Newly unclassified Pentagon images show suspected drug boats as official issues deadly warning
EXCLUSIVE – Newly unclassified Pentagon images show suspected drug-smuggling boats at sea, including vessels loaded with apparent narcotics.
The images come as the department warned traffickers that the U.S. will continue hunting down those who threaten Americans, nearly a year after the Trump administration began striking suspected drug-trafficking vessels.
"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," Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital.
The photos, dated Oct. 27, Oct. 29 and Dec. 4, 2025, show the boats speeding through open water under U.S. military surveillance.
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Wilson said Operation Southern Spear has disrupted trafficking networks, forced traffickers to adapt their methods and removed "dangerous narcoterrorists."
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"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," Wilson said.
The Pentagon told Fox News Digital the operation has carried out 67 strikes, including the first strike on Sept. 2, 2025.
One of the most 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 wrote in a post on X, saying the operation was carried out by Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere under the direction of Gen. Francis L. Donovan.
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"Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere continues executing precise, lethal operations against the cartels," Donovan said in a statement quoted in the post. "We will hunt, disrupt, and defeat these narco-terrorist networks."
"SOUTHCOM is resolved to neutralizing cartel terror and violence throughout the region and into the U.S. homeland," he added.
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Days before the Caribbean strike, the U.S. military said two people were killed in a strike on a vessel in the Eastern Pacific. That was the first reported strike in more than two months. A video posted to X showed what appeared to be a moving boat before a flash filled the screen.
Since the first strike last September, the Trump administration has targeted suspected cartel vessels in the Atlantic and Pacific that it says were carrying narcotics.
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Trump has described the fight as an "armed conflict" with cartels in Latin America and has argued the attacks are necessary to stop drugs from reaching American communities and fueling fatal overdoses.
The administration is also pursuing agreements with allied nations that could extend its campaign 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 the U.S. to conduct joint operations against criminal groups on their soil, though Guatemala denied an agreement had been reached. Ecuador began similar missions with the U.S. in March.
Reuters, The Associated Press and Fox News Digital's Eric Mack contributed to this report.