HMS Trent seized £290.66m of cocaine in two huge blows to drug runners in the Caribbean.
British sailors, Royal Marines and a US Coast Guard team on HMS Trent intercepted a suspected smuggling speedboat south of the US Virgin Islands.
“The smugglers began jettisoning their illegal cargo as they fled towards land, but Trent, her fast sea boats and an American patrol aircraft gave chase – eventually recovering 94 bales of class-a narcotics, weighing 2,757kg and worth £220.56m. This was HMS Trent’s second drugs bust in the space of three weeks, having seized £70.1m of cocaine in a separate operation in January – pouncing as darkness fell as smugglers tried to escape.
A high-octane chase ensued under moonlight as the smugglers tried to offload their illegal cargo, but Royal Marines coxswains and the USCG boarding team closed in, took control of the vessel and detained four crew members. As the sun rose, Trent’s 60-strong crew scoured the ocean for the abandoned cargo, eventually retrieving 29 bales of cocaine weighing in at 876kg after an extensive ten-hour search across 24 square miles.”
You can read more on this here.
BZ to HMS Trent, her Captain and Crew, as well as to the USCG boarding team – and of course to the men and women at JIATS in Key West who usually coordinate these actions! They really are top notch!!!
Yes BZ. But she needs an S-100 on board as a minimum improvement.
Add a hangar, put the crane on top or on a side. And S-300 becoming available, that’s bigger, higher payload and longer range than S-100. ROK Navy has already ordered this.
Her Crew are all on a high after that success i’ll bet.
Oh, behave!
Great news…. that’s another T31 then……
I wish!
Selling the lot to the Russian and ChiCom drug lords would be rough justice. Adding the cash to the defence budget.
Tempting as this idea is I’m not sure the British government should get into the drug dealing business.
I’m not sure HM Gov should ever have people who specialise in doing hypothetically deniable deeds. No, not us, it’s just not cricket old boy! But it is undeniably tempting or is that easily deniable too. Confusing isn’t it Gareth.
Well … Not again …
Was coming here to say that, should have known you’d get in first 🙂
Sorry ! 😄
Reads like a Tom Clancy novel!
He has a way of making his stories very realistic.
More for us! Huzzah!
Pity we cannot cash in and sell the lot to Russian and ChiCom drug dealers. Opium wars – DING DING, seconds away, round two!
Bastards!!