B.D.F. wants a chopper to assist with drug operation efforts

While the vehicles and vessels will no doubt be welcome additions to the fleets of the armed forces, the B.D.F. wants a helicopter. According to B.D.F. Commander, Brigadier General David Jones, they conducted two anti-drug operations with the assistance of U.S. troops and helicopters, and they were wildly successful. With the reality of a lack of resources, owning a helicopter might seem like the B.D.F.’s pipe dream. But not so, says Jones. He’s already setting the stage for the acquisition of a chopper and says the government is fully on board.

Brig. Gen. David Jones, Commander, B.D.F.

David Jones

“The one in April they sent Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters to do that operation. We netted over sixty-two thousand plants that valued over twelve million dollars with two days of operations alone. Within that two days…it would take us over two years, just the B.D.F. alone with just our soldiers, just to locate those plantations and actually go in and destroy them. The second operation occurred in September, from the seventh to the tenth of September, where this time we had two Chinook helicopters, so at any one time they could deploy forty-five to up to ninety soldiers at different locations. The soldiers were able to be dropped off at different locations and then destroy the marijuana plantations. One of the operations that we had just recently is a third operation in which the B.D.F. and Forestry Department and the Coast Guard SEALs assisted us, where we destroyed a number of plantations without the helicopters and that’s where we had the recent shooting incident where they fired on the B.D.F. patrol and the B.D.F. were able to capture two of the guys and bring them in. They are now in Police custody. We destroyed a total of about thirty-seven thousand marijuana plants in that operation. Our main ream is to have our own helicopters because helicopter support is vital, really vital to these operations. For the past three years or so we have been sending some of our pilots to Jamaica to do actual helicopter training and the type of helicopters we are interested in is the same type of helicopters that we have been sending our guys to do training in. The government has committed to share the cost of maintaining these helicopters. One of these helicopters cost about two point nine million U.S. dollars and little over a million dollars Belize to maintain, and the government has shown support that they are willing to share the cost and make sure this happens.”

The total value of the drugs destroyed in those three operations was close to thirty million Belize dollars.