Since September, U.S. forces have attacked at least 67 suspected drug-trafficking vessels and killed at least 221 people under Operation Southern Spear. Yet internal assessments by the Drug Enforcement Administration and Pentagon officials found that the campaign has not reduced the price, availability or purity of cocaine in the United States, according to The Washington Post, which reviewed the DEA assessment and reported details of a closed Pentagon briefing to senators.
The findings contrast with President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the strikes have cut maritime drug trafficking by 97% or 98%. Whatever effect the campaign has had on particular sea routes, it has not produced a corresponding reduction in the cocaine reaching the U.S. market, according to the government’s own indicators.
Instead, traffickers have adapted. The DEA assessment found that criminal networks were moving away from go-fast boats vulnerable in international waters and shifting cargo onto larger vessels, closer to coastlines and through commercial ports. Air trafficking has also increased, with aircraft leaving clandestine airstrips along the Colombia-Venezuela border for Guyana and Suriname.
One DEA official described the effect to the Post as squeezing a balloon: pressure in one place pushes the trade somewhere else.
The scale of global cocaine production makes that adaptation easier. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2026 World Drug Report found that potential cocaine manufacture reached a record high in 2024, rising more than fourfold over a decade to more than 4,000 metric tons of pure cocaine. Against that supply, losses of individual vessels and cargoes can disrupt trafficking networks without necessarily creating scarcity in the U.S. market.
The limits of the approach have also been acknowledged within the military. Marine Gen. Francis L. Donovan, head of U.S. Southern Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 19 that “the boat strikes aren’t the answer.” Kinetic strikes would be one of several tools in a broader campaign, he said, and “probably not the most effective tool.”
The Pentagon nevertheless argues that the operation should not be judged solely by the amount of cocaine reaching the United States. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell has said the campaign is intended to disrupt and dismantle trafficking networks and the revenue generated by them, while the administration argues that lethal force increases the risks and costs facing smugglers.
The strikes may also carry trade-offs for traditional law enforcement. Boarding and seizing a suspected smuggling vessel can produce detainees, cargo, communications and other evidence that investigators can use to identify routes, financiers and trafficking networks. A lethal strike can eliminate those opportunities. The Post also reported concerns that informants providing intelligence on trafficking networks were being pulled from some operations because of fears they could be caught in a strike.
The campaign’s legal and targeting framework is separately under scrutiny. The Pentagon inspector general opened an evaluation in May examining whether U.S. Southern Command followed established targeting procedures in the strikes. An earlier Lead Inspector General report confirmed that Operation Southern Spear was launched in November 2025 to disrupt narcotics flows involving designated terrorist organizations and transnational criminal groups across the Western Hemisphere.
The strikes have clearly changed the risks facing traffickers and forced some networks to change how they move cocaine. But measured against the indicators the DEA uses to assess the domestic market – price, availability and purity – the campaign has so far changed how cocaine moves without meaningfully reducing the supply reaching American consumers.
