On October 5, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump publicly claimed that the U.S. Navy had blown up another “cartel terrorist” boat the previous night in the Caribbean Sea – which would mean the strike occurred on October 4, 2025. The statement came during Trump’s speech celebrating the US Navy’s 250th anniversary at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.

During the speech, Trump said ” In recent weeks, the Navy has supported our mission to blow the cartel terrorists the hell out of the water. You see that? And there are no boats in the water anymore… we did another one last night. Now we just can’t find any.” It is unclear whether Trump was announcing a new strike which occurred on October 4th or was referring to the October 3rd strike which had already been announced by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (separately assessed in USMAR251003a). No official post from the @SecWar, @WhiteHouse, or @POTUS accounts has been found referring to a distinct strike on October 4th, 2025. No visual evidence, local reporting, or independent confirmation of a separate attack or casualties has emerged.

An AP investigation published on November 7th mentioned three men who had reportedly disappeared “last month” at sea and were possibly killed by US military strikes. However, as the reporting did not identify a specific date, their details have been included in all assessments for October but have not been listed among the victims list until further information can tie them to a specific strike. AP reported that 42-year-old Robert Sanchez, a father, fisherman and native of Guiria had been helping traffickers navigate the waterways due to economic pressures when he disappeared and was reported as dead by relatives on social media. 24-year-old Dushak Milovcic, a former cadet in the National Guard Academy had dropped out to make more money from running drugs on boats for smugglers and was killed. Juan Carlos “El Guaramero” Fuentes, a former transit bus operator whose bus had broken down, turned to smuggling to feed his family and had only been on his second smuggling run when he was killed.

Note – given the ambiguity of the reporting on this incident, it has not yet been included in Airwars’ incident tracker on our conflict page in the top-line summary.