Hegseth announces Operation Southern Spear after 20th US strike against alleged ‘narco-terrorists’
Days after deploying America’s newest and largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean to target what the Trump administration alleges are drug-trafficking boats from Venezuela, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled a large-scale military and surveillance operation in the region that will commence later this month.
“Operation SOUTHERN SPEAR defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people. The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood — and we will protect it,” Hegseth wrote in a social media post Thursday night.
Venezuela launched a major military mobilization campaign this week in response to the U.S.’ unusual surge of weapons and Navy assets to its Southern Command area of responsibility. On Tuesday, Hegseth deployed America’s most advanced aircraft carrier — the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) — and its strike group to Southcom, following an order from President Donald Trump.
Tension has risen between Trump and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro this year, continuing to escalate in recent months.
The U.S. has conducted multiple deadly strikes in the region Southcom covers since early September against vessels Hegseth has accused online of smuggling drugs from Venezuela. Experts have noted that the South American nation is not America’s top illegal narcotics supplier, and Maduro has repeatedly rejected those allegations.
Some lawmakers have flagged issues around the Pentagon’s lack of transparency or evidence about exactly who and what the strikes have hit to date. The administration has not pursued a formal declaration of war from Congress.
On Friday, a Pentagon official told DefenseScoop: “We are confirming that on the President’s orders, there was a kinetic strike on Nov. 10 in the Caribbean Sea and four narco-terrorists were killed with no survivors. As of today, there have been 20 total kinetic strikes with 79 narco-terrorists killed, two wounded and repatriated to their home countries, and one attempted rescue at sea by Mexican authorities.”
Hegseth’s Operation Southern Spear comes after the Navy initiated a campaign under the same name in January to operationalize a combination of robotic and autonomous systems (RAS) to detect and surveil illicit drug trafficking.
Led by Southcom and the U.S. 4th Fleet, that operation was billed early on as a means to “help determine combinations of unmanned vehicles and manned forces needed to provide coordinated maritime domain awareness and conduct counternarcotics operations.”
The Pentagon official told DefenseScoop that Hegseth’s latest announcement marks “a formal operation naming for what the Joint Task Force Southern Spear (USMC’s II MEF) and Southcom have already been doing in theater.”
