Pentagon Vows More Strikes After Caribbean Boat Raid That Killed 11
Defense officials say the U.S. will continue military action against designated 'narco-terrorists' after a strike that the Pentagon says targeted a drug-smuggling vessel
The Pentagon said it will pursue additional strikes against drug-trafficking groups after a U.S. military strike on a vessel in the Caribbean killed 11 people this week, a development that U.S. officials described as part of a broader campaign to halt the flow of illegal narcotics.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking on Fox News on Wednesday, said the United States has "assets in the air, assets in the water, assets on ships, because this is a deadly serious mission for us, and it won't, it won't stop with just this strike." He added that "anyone else trafficking in those waters who we know is a designated narco-terrorist will face the same fate." President Donald Trump, when asked why the vessel was not intercepted and those aboard arrested, cited the scale of the drug flow into the United States and said "they won't be doing it again." The Pentagon has said the vessel was transporting drugs.
The strike, which U.S. officials say killed 11 people, took place in Caribbean waters and is being presented by the administration as the opening of a long-threatened military campaign against cartel trafficking. Administration officials have for months floated the possibility of using military force to interdict cartel operations at sea and to target what they describe as transnational narco-terrorist networks. The action marks a notable escalation in the U.S. approach to drug interdiction beyond traditional law enforcement measures.
The Pentagon has not publicly released detailed operational information about the strike, including the precise location, the units involved or the intelligence used to designate the vessel as carrying illegal narcotics. Officials have described the operation as aimed at disrupting shipments believed to be destined for the United States.
The use of U.S. military force against nonstate trafficking groups raises legal and diplomatic questions that have been flagged by commentators and legal experts. The administration's framing of certain traffickers as "narco-terrorists" carries implications for the use of force and for how operations are justified under domestic and international law. Officials have not yet publicly addressed whether they sought or obtained consent from coastal states in the area where the strike occurred.
The strike and subsequent statements by senior U.S. officials come amid heightened rhetoric from the White House about drug trafficking and national security. U.S. leaders have pointed to rising overdose deaths in the United States and large shipments of synthetic opioids as drivers of more aggressive measures. Critics of a military approach caution that such actions risk civilian casualties, regional instability and potential diplomatic fallout.
U.S. officials say they will continue to use a mix of assets at sea and in the air to interdict shipments and to target individuals and networks they identify as threats. It remains unclear how often such strikes will occur, how targets will be certified as legitimate military objectives, or how the effort will be coordinated with states in the Caribbean and Latin America.
The incident is likely to draw scrutiny from congressional lawmakers, international partners and rights observers as administration officials carry forward a campaign that to date has been discussed publicly but not deployed at scale. Additional details about the strike and any subsequent operations were not available from the Pentagon at the time of reporting.