USCG HITRON JACKSONVILLE, Florida — The Coast Guard is pushing for more ships, aircraft, and personnel to keep pace with the record flow of drugs heading toward the US.
Recent drug offloads from Coast Guard cutters rank among the largest in the service’s history, and leaders say the flow of narcotics through the eastern Pacific and Caribbean continues to rise.
“From a service perspective, I’d say we need assets,” Cmdr. Chris Guy, commanding officer of the Coast Guard’s South Tactical Law Enforcement Team, told Business Insider. “We need ships,” he added, and “the more assets we have, the more ability we have” to “stop the flow of dangerous drugs into the United States.”
Last week, the Coast Guard cutter Stone offloaded over 49,000 pounds of cocaine worth more than $362 million in Port Everglades, Florida, after a monthslong deployment in the eastern Pacific. The crew of the Stone, a Legends-class National Security cutter, completed 15 interdictions, including three in one night.
The offload was the largest amount of cocaine ever seized by a single Coast Guard ship on one deployment, but it’s just the latest in a string of major busts for the service.
More drugs, more intercepts
The Coast Guard has long been the nation’s leading force for intercepting drug shipments at sea. But as traffickers grow in number and their hauls get larger, the service is pushing to expand its fleet, adopt new technology, and boost recruiting to keep pace.
The Coast Guard’s force design plan for 2028, approved by US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem earlier this year, aims to increase the workforce, acquire more ships and revamp the current fleet, add more helicopters, and invest in better intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities.
At the time the plan was unveiled, the acting Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Kevin Lunday, wrote that it came after “decades of underinvestment and severe readiness challenges.”
Some of those issues, including shipbuilding and maintenance delays and years of missed recruiting and retention goals, have been tracked by the Government Accountability Office, a government watchdog agency.
Guy said the Coast Guard knows what capabilities it continues to need to meet that threat.
“We need maritime patrol aircraft, and we need persistent surveillance at sea so that we can find the drugs. We need vessels that have, whether it’s a Coast Guard cutter or whether that’s a US Navy ship, a Coast Guard boarding team attached to it. And then we need that end-game capability, whether that’s a fast boat with a marksman that’s in the back of the boat and the ability to shoot out engines, or a helicopter with a marksman that can stop the vessel,” he told Business Insider.
As the force design plan takes effect, it’s expected to have a significant impact on addressing major challenges, officials said, at a time when the service is intercepting more drugs than ever before.
A mix of factors is driving those record hauls, from instability in drug-producing countries in South America and shifting trafficking routes to improved surveillance on ships like the Stone and the service’s growing ability to adapt to new smuggling tactics.
In particular, the increasing use of uncrewed aerial systems, like Shield AI’s MQ-35 V-BAT, which was aboard the Stone on its recent deployment and helped the ship’s crew find vessels at night, is upping the Coast Guard’s ability to locate and track drug runners.
“The UAS is a game-changing capability for us,” Capt. Daniel Broadhurst, the commanding officer of the Coast Guard’s Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron, told Business Insider. “The number one enabler of what we do, the key to success, is ISR.”
Getting more ISR capabilities for the cutters on patrol, be it better sensors onboard or drones that can be the eyes in the sky, has been a priority for the service.
Stopping drug runners
The US is intensely focused right now on stopping drug shipments at sea, relying on cooperation across multiple federal agencies.
Under President Donald Trump, the tactics have now moved beyond regular, lawful Coast Guard interdictions. This year, the administration has pursued controversial military strikes on alleged traffickers in the Pacific and Caribbean, raising concerns as the president has used wartime rhetoric. Trump has said that the previous methods of interdicting these vessels have “been totally ineffective.”
Last week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told reporters aboard the Stone that the president “has taken an all-hands approach” to stopping drug smugglers.
“He’s not choosing just one line of effort but recognizes the unique capabilities that we have across the United States government to get after that promise that he made to make America’s streets and communities safe again,” Gabbard said.
Meanwhile, the Coast Guard continues to see substantial success in conducting its lawful, step-by-step interdiction process.
“When we say the Coast Guard is accelerating counter-narcotics operations, we mean it,” Vice Adm. Nathan Moore, commander of the Coast Guard’s Atlantic Area, said last week at the Stone’s offload. “In fiscal year 2025, we seized the most cocaine in the service’s history, nearly 510,000 pounds.”
The Coast Guard estimates 80% of interdictions of US-bound drugs occur at sea, the majority of which are based in the eastern Pacific. They’re coming to the US mostly on “go-fast boats,” as well as fishing vessels and semi-submersibles.
The increasing number of drugs seized, particularly in the past year, reflects “the intensity and the scale and the lethality of the drugs and the threats that we face,” Moore added.
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