One of the newest trends in cocaine smuggling gives new meaning to the term "undercover."

The latest version of "narco-subs" – or homemade sea vessels used to traffic drugs – have significantly improved on previous models, with impressive new engineering making them fully submersible under water for the first time. Authorities have tracked down several such subs in the jungles of Ecuador and Columbia, where they are constructed, and the confiscated models revealed just how much ingenuity, ambition, and money their architects possess.

Though hardly new to the drug trafficking world – law enforcement first spotted crude versions in the late 1990s – traffickers turned to them in greater number once authorities cracked down on the speedboats used to jet bricks of cocaine up to the US coast throughout the past two decades. Low-riding, relatively slow-moving vessels have proven to be much less conspicuous.

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