US military obliterates vessel in Pacific Ocean and kills three ‘narco-terrorists’ as part of Operation Southern Spear

The US military has destroyed yet another drug trafficking vessel in the Pacific Ocean, killing ‘three male narco-terrorists,’ US Southern Command announced.

‘A lethal kinetic strike’ was carried out on Wednesday, according to SOUTHCOM. The strike was ordered by US Southern Command General Francis L Donovan.

The military said the vessel was operated by a ‘Designated Terrorist Organization,’ and that intelligence confirmed it was ‘transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.’

No US military personnel were harmed in the strike, according to the announcement. 

US Southern Command shared a declassified video on X and its website of the drug smuggling boat getting destroyed.

In the black and white footage, a vessel that appears to have been a three-engine speedboat can be seen cutting through the waves. 

About five seconds into the video, a missile can be seen flying towards the boat from out of frame before striking it and causing a large explosion. 

The speedboat can then be seen on fire and slowly coming to a stop before the video ends.

The vessel was destroyed as part of Operation Southern Spear, which was launched by the Trump administration in September 2025 in an effort to reduce the flow of drugs entering the US.

The operation’s declared aims are ‘detecting, disrupting, and degrading transnational criminal and illicit maritime networks.’ 

US Southern Command is in charge of carrying out the operation.

It is one of the eleven unified combatant commands in the United States Department of Defense, and its area of responsibility is the Caribbean, all of Latin America below Mexico and the surrounding waters.

Following the unveiling of Operation Southern Spear, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that several cartels, and even the regime of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, were designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. 

In December 2025, President Trump signed an executive order designating fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.

Those moves have given the US legal leeway to destroy suspected drug trafficking vessels and kill their operators without due process.

Critics of Operation Southern Spear have called the strikes on drug smuggling vessels illegal and expressed concern that the intelligence leading to the attacks may not always be accurate, creating the possibility of innocents being killed. 

Operation Southern Spear faced particularly heightened scrutiny late last year after it was revealed that a second strike had been ordered to kill survivors clinging to wreckage who had not been killed in an initial strike.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had allegedly given verbal orders to leave no survivors. He was accused of a war crime, as killing survivors who are no longer combatants is considered a violation of international law.

The ‘double tap’ strike was carried out during the first bombing of Operation Southern Spear.

In Hegseth’s defense, he and other Pentagon officials said that the survivors were potentially in communication with other nearby drugs boats and were trying to salvage the remaining drugs in the ship’s cargo, making them legitimate targets.

Hegseth also argued that he was technically not the person to issue the final order and that Admiral Frank Bradley had done so. 

But that shifting of blame only caused further backlash among some military insiders who accused the secretary of defense of throwing an ‘American hero’ under the bus.

Ultimately, neither Bradley nor Hegseth faced any serious consequences for the alleged war crime, but the military seemed to have learned from the situation in future strikes. 

After an attack on February 5 killed two people but left one alive, US forces ‘immediately’ moved to initiate rescue efforts for the lone survivor, SOUTHCOM announced at the time. 

Wednesday’s strike has brought the total number of vessels destroyed as part of Operation Southern Spear to 52, and it has brought the total number of people killed in the attacks to 174.

That breaks down to an average of about seven boats destroyed per month and an average of about 23 people killed per month since the operation began on September 1.

Between April 11 and Wednesday’s strike, three other attacks that were part of Operation Southern Spear have been conducted. 

Two boats in the Pacific were destroyed on Saturday. Two people were killed in the first strike, and a third who abandoned the vessel is presumed to be dead. An additional three people were killed in the second strike. 

A third boat was destroyed on Monday, killing two more people.