DRUG smuggling has reached new depths with drug lords using SUBMARINES to smuggle cocaine out of Col****ia.

As the authorities step up efforts to stop airplanes and speedboats long used to export drugs from the worlds biggest cocaine producing country, traffickers are turning to vessels that travel under water to carry on their trade.

With only breathing tubes and mini navigation equipment above the surface, they leave almost no wake, making them hard to spot from the air.

Sub ... cramped

They can sometimes be spied by coast guard patrols and their sound can be picked up by Navy submarines equipped with sonar.

The diesel-fuelled craft are used mostly on the Pacific coast to take drugs to Central America and Mexico for eventual sale in the United States.

The Navy estimates the boats travel up to two weeks to get to their destinations.

They can transport up to 10 tonnes of cocaine on each voyage, after which they are scuttled to avoid questions.

Each costs about $600,000 to make, carries four to five crew members and is outfitted with one or two propellers, allowing it to travel at 10 to 12 knots, the Navy says.

Most are more than 50 feet long and built by drug smuggling groups sometimes in collusion with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Col****ia, or FARC, which funds its four-decade-old Marxist insurgency with the drug trade.

Col****ia exports 600 tonnes of cocaine per year, according to United Nations monitors, about a third of it from the Pacific coast.