This image from video provided by U.S. South Command shows a vessel accused of trafficking drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean shortly before it was destroyed by the U.S. military, killing two and injuring one, on Jan. 23, 2026. (U.S. Southern Command)
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s internal watchdog has announced it will launch an investigation into the whether the U.S. strikes against drug boats in the Caribbean have followed targeting guidelines.
Critics have charged that the attacks are illegal.
The evaluation’s objective is to determine whether the Pentagon adhered to a six-phase process called the Joint Targeting Cycle, wrote Bryan T. Clark, assistant inspector general for evaluations programs, combatant commands and operations in a May 11 memo to Gen. Joseph Donovan, the leader of U.S. Southern Command, and Bradley Hansell, under secretary for intelligence and security.
The Joint Targeting Cycle, according to a 2018 Joint Chiefs of Staff document, provides a framework for carrying out a military mission and achieving its goals.
The investigation into operations in U.S. Southern Command, referred to as Operation Southern Spear, was self-initiated and not in response to a congressional query, the agency said in a statement to Bloomberg News, which first reported the probe.
“We will perform the evaluation at the Pentagon and USSOUTHCOM headquarters, Doral, FL. We may identify additional locations during the evaluation,” Clark wrote in the two-page memo.
Operation Southern Spear, the Pentagon’s name for the campaign against drug trafficking in Latin America, has continued despite the U.S. military’s focus on the Middle East. Strikes under the operation have increased in frequency in recent weeks after a relative lull that followed the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January.
The U.S. has conducted nearly 60 strikes, which began in early September, and killed at least 193 people in total in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
The military often releases short videos of the vessels being blown up.
President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narcoterrorists.”
