United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has formally announced the launch of a US military operation to target so-called “narco-terrorists” as Washington’s large-scale build-up of troops, warships and fighter jets continues in Latin America.

“Today, I’m announcing Operation SOUTHERN SPEAR. Led by Joint Task Force Southern Spear and @SOUTHCOM, this mission defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people,” Hegseth said in a post on X.

“The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood – and we will protect it,” he said.

SOUTHCOM is the acronym for US Southern Command, whose area of responsibility covers 31 countries through South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

In a post on social media, SOUTHCOM said US Marines were conducting artillery training onboard the USS Iwo Jima – an amphibious assault ship – in the Caribbean in support of US President Donald Trump’s “priorities to disrupt illicit drug trafficking and protect the homeland”.

Hegseth’s announcement late on Thursday followed a report that the US military had carried out its 20th attack on vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing four people earlier this week.

US broadcaster CNN quoted an unnamed US Defense Department official who said there were “no survivors” from a strike on a suspect drug smuggling vessel, which took place on Monday.

The attack is the latest reported targeting of people travelling in boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. The US claims it is targeting drug smuggling, but has provided neither evidence nor legal justification for launching lethal attacks that have killed some 80 people so far.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio reacted on Wednesday to criticism of the US attacks by its G-7 allies, saying that Europeans will not dictate how Washington chooses to defend US national security.

Largest US military build-up in Latin America region in generations

The naming of Operation Southern Spear comes as the USS Gerald R Ford, the most advanced US aircraft carrier, is expected to arrive off the coast of Venezuela within days, which has been described as an extraordinary show of US military power not seen in South America in generations.

The arrival of the aircraft carrier adds to the already significant build-up of US troops, naval forces and air power, purportedly as part of Trump’s targeting of Latin American drug trafficking gangs but widely seen as directed at the removal of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.

Speaking on Venezuelan state television on Wednesday, President Maduro accused the US of creating false narratives to justify its attacks on vessels in regional waters and threatening his country.

“Since they cannot say that we have hidden biological or chemical weapons, they invent a bizarre narrative,” said Maduro, who Washington has accused of drug trafficking.

The country’s Ministry of Defence said earlier this week that almost 200,000 troops have been mobilised for a two-day exercise to improve Venezuela’s readiness to respond to the “imperialist threat” posed by the growing US military presence in the region.

Venezuela Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said late Tuesday that US military deployment in the Caribbean was a “vulgar attack against the sovereignty and peace” not only of Venezuela, but of the entire region.

Elizabeth Dickinson, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for the Andes region, told The Associated Press news agency that “there’s nothing that an aircraft carrier brings that is useful for combating the drug trade” in the region.

“I think it’s clearly a message that is much more geared towards pressuring Caracas,” Dickinson said.