Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the Pentagon carried out another "lethal kinetic strike" at President Donald Trump's direction on a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean that killed four men.
"Earlier today, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out a lethal kinetic strike on yet another narco-trafficking vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) in the Eastern Pacific," Hegseth wrote on X, using the Defense Department’s secondary title.
It's the 14th known time the Trump administration has launched a military strike against alleged drug-carrying boats in recent months.
Hegseth defended Wednesday's strike the same way he did previous ones, saying the target “was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling." He has repeatedly said targeted vessels are traveling along a known drug-smuggling route and carrying narcotics when the United States conducts its strikes.
Hegseth said this week that the U.S. military conducted three strikes Monday on four vessels in the same area that killed 14 people, whom he similarly described as "narco-terrorists."
NBC News has reported that lawmakers on Capitol Hill have expressed concern over a lack of transparency around the strikes.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., criticized the Trump administration for skirting congressional approval in a Fox News interview Sunday, saying Congress "has to vote on it" if Trump wants to go to war.
Trump last week stopped short of saying he would seek consent from Congress to use military force. He also suggested that the strikes would be expanded, telling reporters that land targets were "going to be next." While he didn't specify any countries, he has called Colombia a "drug den" and said Mexico is "run by the cartels."
The presidents of Colombia and Mexico have criticized the recent military strikes.
Several of the U.S. strikes have taken place in the Caribbean Sea near Venezuela. Trump has long been critical of that country's president, Nicolás Maduro.
In defending multiple strikes since September, Hegseth has repeatedly compared drug-trafficking from Central and South America to the terrorist group Al Qaeda, saying last week that "we will treat you like we have treated Al Qaeda" by mapping out smugglers' networks and hunting them down.
