June 5, 2026: Last April the American navy conducted exercises off the Florida coast to test the use of surface and aerial drones to detect drug smuggling speed boats. Once alerted, MH-60 helicopters from American LCS/Littoral Combat Ships would arrive to either capture or destroy the speed boats.

So far America has used combat aircraft or armed helicopters to destroy more than a hundred drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean and off the Pacific coast. To aid in these operations a new Tsunami naval drone has been ordered. These 1.7 ton vessels are 11.3 meters long and four meters wide. Powered by a 400 HP engine, they have a top speed of 74 kilometers an hour. Payload is about half a ton and range is about a thousand kilometers. These drones carry daylight and infrared cameras. The communications system enables land, air or ship based controllers to issue new or modified instructions to the drones. Used against drug smugglers, these boats would participate in the search and they would accompany the drug boats until armed personnel in boats or helicopters show up to capture the drug smuggling boat.

Then there is STAKE/Surface To Air Kinetic Engagement. This is an anti-drone system that uses the 70mm APKWS Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System which was introduced in 2012. There are now several versions of the 70mm air-to-surface and surface-to-surface versions. Developing a guided 70mm rocket took so long because the manufacturers underestimated the technical difficulties of getting the laser seeker and flight control mechanisms into that small a package, at a weight and price the customer could afford. The price of the new 70mm missile is about $22,000 each. This is typical for these weapons and about a third less than a smart bomb and less than a quarter of what a Hellfire missile costs.

The guided 70mm rocket is used against targets that don't require a larger 49 kg Hellfire missile but still needs some targeting precision. In tests the APKWS hit within a meter of the aiming point, about what other 70mm missiles are capable of. The 70mm missile makes an excellent weapon for large drones, especially since you can carry more of them. The launcher for carrying these missiles is designed to replace the one for Hellfire but can carry four APKWS instead of one Hellfire.

All these 70mm guided rockets are basically 13.6 kg 70mm rockets with a laser seeker, a 2.7 kg warhead, and a range of about six kilometers when fired from the air. Laser designators on a helicopter, or with troops on the ground, are pointed at the target and the laser seeker in the front of the APKWS homes in on the reflected laser light.

Bringing all these military grade sensors and missiles to find and destroy, or capture, drug boats is expected to make operating these drug boat fleets much more expensive and difficult to recruit men to operate the boats. While some of the boat operators have been captured, most have been killed. With the addition of Tsunami drones armed with APKWS, the chances of surviving a mission to deliver drugs by boat to the American mainland go from difficult to nearly impossible.