The Pentagon has released newly unclassified images of suspected drug-smuggling boats at sea, part of a campaign of lethal strikes against alleged traffickers that has now reached 67 operations since it began last year.
The photos, dated Oct. 27, Oct. 29 and Dec. 4, 2025, show go-fast vessels moving through open water under U.S. military surveillance, some appearing to carry loads of narcotics. The images were provided exclusively to Fox News Digital.
Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson framed the release as a warning to traffickers. “Nearly one year after the first strike, the message to narco-terrorists remains unchanged: if you traffic deadly illicit narcotics and threaten the American people, we hunt you down, we will find you, and we will kill you,” Wilson said in a statement.
Wilson said the broader effort, called Operation Southern Spear, has “disrupted trafficking networks, forced trafficker adaptations, removed dangerous narcoterrorists, and demonstrated that the United States will use every lawful tool available to defend our Homeland and protect our communities.” The Pentagon says the operation’s first strike came Sept. 2, 2025, and it has carried out 67 strikes total since then.
Latest strikes
One of the more recent strikes came Aug. 25, when U.S. Southern Command said four alleged drug smugglers were killed aboard a fast boat operating along known trafficking routes in the Caribbean. “Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking,” SOUTHCOM said in a post on X, attributing the operation to Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere under Gen. Francis L. Donovan.
“Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere continues executing precise, lethal operations against the cartels. We will hunt, disrupt, and defeat these narco-terrorist networks.”
Donovan added that “SOUTHCOM is resolved to neutralizing cartel terror and violence throughout the region and into the U.S. homeland.”
Days before that Caribbean operation, the military reported two people killed in a strike on a vessel in the Eastern Pacific — the first reported strike in more than two months at the time. Video posted to X showed a moving boat before a flash filled the screen.
Expanding scope
Since the campaign’s start last September, the administration has targeted suspected cartel vessels in both the Atlantic and Pacific that officials say were carrying narcotics. President Trump has described the effort as an “armed conflict” with Latin American cartels and has argued the strikes are necessary to stop drugs from reaching American communities and fueling fatal overdoses.
The campaign is not limited to the water. The administration is pursuing agreements with allied governments that would extend operations onto land in multiple Latin American countries. War Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a visit to Panama this month that Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras had agreed to allow joint U.S. operations against criminal groups on their soil — though Guatemala denied any such agreement had been reached. Ecuador has been conducting similar joint missions with the U.S. since March.
The strikes have drawn scrutiny in Washington. A Democratic senator has accused the Pentagon of committing murder through the boat strikes, arguing that killing suspected traffickers without capture or trial raises serious legal questions. The Pentagon has not altered its position in response, continuing to describe the strikes as lawful actions against narco-terrorist networks.
