The U.S. Southern Command (Southcom), the “unified command” responsible for U.S. military activity in Latin America and the Caribbean, maintains about seventeen radar sites to detect possible drug-smuggling flights.¹

Six of these are Ground Based Radars (GBRs), three in Peru (Iquitos, Andoas and Pucallpa) and three in Colombia (San José del Guaviare, Marandúa and Leticia). The rest are mobile, in secret locations, or part of the Air Force’s Caribbean Basin Radar Network, which operates in six countries. (Two sites on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, in Ríohacha and the island of San Andrés, are part of this latter network.)²

The Colombia aid package law for 2000-2001 (Division B, Title III, 2001 Military Construction Appropriations bill, H.R. 4425, Public Law 106-246) includes $13 million for a fourth GBR in Colombia, at Tres Esquinas, on the border between the departments of Caquetá and Putumayo. 

Most radars are located on host-country military bases; within the stations themselves, however, U.S. personnel are in charge of their own security. The radar sites are usually manned by personnel from several branches of the U.S. military, including some National Guard and reserves. One is operated entirely by marines. "A typical detachment," according to a Southcom publication, "consists of 36 to 45 personnel. Perhaps 30 to 40 percent are radar technicians. Since GBRs are essentially self-contained units, everyone from cooks to security guards are among those based at the sites. ... Duty at these remote posts varies from two weeks to six months, depending on service status, rank and specialty.”³

The U.S. Navy has completed a new “Relocatable Over-the-Horizon Radar” (ROTHR) in Puerto Rico to detect narcotics smuggling flights in South America. Existing ROTHRs in Virginia and Texas carry out surveillance over Mexico and the Caribbean. The new site is being constructed at Fort Allen in central Puerto Rico and on the small island of Vieques off the island’s east coast.

Sources:

¹ Richard K. Kolb, "Tracking the Traffic. U.S. Southcom Counters Cocaine at the Source," Dialogo: The military forum of the Americas. (U.S. Southern Command: July-September 1997) <http://www.allenwayne.com/dialogo/julsep97/frames/article.htm>.

² Walter B. Slocombe, undersecretary of defense for policy, United States Department of Defense, letter in response to congressional inquiry, April 1, 1999.

³ Kolb.