I asked an ex-military friend who used to work in the Key West area,
about the weakness of our Southern air-defense, and here is what he
told me:
When the military got dragged into the War-On-Drugs, it came under much
pressure from Washington to find a reliable method to determine which
aircraft are carrying drugs. As a result, all of the human radar
operators have been replaced by specially-trained, drug-sniffing dogs.
Whenever the dog sees a new blip on the radar screen, he sniffs at it,
and if he detects drugs, he barks, which alerts the supervisor, (a human),
who sounds the alarm.