Bolivian Task Force To Get U.S. Aviation Advisor for Interdiction, Crop-Eradication

by Stephen Peacock
Mar 7

The Bolivian Air Force Red Devil Task Force (RDTF), the military unit responsible for providing aerial support to Bolivian police operations, will continue to operate under the guidance of the State Dept. into the foreseeable future, a new personnel-services contract (PSC) document indicates.

According to the document, which was obtained during a search of the FedBizOpps contracting database, the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) is seeking to recruit a Senior Aviation Advisor for such purposes. The candidate will be based in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, to oversee State assets and contractor services provided to RDTF. That person also will serve as a high-level interagency coordinator of Drug Enforcement Administration, Dept. of Defense, Customs, and Bolivian military and police personnel “for the purpose of destroying illegal narcotics crops through aerial eradication and intercepting illegal drug shipments through aerial interdiction operations.”

Although the selected advisor will work under the supervision of the Narcotics Affairs Section (NAS) director and be accountable to the U.S. Ambassador, the candidate will be allowed to exercise “wide latitude for independent action, initiating projects and executing approved new programs…”

This advisor slot is not a newly created position. Indeed, when compared against a 2001 “end-use report” obtained several years ago by Narcosphere Co-Publisher Jeremy Bigwood, it appears that the State Dept.’s NAS is setting its sights on more of the same interdiction and crop-eradication activities as 2006 progresses. As the 2001 document points out:

The majority of NAS-supported aviation assets are operated by the Bolivian Air Force (FAB) personnel assigned to the [RDTF], and are supervised by one U.S. PSC and three U.S. military personnel serving in Bolivia under Participating Agency Support Agreements… All [aviation assets] are based in Santa Cruz, with permanent Forward Operating Bases in Trinidad and Chimore. Maintenance oversight and training is provided by Dyncorp.

Similarly, the new contractor solicitation calls for an advisor to:

Oversee activities of up to three Department of State PSCs and approximately 20 contractor personnel. Provide both technical and operational/standardization oversight to the RDTF Unit staff, and technical direction and management to contractor employees…”

The advisor will work primarily “in an office or aircraft hangar with some travel to the field for meetings, conferences, activity reviews, and field inspections and or program evaluations. Some field sites have been declared hazardous duty locations by the Department of State due to hostile activities of the narco-traffickers and therefore pose significant risk to the incumbent while at these sites.”
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Trail to Peru, Too
A belated observation on the source contracting-notice: for those who happen to click on the link contained in the story, you might notice that in the State Dept. document it alternately refers to "Santa Cruz, Bolivia," and "Santa Cruz, Peru." Although there is a Santa Cruz in both nations, the document clearly meant to identify only the Bolivian location. The bureaucrat who wrote up the contracting notice no doubt made the Peruvian reference in error, but not without cause, as I will explain.

After reviewing other counternarcotics-related contracting projects for that same week in February, I discovered that State/INL on that same day indeed began looking to deploy or replace a Field Advisor/Security Specialist in Peru. The candidate for that position, according to the other document, will "coordinate and monitor NAS and INL sponsored/directed activities in support of Peruvian counter narcotics operations." That person also may "serve as the Embassy Field Coordinator (EFC) in Pucallpa or other forward operating locations (FOLs) east of the Andes."

The advisor's duties will include the training of "U.S. government employees and Peruvian Counterparts" in subjects ranging from air mobile operations and "emergency extraction" to helicopter gunnery and survival-evasion-resistance-escape (SERE) techniques.

The advisor additionally will be responsible for setting up "base camps used for eradication campaigns, including infrastructure for security, communications, field sanitation and hygiene and food service."