HITRON Catches its 1,000th Smuggling Boat, Using Force Without Fatalities
The U.S. Coast Guard's Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON) has completed its 1,000th drug-running interdiction, racking up yet another disabled go-fast boat.
On August 25, a HITRON team aboard USCGC Midgett was operating about 375 nautical miles southwest of Acapulco, in the Eastern Pacific transit zone. A trafficking vessel was spotted and refused to heave to for boarding, so the team disabled the boat for law enforcement boarding. Midgett's crew recovered more than 3,600 pounds of cocaine from the vessel.
HITRON was commissioned in 2000 with a mission to stop suspect go-fast vessels and slow the flow of cocaine into the U.S. Its tactics are unique: its sharpshooters operate from helicopters deployed aboard Coast Guard cutters in U.S. Southern Command, and they give pursuit when a smuggling boat is in range. If radio hails and warning shots do not bring the suspect boat to a halt, the HITRON team uses .50-caliber rifles to shoot out the boat's outboards. This compels the smuggling vessel to stop, generally in safety; loss of life is accidental, vanishingly rare, and investigated when it occurs.
HITRON hit its 500th interdiction mark in 2017, having stopped a combined 422,000 kilograms of cocaine with a wholesale value estimated in the range of $17 billion (at the time). Over the past 12 months alone, HITRON squadrons have added another $3.3 billion to the tally.
The only drug interdicted in a meaningful economic quantity off Latin America is cocaine, much of which is bound for European markets via commercial seaports in the Caribbean islands and Central America. The remainder makes its way to North America, predominantly overland via Mexico and the U.S. southern border. U.S. Coast Guard interdictions of cocaine are by far the largest U.S. law enforcement drug seizures by value, due both to volume and to cocaine's exceptional price per kilo.
Cocaine accounted for about 30,000 fatal drug overdoses in the U.S. in 2023, according to the NIH. Fentanyl, predominantly made in Mexico and smuggled in by land, accounted for about 74,000 deaths.