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Comment by std_throwaway | Hacker News Reader

The Mexicans should educate themselves about siege weapons. There is a much superior design that could launch heavier projectiles over a greater distance without sacrificing firing rate.

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The trick is that you want your payload to be intact on impact. :3 Staining the Arizona desert with marijuana mulch doesn't help anyone except the jackrabbits.

Time delay air cushion or parachute could resolve those problems pretty cheaply.

This may come as a shock, but the drug dealing world is not full of rocket scientists.

The drug dealing world is resourceful. I would be shocked to the point of incredulity if the primary obstacle to implementing basic improvements casually mentioned in HN comments was simply that they didn't have anyone they could consult on the matter.

They're not going to be developing in-house nuclear weaponry, no, but cartels can and do find intelligent, experienced and competent people who can help optimize their supply chains.

I don't think it's a matter of them not realizing there are superior designs; I think it's a matter of superior designs not being worth the extra cost or somehow having an unintended result.

Resourceful only gets you so far... at some point you need a team of engineers with stable jobs over a long period of time. I'd say the line is roughly between the junky subs we see now, and researching, developing and fielding a stealthy modern sub. It's not impossible, but it's not like finding a chemist who can teach a whole bunch of people who to follow a recipe. You're talking about specialized skills, and people who have those skills and have put them into practice tend to be watched.

They've been known to kidnap "consultants" :(

One cartel had a large-scale meshnet.

You're not going to find a specialist in "Whole sub designs and manufacture" anymore than you could kidnap one person who would teach you how to build the space shuttle. You'd need to kidnap teams of specialists, which I would assume might draw international attention.

True. I recall reading that they kidnapped people to build their meshnet.

That must have been a terrifying and hopeless situation to be in.

Indeed :(

They were also co-opting local ISPs to identify activist bloggers.

All driven by the US drug war.

Insane. I don't doubt that legalizing drugs would have relatively short-term impacts as some people who would have otherwise never tried them, try them, and some of those become hooked. How anyone can look at that, and compare it to the insane and eternal war we've chosen instead, and find the war a better choice is baffling to me.

Yes, it's been a disaster for several South and Central American countries :(

Or perhaps the superior designs are better at preventing detection and have yet to be discovered by the opposition.

Rocket scientists are well educated. There are lots of smart people who aren't. Generally speaking most people are smart. What one believes about other people's intelligence says more about the believer's intelligence than the believee's.

Except that we're talking about applications normally associated with rocketry, so I wasn't being facetious, but literal.

They are doing quite well with submarines, which seems hard, and drones, which may be off-the-shelf.

https://www.google.co.nz/amp/www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-new...

https://www.google.co.nz/amp/www.ibtimes.com/mexico-drug-tra...

The distance between the subs they have now, and the type described in the post I replied to is the distance between a Model T and a Ferrari LaFerrari.

I would be interested into some more details. Disclaimer: I am not a drug lord.

Surely autonomous subs would make sense to hard to reach markets like the UK?

Another technique is to get a diver to bolt on (or otherwise attach) a container full of drugs to the hull of some regularly scheduled cargo ship and use another diver to detach it when it arrives at the destination.

No but thankfully rocket scientists have publicly demonstrated that it works, and car manufacturers ensure the parts are available worldwide at rock bottom prices (with native language schematics and instructions!).

I suspect they don't gain any tangible benefit from firing further.

Jacked Rabbits :-)

Now you're making me think of Dylan, the stoned rabbit from The Magic Roundabout...

This sounds similar to "Dropping an egg from a plane at a few hundred feet". Maybe similar technologies could be involved in the payload?

There's been cases of people trying to use "air cannons", sometimes mounted out of modified vehicles, to send drugs over the border: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/2-teens-fac...

but I'm more endeared by the fact that the state of the art in short-range ballistic drug transport is looking more and more like the IRA's improvised mortars (up to and including mounting them in modified vans): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrack_buster

From what I understand, the latest in non-chemical ballistic drug delivery mechanisms are capable of launching a 90kg brick of cocaine over 300 meters. Outdated drug catapults can't really compare.

Old school tech can do more than 90kg. Here's a car being launched by trebuchet https://youtu.be/-wVADKznOhY?t=1m48s

Not sure it make 300m though

The blend of Reddit meme and HackerNews fact-based replies is just right in this thread.

For anyone out of the loop, lots of references are being made to the https://www.reddit.com/r/trebuchetmemes/ sub.

The culture change on hackernews is certainly speeding up, references like this used to be attacked nearly immediately by the hackernews community.

I'm guessing these didn't get modded down, because they're actually relevant and maybe interesting. Even if it's not interesting, it's certainly bikeshedding which is generally popular here :)

Reddit is decaying at an accelerated rate nowadays & many are looking for a good alternative. I know that's why I came here.

That is nice, but not exactly easy to do in secret near the border.

Wall or no wall, much of the border is unguarded at any particular time. And if Age of Empires taught me anything, it's that trebuchets can be packed up and moved before the other player---err, before the DHS and DEA even notice

You must be thinking of the trebuchet. It's a classic design; I wouldn't call alternative designs outdated as much as unsuitable for their purpose.

Can't escape Reddit no matter where you are.

Selection bias. The cartels using trebuchets aren't getting caught.

Interesting theory there.

The trebuchet being a infinitely superior war machine is NOT fake news

Like looking at planes that return from battle and placing extra armor in the places where there AREN'T bullet holes :D

More likely the well capitalized one's with sound business plans aren't. About twenty years ago, I heard someone describe the difference in the drug trade then and in the 1970's as the difference between some hippies with a boat and the green shipping container every Tuesday.

Forty-seven pounds is not even hippies with a boat. They moved tonnes in fifty pound bails.

Would the contents be intact though?

As long as the container holds. It is not like they are launching the whole lab and staff with it.

And could be useful against a wall...

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