US won't say how it knows drug-boat strikes are working

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(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump's administration says maritime strikes cut drug trafficking by up to 98%, but Southern Command won't release the internal metrics it uses to evaluate the operation's effectiveness, citing security reasons.

The Department of War has killed 221 people in 66 strikes since September, a Southern Command official said. The government has obligated at least $820.9 million to Operation Southern Spear through June 30, according to the most recent report by the Department of War's lead inspector general. That figure reflects only what Southern Command has obligated, not the campaign's full cost.

The Department of War does not publicly release estimates for the cost of individual strikes or the operation as a whole, a Southern Command spokesperson told The Center Square. The spokesperson also said the total won't be known until the operation ends.

Outside estimates run higher. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated in January that the operation was costing about $31 million a day, plus $2.8 million a day in unbudgeted expenses.

Elaine McCusker, a former Pentagon comptroller now at the American Enterprise Institute, estimated about $3 billion through late July. Her figure covers more than the boat strikes; she said it also includes Operation Absolute Resolve, the January mission that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The Department of War's lead inspector general reported that U.S. Southern Command "could not publicly release its measures of effectiveness for assessing the conduct of OSS." The command's mission statement is classified, and it told the inspector general it could not provide a public accounting of the strikes.

"U.S. Southern Command uses internal metrics to assess Operation Southern Spear, but specific details are not released for security reasons," a Southern Command spokesperson told The Center Square.

In March, Gen. Francis Donovan, the head of U.S. Southern Command, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., pressed him on what evidence showed the campaign was degrading cartel operations rather than simply destroying low-level assets and boats, killing people and displacing trafficking routes.

Donovan said he could not provide measures of effectiveness of Operation Southern Spear but pointed to changes in traffickers' patterns.

"The boat strikes aren't the answer," Donovan said. "What we're looking for right now is really a counter cartel campaign process that puts total systemic friction across this network."

He described trafficking as running along four or five land and sea routes, from production to delivery, and said the goal was to disrupt the network across its entire supply chain. Kinetic strikes, Donovan said, "will be one of the many tools, and probably not the most effective tool."

Kelly's office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Trump has repeatedly said the strikes cut maritime trafficking by up to 98%. He's also said the strikes "brought nearly all smuggling activity to a halt" and that each strike saves "25,000 lives."

"Any suggestion that these efforts have not been effective are laughable," White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said.

She said the strikes have eliminated traffickers and deterred others from attempting the same routes.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, praised the operation at the March hearing. A Senate Armed Services Committee spokesman did not provide comment by deadline.

Andrés Martínez-Fernández, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation who researches transnational organized crime, said the strikes have been effective in ways critics overlook. They have shut down a key Caribbean smuggling corridor, he said, and signaled to regional governments that Washington is serious about confronting drug cartels.

Martínez-Fernández said traffickers have adapted, shifting to land routes and other methods, and that the maritime strikes were only one front in a larger fight.

The Department of War's lead inspector general reported a similar pattern, citing experts who said cartels have moved cocaine into container ships and onto land routes through Central America while absorbing the loss of the occasional boat.

The U.S.-Mexico border is "the center of gravity" for drug trafficking, not the sea, Martínez-Fernández told The Center Square. The maritime strikes primarily target cocaine. Federal drug agencies say fentanyl enters the United States mainly across the southwest land border.

The administration also credits the strikes with saving lives, pointing to falling overdose deaths. But the White House's own drug-control strategy says the downward trend in overdose deaths "began in late 2023," nearly two years before the first strike. The White House strategy also sets performance targets for dozens of drug-control measures, from Coast Guard cocaine seizures to border arrests. None tracks the military strikes specifically.

The absence of a public yardstick extends across the government. The Government Accountability Office found in 2024 that the Department of War "has not assessed the agency-wide effectiveness of its counternarcotics" activities and had not identified measurable outcomes for its goals, recommendations the department still had not implemented as of this year.

"It is unclear how DOD can determine the effectiveness of its counternarcotics" work without those measures, Chelsa Kenney, a GAO director, told The Center Square.

If the strikes were significantly choking off supply, one potential effect would be higher cocaine prices and lower purity in the U.S. market. The Office of National Drug Control Policy did not respond to questions about whether it monitors the price, purity or availability of cocaine in the United States.

McCusker, the former Pentagon comptroller, said the operation's cost "is not that high" and called it core to Southern Command's mission. But she said such assessments often measure what is easy to track "rather than what is achieved," and that this "seems to be part of the challenge with Southern Spear, at least publicly."

Kenney said the Government Accountability Office has not been asked to review Operation Southern Spear.