The military has increased the number of secret fixed-wing attack aircraft and armed MQ-9 Reaper drones, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. military has ramped up attacks against boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean this month, flying more attack aircraft than ever before in its campaign to kill people the Trump administration accuses of smuggling drugs at sea, according to a U.S. military official and a person briefed on the strikes.
The latest attack on Sunday, which the Pentagon said killed three people in the eastern Pacific, was the seventh this month and 54th overall since the campaign started in September. The strikes have accelerated particularly in the past two weeks, and Sunday’s attack raised the death toll to at least 185.
In the past few weeks, the military has without public notice increased the number of secret fixed-wing attack aircraft and armed MQ-9 Reaper drones operating from bases in El Salvador and Puerto Rico, allowing the military to accelerate the strikes, the two people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discussion operational matters.
The precise number and type of aircraft involved remain classified — as does so much of the boat strike campaign — and the two people declined to quantify the increase in aircraft other than to say there were now sufficient planes and drones based in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific without having to move aircraft between the two regions.
Before the increase in aircraft, a suspected drug boat might have had a 50 percent chance of evading the military, the military official said. Now that is down to about 25 percent, said the official, who declined to describe how the military determines which boats to sink and which to allow the Coast Guard to board and seize — as it has done for decades with drug traffickers.
The descriptions pointed to a military campaign that has grown larger and more lethal, even as it has receded from public consciousness, overshadowed by President Trump’s war in Iran. And they deepened questions about a campaign that many legal experts have said has been a series of illegal, extrajudicial killings.