On Dec. 30, at the direction of @SecWar Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted kinetic strikes against three narco-trafficking vessels traveling as a convoy. These vessels were operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations in international waters. Intelligence confirmed the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes and had transferred narcotics between the three vessels prior to the strikes. Three narco-terrorists aboard the first vessel were killed in the first engagement. The remaining narco-terrorists abandoned the other two vessels, jumping overboard and distancing themselves before follow-on engagements sank their respective vessels. Following the engagements, USSOUTHCOM immediately notified @USCG to activate the Search and Rescue system. @DeptofWar #OpSouthernSpear

The Coast Guard dispatched a HC-130J to waters near the Mexico-Guatemala border following a Dec. 30 airstrike. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Jade K. Venegas. The Coast Guard ended its search for an unspecified number of survivors of an American airstrike on a suspected drug boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean.  The Coast Guard dispatched aircraft and personnel on Tuesday after American forces hit a trio of boats in Central American waters, leaving several survivors and killing three people. Late on Friday, Jan. 2, the Coast Guard announced it was ending its search. It was the most extensive search and rescue operation the U.S. has carried out since the military began airstrikes on suspected drug vessels in September. The spokesperson did not say if any of the survivors had been recovered yet.  The survivors were part of a three-ship convoy traveling in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Dec. 30. According to U.S. Southern Command, intelligence identified the ships as a convoy of “narco-trafficking vessels” and the military launched a strike on one of the ships. That killed three people onboard. The crews of the other two vehicles jumped ship. SOUTHCOM said the crews distanced themselves from the vessels, which were both sunk in “follow-on engagements.” U.S. Southern Command announced the Dec. 30 strikes the following day. It said that the Coast Guard was contacted for search and rescue efforts. The Coast Guard separately said that it was notified on Tuesday about “mariners in distress” in the Pacific Ocean, and that it was sending a C-130 to search the area and drop a survival raft and supplies if needed. The U.S. Coast Guard is coordinating search-and-rescue operations with vessels in the area, and a Coast Guard C-130 aircraft is en route to provide further search coverage with the ability to drop a survival raft and supplies. Late on Friday, Capt. Patrick Dill, chief of incident management, Southwest District, said in a statement that the Coast Guard was suspending its search “pending further developments.” “At this stage of the response, the likelihood of a successful outcome, based on elapsed time, environmental conditions, and available resources for a person in the water is very low,” he said. Two more airstrikes on Dec. 31 hit two other boats, killing five people in total, SOUTHCOM said, not specifying where in the world those attacks took place. There have been more than 30 strikes on alleged drug vessels since September, with at least 115 people killed. The Department of Defense did not say where the Dec. 30 strikes took place, but the Coast Guard said that it was alerted to people in the water roughly 400 nautical miles southwest of the Mexico-Guatemala border.  Top Stories This Week A Coast Guard spokesperson told Task & Purpose that a HC-130J plane based out of Sacramento was sent, searching an area of more than 1,000 nautical miles. The Coast Guard also sent a marine information broadcast to sailors in the area. Conditions were rough, the spokesperson said with 40-knot winds and waves as high as nine feet reported.  “As of Friday, the Coast Guard coordinated more than 65 hours of search efforts including working with partner nations, commercial fishing and Automated Mutual-Assistance Vessel Rescue (AMVER) system vessels,” the statement continued. U.S. Southern Command directed questions about the operation to the Coast Guard.  Tuesday’s incident was the fourth time survivors have been reported. In the very first U.S. attack on ships in Latin American waters on Sept. 2, two people were revealed to have survived the initial strike. They clung to the wreckage of the boat for at least 45 minutes before being killed by a second airstrike.  In an Oct. 16 strike in the Caribbean Sea, two people died and another two, an Ecuadorian and a Colombian national, were rescued by the U.S. Navy. Two days later they were released back to their home countries. On Oct. 21, four ships in the eastern Pacific Ocean were hit, leaving one immediate survivor and 14 dead. The United States said it alerted a nearby Mexican military boat about the survivor. However after several days of searching, Mexican authorities said they were halting efforts. The individual is believed lost at sea and is counted as one of the people killed in the strikes. The strikes in both the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have been carried out by U.S. Special Operations Command, according to reporting by multiple outlets. The military and White House have accused all of the ships attacked of trafficking drugs and being tied to gangs designated as foreign terrorist organizations, although it has presented no evidence publicly. There have been 35 strikes The Coast Guard has continued to carry out its regular drug interdiction operations in the Pacific and Caribbean even as the military has ramped up its airstrikes on suspected drug trafficking vessels.  The military has a large force of more than 15,000 troops in the Caribbean as part of Operation Southern Spear, including several aircraft, multiple destroyers, a Marine Expeditionary Unit and an aircraft carrier. Update: 1/2/2026; This story has been updated after the Coast Guard announced it was suspending its search for survivors.   Task & Purpose Video Each week on Tuesdays and Fridays our team will bring you analysis of military tech, tactics, and doctrine.

NewsAirstrike on 3 boats carrying drugs from the U.S. military. 02.01.2026 14:17 The U.S. Southern Command conducted airstrikes on three boats identified as carrying drugs in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. Three people were killed in the attack. In a statement from the U.S. military, it was noted that three more boats identified as carrying drugs were attacked as part of the ongoing Southern Cross Operation in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, resulting in the deaths of three individuals.The U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) reported that an airstrike was conducted on three boats identified as involved in drug trafficking on December 30, 2025. The statement emphasized that the joint task force conducting the Southern Cross Operation in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific carried out an attack on a boat operated by organizations designated as "terrorist groups" by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.3 BOATS HIT, 3 PEOPLE DEADThe statement included, "Intelligence sources confirmed that the vessels were navigating known drug trafficking routes and that a narcotic substance transfer occurred between the three vessels prior to the attacks."Authorities reported that in the initial intervention, three individuals on the first vessel were neutralized, while those on the other two vessels abandoned the ships and jumped into the sea before the interventions. It was noted that as a result of the ongoing attacks, the two vessels were later sunk. The statement indicated that following the operations, the U.S. Southern Command immediately informed the U.S. Coast Guard for search and rescue efforts. Latest News

The US destroyed three drug boats and left at least three dead in a military operation in international waters. Southern Command reported that the vessels were traveling along known drug trafficking routes and had transferred drugs between them.

#EEUU destruye tres narcolanchas y deja al menos tres muertos en operación militar en aguas internacionales. El Comando Sur informó que las embarcaciones transitaban por rutas conocidas de narcotráfico y habían transferido drogas entre sí.

The United States Army announced that it destroyed three boats allegedly loaded with drugs in an attack that has left at least three dead.

El Ejército de #EstadosUnidos anunció que destruyó tres lanchas supuestamente cargadas de droga en un ataque que ha dejado al menos tres muertos.

The U.S. Southern Command reported that on December 30th it carried out kinetic attacks against three vessels linked to drug trafficking that were sailing in convoy through international waters, as part of Operation Southern Spear. #TVV

El Comando Sur de Estados Unidos informó que el pasado 30 de diciembre ejecutó ataques cinéticos contra tres embarcaciones vinculadas al narcotráfico que navegaban en convoy por aguas internacionales, como parte del operativo Lanza del Sur. #TVV

US Bombs Three More Vessels in the Caribbean On December 30, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ordered kinetic attacks against three vessels carrying suspected drug traffickers traveling in convoy. These attacks are part of Operation Southern Spear. Three suspected narco-terrorists aboard the first vessel were killed in the initial engagement; the remaining individuals abandoned the other two vessels by jumping overboard. The Coast Guard was notified to conduct search and rescue operations. #Vessels #US #SouthernSpear

EU bombardea tres embarcaciones más en el Caribe El pasado 30 de diciembre, el secretario de Guerra de Estados Unidos, Pete Hegseth, ordenó ejecutar ataques cinéticos contra tres embarcaciones de presuntos narcotraficantes que viajaban en convoy. Estos ataques forman parte de la operación Lanza del Sur. Tres supuestos narcoterroristas a bordo de la primera embarcación murieron en el primer enfrentamiento; las personas restantes abandonaron las otras dos embarcaciones, saltando por la borda. La Guardia Costera fue notificada para implementar tareas de búsqueda y rescate. #Embarcaciones #EU #LanzaDelSur

Attention all governments in the region. This appears to be the exact area where the boatmen who jumped from bombed vessels fell. It is known that three people died; the rest survived by jumping into the sea. Information obtained by our naval force, which is prepared to cooperate.

Aviso a todos los gobiernos de la zona. Está parece ser la zona exacta donde cayeron los lancheros que se arrojaron de embarcaciones que fueron bombardeadas. Se sabe que tres personas murieron, el resto quedó viva porque se arrojaron al mar. Información conseguida por nuestra fuerza naval que está dispuesta a colaborar.

The Coast Guard is continuing the search for survivors from a U.S. military strike against suspected drug vessels that took place earlier this week. We now know roughly where those strikes took place: Approximately 400 nautical miles southwest of the Mexico/ Guatemala border.

On Dec. 30th, the @uscg was notified by the @DeptofWar of mariners in distress in the Pacific Ocean.  The U.S. Coast Guard is conducting search and rescue operations. Updates will be provided when available.

ALAMEDA, Calif. — The U.S. Coast Guard suspended its search for the reported people in the water approximately 400 nautical miles southwest of the Mexico/Guatemala border Friday. Despite extensive coordination with international rescue coordination centers, Department of War partners, and Automated Mutual-Assistance Vessel Rescue (AMVER) system vessels, available assets were extremely limited due to distance and range constraints. The U.S. Coast Guard coordinated more than 65 hours of search efforts, leveraging an underway AMVER vessel in the region and U.S. Coast Guard HC-130J launched from Sacramento, covering more than 1,090 nautical miles under favorable visual conditions with no sightings of survivors or debris. Three additional vessels in the area were asked to assist in the search, all reporting negative results. “Suspending a search is never easy and given the exhaustive search effort, lack of positive indications and declining probability of survival, we have suspended active search efforts pending further developments,” said U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Patrick Dill, chief of incident management, Southwest District. “At this stage of the response, the likelihood of a successful outcome, based on elapsed time, environmental conditions, and available resources for a person in the water is very low.” ###

In regard to the Dec. 30 U.S. military strike at sea (which hit three vessels and left survivors floating from the latter two), the Coast Guard says this today: "The Coast Guard began coordinating search efforts around 3 p.m., on December 30th, after receiving notification from the Department of War of people in the water approximately 400 nautical miles southwest of the Mexico / Guatemala border. The Coast Guard launched a HC-130J from Sacramento, Calif., to search an area covering more than 1,000 nautical miles and issued an urgent marine information broadcast to mariners in the area. Weather reported in the area was nine-foot seas, and 40-knot winds. As of Friday, the Coast Guard coordinated more than 65 hrs of search efforts including working with partner nations, commercial fishing and Automated Mutual-Assistance Vessel Rescue (AMVER) system vessels.”

The conditions were treacherous in the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles off the Mexico–Guatemala border. There were gale-force winds and 9-foot seas. It would be dangerous if you were on a boat, nevermind if yours was blown out of the water. Eight men leapt into those rough seas on December 30 when the U.S. rained down a barrage of munitions, sinking three vessels. They required immediate rescue; chances were slim that they could survive even an hour. In announcing its strike, U.S. Southern Command or SOUTHCOM, said it “immediately notified” the Coast Guard to launch search and rescue protocols to save the men. But it took the United States Coast Guard almost 45 hours to begin searching the attack zone for survivors, new reporting by Airwars and The Intercept reveals. Help did not arrive in time. A total of 11 civilians died due to the U.S. attack on December 30 — including the eight who jumped overboard, according to information provided exclusively to The Intercept by SOUTHCOM, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in and around Latin America and the Caribbean. This represents one of the largest single-day death tolls since the U.S. military began targeting alleged drug smuggling boats last September. “SOUTHCOM doesn’t want these people alive.” Using open-source flight tracking data, Airwars and The Intercept learned that a Coast Guard plane did not head toward the site of the attack for almost two days. A timeline provided by the Coast Guard confirmed that it was roughly 45 hours before a flight arrived at the search area. The slow response and lack of rescue craft in the area suggests there was scant interest on the part of the U.S. in saving anyone. It’s part of a pattern of what appear to be imitation rescue missions that since mid-October have not saved a single survivor. On December 30, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told the Coast Guard’s parent agency — the Department of Homeland Security — that SOUTHCOM stood ready to provide them with “specialized maritime capabilities” in support of their missions. But just hours later, it was SOUTHCOM that called on the Coast Guard to conduct the search and rescue mission for the eight men. The Coast Guard told The Intercept that it received the initial report of people in distress from SOUTHCOM at 1:40 p.m. Pacific time on December 30. (The exact timing of the U.S. strike is not known, but when SOUTHCOM posted about the attack on X the following day it wrote that it had “immediately notified” the Coast Guard). The survivors jumped into the Pacific approximately 400 nautical miles southwest of Ocos, Guatemala. They faced extreme conditions: 9-foot seas and 40-knot winds, according to Kenneth Wiese, a spokesperson for the Coast Guard Southwest District. The Coast Guard said it soon began contacting Maritime Rescue Coordination Centers in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica; the Central American Air Navigation Services Corporation, which provides regional air traffic control and search and rescue coordination; and eight commercial vessels within 200 nautical miles of the last known position of the survivors. A lone container vessel, the Maersk Eureka, responded to the call. On December 31 at 6:44 a.m. Pacific time, the ship arrived at the last known position of the survivors and found nothing. That morning at 9:19 a.m. Pacific time, a Coast Guard C-130 search and rescue plane took off from Sacramento, California, and headed to Liberia, Costa Rica, “for refueling and crew rest.” A day later, on January 1 at 7:33 a.m. Pacific time, the aircraft left Costa Rica and headed toward the “search area,” according to the Coast Guard. It finally arrived “on scene” at 10:18 a.m. Pacific time on New Year’s Day.  Nathan Walker/Airwars The Coast Guard said that it suspended its search on January 2, reporting “no sightings of survivors or debris.” A U.S. government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, said the men were presumed dead when the search was ended. “Suspending a search is never easy, and given the exhaustive search effort, lack of positive indications, and declining probability of survival, we have suspended active search efforts pending further developments,” said Coast Guard Capt. Patrick Dill, chief of incident management, Southwest District, at the time. A second government official who spoke with The Intercept said the Coast Guard response didn’t look like “foot dragging,” but questioned why, after months of attacks in the region, search and rescue assets weren’t pre-positioned closer to the Eastern Pacific. “SOUTHCOM doesn’t want these people alive,” that official said. Asked for comment on the allegation, Southern Command spokesperson Steven McLoud said: “SOUTHCOM does not comment on speculative or unfounded reporting.” The Coast Guard confirmed the C-130 sent from Sacramento was its only aircraft in the area. “There were no other Coast Guard assets in the area to assist with the search,” said spokesperson Lt. Cmdr. Lauren Giancola. The Coast Guard would not explain why it hadn’t pre-positioned assets in the region. “Any questions regarding military operations including recent strikes should be referred directly to the Department of War,” Giancola told The Intercept. Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson did not return a request for comment. The search and rescue operation for the boat strike survivors differs starkly from the U.S. response when a U.S. Marine involved in the military campaign in the Caribbean fell overboard from the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima in the SOUTHCOM area of operations this month. It sparked a “nonstop search and rescue operation” that included hundreds of flight hours and extensive aviation support, according to a statement from the Marines’ II Marine Expeditionary Force. Five Navy ships, a rigid-hull inflatable boat, surface rescue swimmers from the Iwo Jima, and 10 aircraft from the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force joined the search efforts. (Lance Cpl. Chukwuemeka E. Oforah, 21, was declared deceased on Feb. 10, 2026.) The slow pace of the U.S. search for boat strike survivors suggests the goal wasn’t to save lives, said Brian Finucane, a former state department lawyer who is a specialist in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war. “It does not appear as if they were eager to rescue additional survivors and then be faced with the question of ‘what do we do with them?’” he told The Intercept. “We’re going to hand off responsibility to the Coast Guard, which is going to arrive in a few days from California and look around and not find anything. So you can draw your own conclusions from that sequence.” The U.S. military has carried out more than three dozen known attacks, destroying 40 boats, in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since September, killing at least 134 civilians.  The most recent attack on Friday – the first known strike in the Caribbean Sea since early November – killed three people. From the first strike, crewmembers have periodically survived initial attacks, leading the U.S. to employ a hodgepodge of strategies to deal with them, ranging from execution to repatriation. The Intercept was the first outlet to report that the U.S. military killed two survivors of the initial boat attack on September 2 in a follow-up strike. The two survivors clung to the wreckage of a vessel attacked by the U.S. military for roughly 45 minutes before Adm. Frank Bradley, then the head of Joint Special Operations Command, ordered a follow-up strike that killed the shipwrecked men. Following an October 16 attack on a semi-submersible in the Caribbean Sea that killed two civilians, two other men were rescued by the U.S. and quickly repatriated to Colombia and Ecuador, respectively. President Donald Trump called them “terrorists” in a Truth Social post and said they would face “detention and prosecution.” But both men were released without charges in their home countries. Since this attack, the U.S. appears to have settled on a strategy of calling for what increasingly resemble imitation rescue missions. Following three attacks on October 27 that killed 15 people aboard four separate boats, a survivor of a strike was spotted clinging to wreckage, and the U.S. alerted Mexican authorities. The man was not found, and he is presumed dead. Last month, SOUTHCOM again called on the Coast Guard. “On Friday, January 23rd, the U.S. Coast Guard was notified by the Department of War’s Southern Command of a person in distress in the Pacific Ocean,” Coast Guard spokesperson Roberto Nieves told The Intercept. A timeline provided by the Coast Guard shows that it took about 17 hours for a Coast Guard C-130 to arrive at the survivor’s last known position, but that aircraft only conducted an hourlong search before “diverting to El Salvador for fuel and crew rest.” It returned to the last known position of the survivor on January 25, about 51 hours after the initial distress call. The search was suspended that night just before 8 p.m. Pacific time, and that person is now also presumed dead. “The expected result is essentially the same as putting a gun to their head.” Following a strike last week — the third since Marine Gen. Francis L. Donovan became SOUTHCOM’s new commander earlier this month — the command announced that it had once again notified the Coast Guard “to activate the Search and Rescue system for the survivor.” The Coast Guard, in turn, told The Intercept that Ecuador’s Maritime Rescue Coordination Center “assumed coordination of search and rescue operations, with technical support provided by the U.S. Coast Guard.” The Coast Guard then walked it back and said the U.S. had only “offered” assistance. Ecuador’s rescue authorities did not return multiple requests for an update on the search. The second government official, who spoke with The Intercept on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment about the boat strikes, said that survivors created “complications and questions” for the U.S. military and intelligence community. Rather than risk exposing intelligence sources and methods by bringing these men to court, the official said it was simpler to leave them to drown. Finucane echoed this assessment. “After rescuing the men in October, it was apparent there would be a strong incentive not to have additional survivors on their hands,” he said. William Baumgartner, a retired U.S. Coast Guard rear admiral and former chief counsel of that service branch, said the December 30 attack was tantamount to a death sentence. “Once the people jump in the water and you blow up the only thing that could possibly save their lives, that’s essentially killing them,” Baumgartner told The Intercept last month. “The expected result is essentially the same as putting a gun to their head.” We’re independent of corporate interests — and powered by members. Join us. Become a member Experts say the survivors of the December 30 attacks likely died within minutes. Accomplished swimmers, clinging to wreckage or flotation devices in warmer waters, could survive longer, some said. None considered that likely in this case. “The combination of the wind and the waves would force feed water into the victim. If the waves don’t drown you, the hypothermia will kill you,” said Tom Griffiths, the founder of the Aquatic Safety Research Group, who previously served as the director of aquatics and safety officer for athletics at Penn State University. “Drowning often takes as little as four to six minutes for a non-swimmer but can be as quick as 90 seconds. I would think under these conditions it could be almost as quick.” John Fletemeyer, an aquatics expert and co-author of “The Science of Drowning,” said that people have survived in the water for up to two days. But such cases, he said, are “outliers.” “It can be almost instantaneous, where it can happen in just a couple minutes if someone cannot swim and they go underwater,” Fletemeyer said. A frequent expert in murder-homicide cases, he explained in detail the pain and suffering involved in drowning. There is also the potential for shark attack, he said, due to blood in the water from those killed in the initial strike. “If we know somebody is in the water dying,” he said, “I think we have a human responsibility to try to save them.”