The U.S. military killed three men in a strike against a boat in the eastern Pacific that it said was transporting narcotics, U.S. Southern Command announced on Saturday.
The United States began a campaign of boat strikes last year in the run-up to the military operation that seized Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela. The military has continued the operations in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, killing around 200 people it has said were involved in the narcotics trade.
But narcotics experts say the boat strikes have failed to slow the smuggling of cocaine from South America to the United States. According to Brown University, the costs of the operation are now at $4.7 billion.
Southern Command provided little detail about the Friday strike but noted that intelligence reports said the vessel was trafficking narcotics and traveling on a route used by drug smugglers.
The military did not say what kinds of drugs the vessel was believed to be transporting. A news release said only that the boat was “operated by designated terrorist organizations.”
The Trump administration has designated a number of Latin American cartels as terrorist organizations, arguing that such a move gives it the power to conduct lethal strikes. Democratic lawmakers have said that the strikes are illegal, and that they have not been authorized by Congress.
In the statement, Southern Command said it was committed to “applying total systemic friction on the cartels,” a phrase that has been used in announcing most strikes on boats suspected of carrying drugs.
The phrase is military jargon likely meant to suggest Southern Command is making it costly — and deadly — for cartels to move drugs.
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
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