Operation Southern Spear

Operation Southern Spear is a United States military and surveillance campaign launched in 2025 by the administration of US president Donald Trump with the declared aims of "detecting, disrupting, and degrading transnational criminal and illicit maritime networks". Some analysts say the operation is a hybridization of the war on terror and the war on drugs. Others have said that removal of Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela was an objective of the operation.

In mid-August 2025, the US began deploying military forces to the Caribbean Sea, amid heightened tensions between the US and Venezuela during the crisis in Venezuela and as the Trump administration sought to slow the flow of illicit drugs. In September, the U.S. military began conducting airstrikes on vessels the Trump administration alleges are controlled by narco-terrorists. By late November, with the Cartel of the Suns designated by the US as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization, a new phase of operations began. In December, the Trump administration declared the Maduro government a Foreign Terrorist Organization, and began boarding and seizing sanctioned crude tankers. In late December, the US made its first strike on a land target within Venezuela. On 3 January 2026, the US bombed targets in Caracas and other locations, and captured Maduro and flew him out of the country.

Later, on March 6, 2026, the Operation was expanded military in Ecuador when the United States participating in bombing Comandos de la Frontera, during the Ecuadorian conflict (2024–present).

The campaign was formally named on 13 November 2025 by Pete Hegseth, US secretary of defense, as an expansion of an operation bearing the same name announced by the United States Navy on 28 January 2025. It uses a hybrid fleet of vessels with robotics and autonomous systems to detect and combat alleged drug trafficking networks in the Western Hemisphere.