The US military hasn’t blown up an alleged drug boat in a month. Has the campaign worked?

By Davis Winkie, Holmes Lybrand, CNN

(CNN) — Amid the longest pause to date in the US military’s deadly military strikes against alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, US law enforcement officials told CNN they are uncertain about the strikes’ lasting impact after 11 months, and experts are skeptical they will meaningfully change the region’s drug trade.

The official mission for Operation Southern Spear, as the boat strike initiative is known, is classified, according to a May 20 report from the Pentagon’s inspector general office. The US military has destroyed at least 67 vessels and killed at least 221 people in the campaign that began in September 2025.

It’s not clear why the strikes have paused. The last occurred on June 21.

But law enforcement officials and experts who spoke with CNN emphasized the resiliency and adaptability of drug smuggling networks, and they expressed skepticism about the lethal strike strategy and its effectiveness.

US Southern Command, the headquarters overseeing Operation Southern Spear, told CNN in a statement that the mission “allows SOUTHCOM to take the fight to the cartels,” many of which have been labeled as terrorist organizations, “before their violence and poison reaches our shores.”

The command, through a spokesperson, said the operation’s objective is “to detect, disrupt and dismantle” cartels labeled as terrorist organizations, which “denies them a foothold in the Western Hemisphere.” The mission also aims to deter cartels from smuggling drugs.

When the campaign against alleged drug boats began last fall, it wasn’t clear whether the purpose was to disrupt cartels or oust Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, who was then the country’s leader.

Official statements always referenced the cartels, but top officials kept discussing Maduro.

In his Truth Social post announcing the first strike, President Donald Trump called out Maduro for allegedly controlling the Tren de Aragua transnational gang, which his administration has labeled a cartel.

In November, White House Chief of Staff Suzie Wiles told Vanity Fair magazine that Trump “want[ed] to keep on blowing boats up until [Venezuela’s Nicolas] Maduro cries uncle.”

But the boat strikes continued even after the US successfully captured Maduro in a daring nighttime January 3 raid into Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. He now sits in a Brooklyn jail awaiting trial on charges related to drug trafficking, money laundering and corruption. Maduro has pleaded not guilty.

Dozens more strikes have occurred since the Maduro raid, with the most recent being on June 21. Experts and law enforcement are still trying to assess what impact they’ve had.

Since the boat strikes began, the amount of sea-borne cocaine seized by the Coast Guard has declined in both the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, according to data the service provided to CNN.

“It’s hard to measure this close in time,” one Homeland Security official told CNN. “We have to wait and see what dent there is and, you know, how cartels are changing tactics.” A second official cautioned CNN that cartels are likely using new routes, which could explain the drop.

Nicholas Magliocca, a geography professor at the University of Alabama who has modeled how cocaine smugglers in Central America adapt to law enforcement pressure, told CNN that “meeting force with force” during the decades-long US-led “war on drugs” has only intensified the issue.

“I don’t see how targeting a small number of smuggling vessels with low-level traffickers onboard will change that,” Magliocca said.

Another cocaine trafficking expert, Sebastian Cutrona, said that sea-borne trafficking “is often done through shipping containers, not through boats [like] those that have been attacked in the last few boats.” He described the boat strike campaign as “performative” in nature.

Cutrona also noted that the Caribbean Sea routes are not the primary way that cocaine enters the US — most goes overland through the US-Mexico border.

And while cocaine was responsible for nearly 20,000 US overdose deaths in 2025, synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which is largely produced in Mexico and the US using chemical precursors from countries like China and India, killed almost twice as many people in the US, or more than 38,000. Opioid overdose deaths were already waning as well when the strikes began.

“I don’t see that the United States is tackling the roots of the problem,” said Cutrona, editor of a recent book about cocaine’s Western Hemisphere supply chain and a senior criminology lecturer at the United Kingdom’s Liverpool Hope University. “These are just low-level associates, and by killing them, the US is by no means … dismantling the criminal organizations that supply those illegal drugs.”

Military officials don’t always know the identities of everyone on board the boats they target, CNN previously reported, and they told the Pentagon inspector general they could not publicly disclose what criteria determine whether a boat is destroyed or intercepted by the Coast Guard.

And cocaine is still reaching the United States.

Customs and Border Protection officials are seizing thousands of pounds per month of the drug at the country’s borders and in the country’s interior, according to the agency’s public data. The Drug Enforcement Agency also seized nearly 180,000 pounds of cocaine during the first half of 2026, according to its website.

The head of US Southern Command, Marine Corps Gen. Francis Donovan, previously acknowledged the limitations of the boat strikes as well.

“Boat strikes aren’t the answer,” Donovan told lawmakers in March.

CNN’s Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.

Davis Winkie’s work at CNN is supported by a partnership between Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners (JFP). CNN retains full editorial control of the reporting.

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