U.S. Deploys Radar to Help Peruvians Track Drug Flights

MILITARY March 1993

The deployment of a U.S. Air Force radar 400 miles north of Lima and a half dozen flights monthly by U.S. Airborne Warning and Control (AWACS) planes in the same region were the latest high-tech efforts by the Bush Administration to stem the avalanche of cocaine base flowing from Peru (Corinne Schmidt-Lynch, "U.S. Radar Tracks Drug Traffickers' Flights Over Peru," Washington Post, 2/18/93, A36).

Although Air Force officials have expressed enthusiasm for the efforts, they may have to be curtailed or ended because of budgetary constraints. The operation has succeeded in driving up the cost of flying cocaine base from Peru to $40,000, roughly double the pre-radar deployment cost.