US Strike on Drug Boat Sparks Legal Debate Over Law of War and Military Conduct

The Pentagon’s manual on the law of war doesn’t list every possible illegal order, but on some points, it’s explicit.

“Orders to fire upon the shipwrecked,” it says, “would be clearly illegal.”

The 1,200-page manual repeatedly stresses that a combatant who is unable to continue fighting is entitled to fundamental protections. It uses shipwreck survivors as a key example — which is why a September 2 counter-narcotics strike in the Caribbean is drawing intense scrutiny.

During the mission, which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said he watched live, the US military struck a suspected drug-smuggling vessel twice. The first strike appeared to kill nine people on the vessel; then the US military launched a second strike on the stricken boat that killed the two remaining survivors, The Washington Post reported last week, citing seven people with knowledge of the strike.

Hegseth called the Post report, which said the secretary had ordered a military leader to kill everyone onboard, “fake news.”

“Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both US and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict — and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command,” Hegseth said Friday.

The White House attributed the decision to conduct a second strike on the stricken vessel, executed “to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” to Adm. Frank Bradley, who now oversees Special Operations Command, instead of Hegseth.

Bradley has been summoned to a closed-door briefing with Congress on Thursday.

His oversight of the strike mission marks a departure from normal military operations, typically overseen by a geographic “combatant commander.” In this case, that would be the head of Southern Command, Adm. Alvin Holsey, whose retirement Hegseth unexpectedly announced last month; the admiral had been on the job for a year.

The Trump administration has said that the actions taken were legal. Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said Tuesday that “Bradley made the right call.”

When asked by Business Insider for comment on the follow-up strike, public affairs officials referred Business Insider to Hegseth’s “X” post voicing support for Bradley.

President Donald Trump has distanced himself from the strike, saying he “wouldn’t have wanted” a second strike, while also defending Hegseth, whom the White House said authorized Bradley to strike suspected drug-smugglers. “I’m going to find out about it, but Pete said he did not order the death of those two men,” Trump said.

Legal experts say that if survivors were targeted after their boat was destroyed, it would represent a clear violation of long-standing US military law governing the treatment of wounded, incapacitated, or shipwrecked combatants.

Killing an enemy combatant or, in this case, a suspected drug trafficker who has been shipwrecked is a “patent violation” of military law that would be obvious to everyone in the chain of command, said Dan Maurer, a retired Army judge advocate general who now teaches at Ohio Northern University’s law school.

“No one who is at all trained on the law of war would think that that’s OK,” Maurer told Business Insider on a phone call. “Whether they’re wounded or sick or a POW or shipwrecked at sea, unless they’re shooting at you, they are not a threat, and they cannot be attacked.”

“There’s actually an affirmative duty to pick them up, to rescue them, so they don’t drown,” he said.

The law of war manual says one of its core purposes is to protect people from unnecessary suffering, including the wounded, the sick, and the shipwrecked. The manual is based on international law, including the Geneva Conventions, which the US helped draft after World War II, Maurer said. Under those rules, combatants who cannot fight must be treated humanely, and in the case of those surviving at sea, rescued.

A person engaged in a suspected criminal act, but who is not an enemy fighter involved in war, is considered to be a “noncombatant” — force against such civilians is usually only authorized when they present an imminent risk to US forces.

Normally, maritime drug interdiction missions are conducted by the Coast Guard with occasional Navy support. While crews may use force in such operations, once a vessel has effectively been disabled and no longer presents a threat to personnel, Coast Guard crews shift to either rescue or detainment.

The Pentagon has described boat operators suspected of drug-smuggling as “narco-terrorists.” In January, the White House designated drug cartels and “other organizations” as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, unlocking additional military authorities.

Congress has not approved authorization for the use of military force for these operations. The legality of strikes on suspected smugglers is in question, with the latest reporting on the killing of survivors raising fresh concerns.

The US military has carried out dozens of strikes on suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific since September, killing over 80 people. Two suspected drug-traffickers survived a separate strike in October. They were picked up by American forces and returned to their home countries.