The United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) announced on Monday that U.S. forces carried out a new “lethal kinetic strike” against a drug-trafficking vessel in Caribbean waters, killing two men identified as narco-terrorists.
Monday’s strike is the first of its kind publicly known to have occurred in May as part of Operation Southern Spear, a U.S. military counter-narco-terrorism security campaign launched by the Department of War in late 2025 aimed at detecting, disrupting, and degrading transnational criminal and illicit maritime networks, curbing the flow of dangerous drugs seeking to enter the United States.
SOUTHCOM announced in an official statement that the operation was carried out by Joint Task Force Southern Spear at the direction of Commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan.
“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” the statement read. “Two male narco-terrorists were killed during this action. No U.S. military forces were harmed.”
SOUTHCOM shared a 15-second unclassified video of the strike in a late Monday night social media post.
Since September, Operation Southern Spear’s efforts have left at least 188 drug traffickers dead across dozens of military strikes against drug-trafficking vessels across Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean waters. Last week, a previous lethal kinetic strike against a drug-trafficking vessel in Eastern Pacific waters left three male narco-terrorists dead.
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in March that going on offense with Operation Southern Spear has restored deterrence against narco-terrorist cartels that profited from poisoning Americans with drugs.
“Last month [February 2026], we went a few weeks without targeting a single boat. Why? Well, because we couldn’t find a whole lot of boats to sink, and that’s the whole point is to establish deterrence from narco-terrorists who have been able to traffic almost unfettered,” Sec. Hegseth said.
Operation Southern Spear, in addition to curbing international drug trafficking operations in international waters across the Western Hemisphere, has also successfully carried out the complex interdiction of six oil tankers illegally transporting U.S. sanctioned oil in cooperation with international partners — actions that have affected financial nodes for international criminal organizations and U.S.-designated Terrorist Organizations seeking to destabilize the Western Hemisphere and threaten the safety of the U.S.
“Joint Task Force Southern Spear continues to conduct decisive operations to detect, disrupt, and dismantle narco-terrorist networks. In support of the President’s directives, the U.S. Coast Guard’s Maritime Security Response Team, accompanied by U.S. Marine Corps Special Purpose Forces, continue to support maritime interdiction operations to target the dark fleet that is enabling U.S. adversaries across the globe,” Gen. Donovan said in April.