Armed Forces of Ecuador and Colombia exercise to stop narcoavionetas

Manta –

From the Manta Air Base, the Super Tucano aircraft fleet receives information about the presence of an airplane that does not have a flight route.

From the Operations Command of Radars of the Armed Forces it is arranged that the airplanes (with autonomy of three and a half hours of flight), initiate a process of approach and link communication with those who fly in that suspicious aircraft.

The fleet, which has an average speed of 450 kilometers per hour, makes the approach to the ship at 10,000 feet.

On the side of the Super Tucano there is a sign that indicates to the occupants of the illicit aircraft that they tune the frequency to communicate with them, as the narco-plane crews usually turn off the system or change the radio frequency.

Once they are contacted, they are asked to land at a specific airport or to leave the Ecuadorian sky.

This is how the ship is intercepted, which in case of not complying with the provisions will be followed until it descends in an Ecuadorian airport.

On the ground, personnel from the Office of the Prosecutor and the Police are waiting to begin the process of gathering information from those who travel on that aircraft.

This is part of the exercises that since yesterday the Armed Forces of Ecuador and Colombia have carried out in the Wing 23 of Combat of the Manta Base.

The practices culminate on Friday the 28th in Cali, Colombia. There are two days of aerial exercises in Ecuador and two days in Colombia. They will be made on the provinces of Manabí and Sucumbíos, on the Ecuadorian side, and Nariño and Putumayo, on Colombian territory.

These are combined exercises with the objective of standardizing procedures in both nations for the detection of unidentified aircraft that would have links with drug trafficking.

To this end, Ecuador implements the operation of interdiction plans through the Super Tucano aircraft fleet, which, according to Oswaldo Jarrín, Minister of Defense, has already left some results.

He gave as an example the accidents that had two aircraft in recent months.

One of them is the one that had a mishap on the Puná island in Guayas. It happened on April 13 and the plane crashed after it tried to evade the radars of the Armed Forces, but no drugs were found inside the aircraft.

The second case occurred in San Lorenzo, Esmeraldas, on May 20, where 12 lumps of jute were found, with 234 brick-type packages with cocaine, with a value of $ 8’190,000.

That is the first aircraft that is in the northern area of ​​Esmeraldas with the illicit substance; previously they were located semisubmersible with drugs.

“The information came from Colombia to indicate the direction, the direction and coordinates of these aircraft,” said Minister Jarrin, who said that they have been working together for a while now.

Mauricio Campuzano, commander of the Ecuadorian Air Force, indicated that it requires the acquisition of a greater number of more radars, because although they would be “latest technology”, due to the geographical characteristics of Ecuador, such as the presence of mountain ranges, more radars are needed to detect all illicit ships.

On June 7 in Manta, Marco Villegas, national director of antinarcotics, said that since 2012, the Ecuadorian Police has had the display of about 21 small planes linked to drug trafficking. According to Villegas, many of those narcoavionetas were seized, others suffered sinister roads, in which even the crew lost their lives.

Source: https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/2019/06/25/nota/7393599/ejercicio-detener-narcoavionetas