A US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper assigned sits on the ramp at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, during a weapons test on September 3, 2020. Senior Airman Haley Stevens/US Air Force/File
The US military has undertaken a campaign against alleged drug trafficking boats in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea using a variety of drones, gunships, and fighter jets, according to people familiar with the assets being deployed.
Most of the strikes have been carried out using MQ-9 Reaper drones, the sources said, which are remotely piloted aircraft used by the military and are typically armed with Hellfire missiles. Other strikes have been conducted by manned aircraft, including AC-130J gunships and fighter jets, the sources said.
To date the Pentagon has not publicly acknowledged what aircraft or hardware the military is using to conduct the strikes.
Since early September, the US military has killed 76 people in 19 strikes that have destroyed 20 boats as part of a campaign that Washington says is aimed at curtailing the flow of drugs into the United States.
The US military has concentrated many of its assets in Puerto Rico, including the MQ-9 drones, F-35 fighter jets, and at least one AC-130J gunship. All have limited ranges and are likely being used for the strikes in the Caribbean. The gunship was spotted on October 9 armed with precision-guided missiles for striking ground targets, CNN has reported.
Last week, an AC-130J gunship operated by the US Air Force surfaced in El Salvador, at US Cooperative Security Location (CSL) Comalapa, according to photos and satellite imagery obtained by CNN.
The facilities in both Puerto Rico and El Savador are seeing highly unusual US military activity.
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Naval Station Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico, a US military installation that had been shuttered since 2004, is now back up and running, according to satellite imagery and photos taken at the base.
And while the US facility at El Salvador International Airport has regularly hosted surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft since it was set up in 2000, the outpost had until recently been used almost exclusively for unarmed aircraft, according to the United States Southern Command.
The position of the facility near El Salvador’s coast makes it uniquely positioned to play a role in the US campaign in the Pacific Ocean. Previously, most potential smuggling vessels transiting the Pacific would have been too far from the types of attack aircraft sources said have been used for the campaign, all of which have limited range and were based either in Puerto Rico or the continental US.
“Operating out of Comalapa provides more options and permits a much wider swath of the Pacific Ocean — through which much of the cocaine trafficked toward the United States passes — to be surveilled and defended,” explained Dr. Ryan Berg, the director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
Before the US began striking alleged drug boats in September, CSL Comalapa played a different role in fighting narcotics trafficking, historically hosting maritime surveillance aircraft, including a Navy P-8A and P-3 Orion operated by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The MQ-9 Reapers, at least seven of which are based in Puerto Rico, according to photos captured in Aguadilla, are predominantly used to strike targets with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, a weapon that was originally designed to destroy enemy tanks but that has become a workhorse for the military as part of drone operations against a range of ground targets.
The AC-130J can carry the Hellfire but it is primarily armed with large guns. The AC-130J seen in photographs obtained by CNN in El Salvador had two cannons—including a 105mm howitzer— visible on the left side of the gunship.
The Pentagon shifted its strategy in recent weeks to more frequently striking suspected narcotraffickers in the eastern Pacific Ocean, rather than the Caribbean Sea, because administration officials believe they have stronger evidence linking cocaine transport to the US from those western routes, CNN has reported. The intelligence suggests that cocaine is far more likely to be trafficked from Colombia to Mexico and eventually to the US, rather than Venezuela, the origin for some of the boats targeted in the Caribbean.
Lawmakers have been seeking answers from the Pentagon about how much the counternarcotics campaign is costing taxpayers, but officials briefing Congress in recent weeks have not provided an overall dollar amount, sources said. Instead, administration officials have acknowledged that each strike typically costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, between the cost per flight hour of the platform and the cost of the munition used.
One hellfire missile, for example, typically costs about $150,000, and reaper drones cost around $3,500 per hour to fly. An F-35 costs around $40,000 per hour to fly. The cost per flight hour of an AC-130J gunship is not public but its predecessor, the AC-130U, which was phased out in 2019, cost over $40,000 per hour to fly.
US Air National Guard maintenance personnel begin loading AGM-114 Hellfire missiles on the hot cargo pad at March Air Reserve Base in California, on December 10, 2023. Tech. Sgt. Joseph Pagan/US Air National Guard/File
The targeting for the strikes is being done via a joint US Southern Command/Special Operations Command targeting cell, with input from the intelligence community, according to two sources familiar with the matter. But questions have been raised about whether everyone the US has killed is truly a member of, or even affiliated with, one of the dozens of drug cartels the US has designated as terrorist organizations.
In several briefings to Congress, including one last week, administration officials have acknowledged that they do not necessarily know the identities of each person on board a vessel before they attack it. Strikes are instead conducted based on intelligence that the vessels are linked to a specific cartel or criminal organization, CNN has reported.
Meanwhile, additional military assets are steaming toward the Caribbean, including the Ford Carrier Strike Group. A significant percentage of all deployed US naval assets globally have been located in US Southern Command since last month.
Administration officials have told Congress that the Ford is moving there to support counternarcotic operations and conduct intelligence gathering, two of the sources said, but its deployment to the region is raising questions about whether President Donald Trump could soon launch strikes against Venezuela.
In a briefing last month, two senior US Special Operations officers could not explain why the administration needed so many powerful military assets stationed in the Caribbean just to blow up small boats, a source familiar with the closed-door session on Capitol Hill said.
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