The Shadow War Off Venezuela’s Coast: How U.S. Special Operators Are Quietly Shaping Operation Southern Spear

Out on the dark water where the rules get thin and the trigger gets heavy, Southern Spear is less a drug bust than a deliberate message: if you run narco-terror cargo under a cartel flag, the United States will hunt you down and end the problem at sea, not in court.

The United States did not formally declare war on anyone this fall, not yet anyway, but actions in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific are telling a different story. What began as routine drug-boat interdictions has hardened into a sustained campaign of lethal strikes against small vessels that U.S. officials allege are tied to Venezuelan trafficking networks and designated foreign terrorist organizations. The operations are happening far from commercial television cameras, largely outside sustained press coverage, and with only limited public scrutiny compared to their scale and lethality.

For anyone who has ridden black water at night with a rifle resting between their knees, the pattern is familiar. This looks like a maritime manhunt conducted under a counter-cartel banner. Call it Operation Tiburón rewritten for the drone age, with better sensors, faster boats, and no courtroom at the end of the chase.

Twenty-Plus Strikes, Dozens Dead

Since early September 2025, U.S. forces operating under US Southern Command’s Operation Southern Spear have conducted at least twenty-one acknowledged lethal strikes against suspected drug-trafficking vessels. Pentagon briefings have placed the official death toll at more than eighty as of early December. Independent counts compiled by journalists and analysts tracking public reporting put the number higher, approaching one hundred killed across more than two dozen strikes by mid-December.

The mechanics are consistent. A U.S. aircraft or naval platform tracks a small vessel moving along a known narcotics route. The crew is designated, in U.S. government language, as narco-terrorists linked to sanctioned or designated networks such as Tren de Aragua. Precision-guided munitions are then used to destroy the boat at stand-off range. The strikes occur hundreds of miles from shore, often at night, and typically leave no survivors to question and no evidence to seize.

One early strike on September 1 and 2 drew particular attention. U.S. forces struck a suspected Venezuelan trafficking vessel, assessed that survivors remained, and then conducted a follow-on strike. Eleven people were reported killed in that engagement. Lawmakers from both parties and multiple media outlets have since raised questions about the decision-making sequence, with critics arguing it may have crossed legal and ethical lines. The administration maintains that the strike complied with the law of armed conflict.

On Dec. 17, at the direction of @SecWar Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organizations in international waters. Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was transiting along a known… pic.twitter.com/Yhu3LSOyea

— U.S. Southern Command (@Southcom) December 18, 2025

From Drug Busts to a Kill Chain

On paper, Southern Spear is a counternarcotics mission. In practice, the language and tools belong to the post-September 11 era of manhunting. The Trump administration’s designation of Tren de Aragua and related networks as foreign terrorist organizations provided the legal and rhetorical framework to treat maritime smuggling as a battlefield problem rather than a law enforcement one.

Senior officials speak openly about mapping networks, tracking individuals, and eliminating threats day or night. Carrier strike groups have operated in the region. Long-range bombers have flown presence missions off Venezuela’s coast. Precision-guided weapons, selected for their lethality rather than their disabling effect, have become standard.

Two ways to continue to read this article.

This is not a boarding team with zip ties and evidence bags. It is a kill chain. The targeting process, while officially opaque, bears the hallmarks of the same intelligence-driven methodology refined in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. Pattern-of-life analysis, persistent surveillance, rapid-strike authority, and real-time battle-damage assessment are not the tools of traditional maritime policing. Quiet SOF Signatures Southern Command statements describe Joint Task Force Southern Spear in deliberately broad terms. They emphasize intelligence confirmation, maritime domain awareness, and action against designated terrorist organizations. They do not specify which units identify the targets, fuse the intelligence, or remain on call when something goes wrong. The signatures are unmistakable. Persistent surveillance over narrow sea lanes. Fast decision cycles against fleeting targets. In at least one instance, a re-engagement after an initial strike. This is the tradecraft of special operations forces and their intelligence partners, adapted from desert compounds and mountain valleys to fiberglass hulls and open water. The result is a system that treats anonymous boats as nodes in a hostile network, eligible for destruction once they cross an invisible line on a digital map. Why This Is Not the Old “War on Drugs” The United States has fought narcotics trafficking at sea for decades. Coast Guard cutters chasing go-fast boats. Decks stacked with cocaine bricks. Miami Vice music blaring in the background. Crews flown north to face indictments. Southern Spear is something else entirely. Officials have acknowledged that they often do not know precisely who is aboard these vessels at the moment of strike. The default outcome is lethal force, not detention. Human rights organizations, regional governments, and legal scholars have described the campaign as extrajudicial and potentially unlawful under international law. Congress has attempted, and failed, to impose new limits or authorization requirements on the operation. At the same time, the strikes sit within a broader pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro’s regime. Sanctions on Venezuelan shipping and oil exports have tightened. U.S. forces have seized tankers carrying sanctioned crude. The administration has openly discussed enforcing a naval cordon against oil shipments linked to Caracas. In that context, the destruction of small boats along trafficking routes reads less like isolated counternarcotics actions and more like a message delivered at sea. Special Operators in Gray Water For those executing the mission, this is the grayest operational space imaginable. The targets are not uniformed combatants. They are well-tanned men in sandals on low-slung pangas, hauling barrels of drugs that fund criminal networks and poison cities far from the Caribbean sun. The authorities behind the mission blend counter-drug, counter-terrorism, and national security powers into a legal twilight zone straddling traditional military and intelligence frameworks. It feels like war. It is described by some as law enforcement. It answers to both, yet fully to neither. This is what shadow war looks like in 2025. Not guys dangling off ropes from helicopters over palaces, but analysts, operators, and aircrews feeding coordinates into a system that erases boats at the edge of a digital map. Like a shark that never breaks the surface, the violence is mostly unseen until the water turns red. If this operation holds, history will not remember the number of boats. It will remember whether Washington had the spine to authorize decisive force, stand behind the operators who executed it, and accept the consequences of treating narco-terror networks like enemies instead of defendants.