U.S.
Hegseth announces 16th strike on an alleged drug boat; 2 killed
From staff and wire reports
November 5, 2025
U.S. forces conducted another deadly strike against a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, killing two people, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on X. (Screen capture from video posted on X)
U.S. forces conducted another deadly strike against a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, killing two people, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced.
The strike came on the same day aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford began heading to the region in a new expansion of military firepower.
The strike raises the death toll from the Trump administration’s campaign in South American waters up to at least 66 people in at least 16 strikes.
No U.S. forces were harmed.
“Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics,” Hegseth said in a post on X.
“We will find and terminate EVERY vessel with the intention of trafficking drugs to America to poison our citizens,” he said.
The latest strike comes as the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier has left the Mediterranean Sea on its way to the Caribbean less than two weeks after Hegseth ordered it to the region.
A defense official, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss ship movements, confirmed that the Ford and the destroyer USS Bainbridge crossed through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic on Tuesday.
The Ford will join a massive buildup of U.S. forces in the region that includes at least eight surface warships, support ships and aircraft, and thousands of sailors and Marines. Ford would bring at least 4,500 more sailors and nine aircraft squadrons.
Although it’s unclear when the strike group will arrive in the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility, the surge of naval forces there would put nearly 20% of the service’s deployed warships in the region, according to Stars and Stripes’ analysis of data from the USNI News fleet tracker.
The Trump administration has asserted that drug traffickers are armed combatants threatening the United States, creating justification to use military force. But that assertion has been met with unease on Capitol Hill.
The leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday released two letters sent to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanding copies of orders issued for the strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, along with the legal justification behind them.
The requests, sent in September and October, have gone unanswered.
In the latest strike, a video Hegseth posted to social media has a gray box obscuring a boat that appears in the water before it’s blown up. The footage then cuts to the vessel engulfed by flames.
Contributing: Stars and Stripes reporters Matthew Adams, Alison Bath and Svetlana Shkolnikova; and The Associated Press