U.S. Southern Command Completes 68th Lethal Drug Boat Strike
U.S. Southern Command has carried out its 68th airstrike on a suspected drug-smuggling vessel, bringing the total toll of its campaign to an estimated 227 deceased suspects.
The lethal strike occurred Monday on an "established narco-trafficking route" in the Caribbean. Southcom had intelligence that confirmed the boat's involvement in trafficking and ordered a strike, destroying the boat and killing four people.
"Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere continues executing precise, lethal operations against the cartels. We will hunt, disrupt, and defeat these narco-terrorist networks. SOUTHCOM is resolved to neutralizing cartel terror and violence throughout the region and into the U.S. homeland," said Southcom Commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan in a statement.
In line with Pentagon directives, Southcom has embraced the use of novel unmanned systems for target identification and tracking. The newly-established Southcom Autonomous Warfare Command (SAWC) is tasked with using cost-effective, autonomous and unmanned systems to inject "total systemic friction" into the business models of cartels. That includes the use of aerial and surface drones for maritime domain awareness.
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“From the seafloor to space and across the cyber domain, we fully intend to leverage the clear superiority of the American defense ecosystem by deploying cutting-edge innovation," Donovan said earlier this year.
More traditional tactics remain in place, too. The effort to capture live smugglers, led by Joint Interagency Task Force South and the U.S. Coast Guard, is still ongoing and cooperates with Southcom. USCG intercepts are consistently nonlethal, and drug enforcement veterans say that the debriefing of live suspects yields valuable intelligence about onshore smuggling networks and midlevel leaders.