieve its missions, its commander said.
ISR needed to help interdict illicit trafficking, whether it be drugs, weapons or humans, all major concerns for the command, not a military threat to the nation, Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser told the Defense Writers Group yesterday. And, some 80 percent of the trafficking takes place in the maritime domain.
“We don’t have the persistence we need over a broad area,” Fraser said. Efforts that could be beefed up include signals intelligence, electro-optical, and electromagnetic work, and “how to detect change” across a huge watery area.
The ISR effort bolsters the command’s work to support other nations in understanding illegal activity, how traffickers transit the waters, where they go ashore and where they go after that. That entails a lot of unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles.
Focusing on so-called “go-fast” boats and semi-submersibles, Fraser said it’s estimated that last year 25 percent of the cocaine trade was found or disrupted.
For example, radar that can penetrate the triple canopy jungle in the region is necessary. Boeing‘s [BA] A-160 Hummingbird is prepping for deployment later this year to an area described as south of the United States.
Of concern to Fraser is illegal weapons trafficking. “A lot of them are moving” in his area of operations, he said, and “the proliferation issue is a big concern.”
The concern is not necessarily about conventional military gaining new weapons, but the possibility that groups such as Colombia’s left-wing FARC, and other local groups, could gain more powerful weapons, putting both military and law enforcement at risk.
For example, Venezuela is modernizing its military and is procuring about 100,000 AK-103s from Russia. Under another agreement, it is working with Russia to build a factory to produce such weapons.
Fraser’s concern is not that weapons proliferation is a military issue but to interdict it before it becomes a military issue.
SOUTHCOM’s role in the maritime environment is to “detect and monitor” illicit traffic as it transits and hands off to partner law enforcement and militaries of partner nations to interdict the illegal activity, Fraser said.