As the world gets ready to usher in a new year, the US military campaign against Venezuela has reached another grim milestone. American forces carried out their latest airstrike on a vessel accused of drug trafficking in Latin American waters on Monday.

The operation announced by US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) represents the 30th strike since the campaign began on September 2.

US Navy battle group representation image

The official US announcement indicated the boat was struck in the eastern Pacific Ocean - so the 'other side' opposite the Caribbean, which is certainly not the first in this area.

Officials claimed the strike resulted in the deaths of two individuals labeled as "narco-terrorists" - which has been used of the Trump administration to defend lethal actions at sea carried out without judicial proceedings, or so much as a warning.

Analysts have tallied that the number people killed by US military actions at sea connected to the Venezuela campaign has risen to 107 with this latest strike.

Meanwhile the NY Times has begun documenting the "Grim Evidence of Trump's Airstrikes" which has "Washed Ashore a Colombian Peninsula":

A thunderous boom rang out through the windless late-afternoon air. Seconds later, smoke began rising out of the sea as if the horizon were on fire.

Watching from the shore on Nov. 6, Erika Palacio Fernández whipped out her phone, she said, unwittingly recording the only verified and independent video known to date of the aftermath of an airstrike in the Trump administration’s campaign against what it calls “narco-terrorists.”

Two days later, on that same shore, a scorched 30-foot-long boat itself would wash up. Then, two mangled bodies. Then charred jerrycans, life jackets and dozens of packets that were observed by The New York Times and were similar to others that have been found after anti-narcotics operations in the region. Most packets were empty, though traces of a substance that looked and smelled like marijuana were found in the lining of a few.

A $30 million Reaper drone launched from a $1 billion navy frigate... all to take out a little wooden boat lined with marijuana packets?

...And backed by an unprecedented US forces build-up in these waters which is costing the American taxpayers some $18 million per day according to various rough estimates. Some sources assert much higher figures per day and per week, and that the cost will soar the longer the deployments go on...

JUST IN🇺🇲🇻🇪🔥 US now deployed a total of 16,000 troops to the Caribbean sea or in #VENEZUELA's airspace costing US taxpayers $40 million per day.

🚨 US' war against VENEZUELA may cost $100b per week and it will be goes another 10 years. pic.twitter.com/Ya2VumdT35

— RKM (@rkmtimes) November 1, 2025

This underscores why many people within Trump's own MAGA base have been against this whole operation and military build-up in the Caribbean which seems set on pursuing regime change against Maduro.

There's also the fact that so long as the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier group is patrolling waters off Venezuela and is busy "facing down" what amounts to a third world army lacking in adequate arms and equipment, this one of just 11 operational supercarriers is absent from other parts of the world it might actually be needed in America's defense.

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