Southern Spear strikes 3-boat convoy in eastern Pacific, killing three; survivors left in water

On Dec. 30, 2025, at the direction of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted what U.S. Southern Command called "lethal kinetic strikes" against three vessels traveling as a convoy in the eastern Pacific Ocean. SOUTHCOM said the boats were "operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations" and were "transiting along known narco-trafficking routes," and asserted that intelligence had confirmed narcotics were transferred between the vessels before the strikes. It provided no evidence for the claim, named no organization, and identified none of those killed. Three alleged "narco-terrorists" were killed aboard the first vessel in the initial engagement; the men aboard the other two boats jumped overboard and distanced themselves before follow-on strikes sank the remaining ships.

The command said it "immediately" notified the U.S. Coast Guard to begin a search and rescue for those left in the water. According to later reporting, that search began only after a delay of roughly 45 hours, was conducted about 400 nautical miles southwest of the Mexico/Guatemala border, and was suspended on Jan. 3, 2026 — after SOUTHCOM struck two more boats — having found no survivors. SOUTHCOM counted the engagement as the 31st through 33rd strikes of a campaign that began in early September 2025 and had, by the command's own tally, killed at least 110 people. No charges were filed, no organization was named, no evidence was made public, and no interdiction or arrest was attempted.

The Standing records this as an extrajudicial use of lethal force: the government killed people on the basis of unproven trafficking allegations, with no judicial process, no charges, and no attempt to detain or interrogate the suspects it said it had identified. It also records the episode as a politicization of the uniformed services, in which armed forces are redirected to a drug-interdiction mission reframed as armed conflict against "designated terrorist organizations." The strike is distinguished within the campaign by its survivor-abandonment dimension — men who escaped the first strike were left in the open ocean as the attack continued, and the rescue the command said it ordered began late and ended without finding anyone alive. It is the earliest strike of this campaign recorded in the archive, and is linked to the southcom-drug-boat-strikes episode.