The Pentagon used a secret aircraft deliberately painted to resemble a civilian plane in its first lethal strike on a boat that the Trump administration alleged was smuggling drugs, killing 11 people in September, according to officials briefed on the operation. The aircraft also carried its munitions inside the fuselage, rather than mounted visibly beneath its wings—further concealing its military character.
The nonmilitary appearance of the aircraft is legally significant. The Trump administration has repeatedly argued that its boat strikes are lawful acts of war, not extrajudicial killings, because President Donald Trump personally determined that the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with drug cartels. However, experts say the method used in this strike may itself constitute a war crime, regardless of the administration’s broader legal theory.
Perfidy concerns raise war crimes implications
Under the laws of armed conflict, combatants are prohibited from feigning civilian status to deceive adversaries into lowering their guard before launching an attack—a violation known as perfidy.
Retired Maj. Gen. Steven J. Lepper, a former deputy judge advocate general of the U.S. Air Force, said that if the aircraft was painted in a way that disguised its military nature and approached close enough to be seen by those on the boat—causing them to fail to take evasive action or surrender—then the strike would qualify as a war crime under armed-conflict standards.
“Shielding your identity is an element of perfidy,”
Lepper said.
“If the aircraft flying above is not identifiable as a combatant aircraft, it should not be engaged in combatant activity.”
Officials familiar with surveillance footage said the aircraft flew low enough for the people aboard the boat to see it. After noticing the plane, the vessel reportedly turned back toward Venezuela before the first strike was carried out.
Survivors, follow-up strike, and shipwreck protections
Two people survived the initial missile strike and later appeared to wave at the aircraft while clinging to an overturned section of the boat’s hull, according to officials briefed on the video. The military then launched a follow-up strike, killing the two survivors and sinking the remaining wreckage.
It remains unclear whether the survivors understood that the explosion on their vessel had been caused by a missile attack. The follow-up strike has drawn particular scrutiny because the laws of war prohibit targeting shipwrecked individuals, a protection that applies regardless of the legal status of the initial strike.
Since that September attack, the military has shifted to using clearly identifiable military aircraft, including MQ-9 Reaper drones, for subsequent boat strikes. It is unclear whether those aircraft flew low enough to be seen.
In an October attack, two survivors swam away from the wreckage, avoided a follow-up strike, were rescued by U.S. forces, and were returned to their home countries, Colombia and Ecuador.
Military manuals warn against disguising combatants
U.S. military manuals explicitly address perfidy, defining it as conduct in which a combatant feigns civilian status so that an adversary “neglects to take precautions which are otherwise necessary.”
A U.S. Navy handbook further states that lawful naval combat must be conducted
“within the bounds of military honor, particularly without resort to perfidy,”
and emphasizes that commanders have a duty to distinguish military forces from civilians.
Despite these clear standards, questions about perfidy have surfaced only in classified, closed-door briefings to Congress, according to people familiar with the discussions. The issue has not been publicly debated because the aircraft involved remains classified. Public attention has instead focused largely on the legality of the follow-up strike against survivors.
Pentagon and White House deflect legal scrutiny
The U.S. Special Operations Command, whose commander Adm. Frank M. Bradley oversaw the Sept. 2 operation, declined to comment on the nature of the aircraft used. The Pentagon insisted that all systems used complied with legal standards. In a statement to The New York Times, press secretary Kingsley Wilson said:
“The U.S. military utilizes a wide array of standard and nonstandard aircraft depending on mission requirements… [and] ensure[s] compliance with domestic law, department policies and regulations, and applicable international standards, including the law of armed conflict.”
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly issued a separate statement that did not directly address perfidy concerns, instead asserting that the strike targeted “narcotics trafficking and violent cartel activities” at President Trump’s direction and was “fully consistent with the law of armed conflict.”
Aircraft identity remains hidden, civilian appearance confirmed
Officials declined to identify the aircraft but confirmed it was not painted in standard military gray and lacked military markings. In early September, amateur plane-spotters posted photographs on Reddit of what appeared to be a modified Boeing 737, painted white with a blue stripe and no visible military insignia, at St. Croix airport in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Three people familiar with the matter said the aircraft’s transponder broadcast a military tail number, meaning it “squawked” its identity via radio signal. However, multiple law-of-war experts said that this would not cure a perfidy violation, as the people on the boat likely lacked equipment to detect the signal.
Legal experts reject transponder defense
Among those rejecting the transponder argument was Todd Huntley, a retired Navy captain and former judge advocate who served with Joint Special Operations Command and led the Navy’s national security law division. Huntley said such an aircraft could be lawful in other contexts—such as a hostage rescue, where internal munitions might be used defensively—but not for launching offensive attacks while appearing civilian.
Legal oversight weakened as strikes expanded
Planning for the boat-strike campaign was closely held, excluding many military lawyers and operational experts typically involved in such decisions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also sought to weaken the role of military lawyers as an internal check, including by firing the top service JAGs in February.
The U.S. military operates several aircraft built on civilian airframes, including modified Boeing 737s and Cessna turboprops, capable of firing munitions from internal bays. While most are painted gray and clearly marked, military and aviation websites show that some are painted white with minimal markings.
Civilian targeting and disputed legal framework
The U.S. military has killed at least 123 people in 35 boat attacks, including the Sept. 2 strike.
A broad range of legal specialists have said the orders issued by Trump and Hegseth to attack the boats are illegal and that the killings amount to murders, because international law prohibits targeting civilians who pose no imminent threat—even if they are suspected criminals.
The administration argues the victims are “combatants” because Trump designated a secret list of 24 criminal gangs and drug cartels as terrorist entities, declaring a noninternational armed conflict between the United States and those groups. That claim is widely disputed, but it has sharpened scrutiny of how individual strikes may have violated the laws of war.
Perfidy precedent raises deeper legal risks
Geoffrey Corn, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former senior law-of-war adviser, said he does not believe the Sept. 2 strike occurred within an armed conflict at all. Now a law professor at Texas Tech University, Corn noted that the United States nonetheless treats perfidy as a crime even in noninternational armed conflicts.
He pointed to the USS Cole bombing case, in which the U.S. charged a Guantánamo detainee with perfidy after militants approached the warship in a small boat while appearing friendly.
Corn said the decisive issue is whether the disguised aircraft was used to exploit apparent civilian status for tactical advantage.
“The critical question is whether there is a credible alternative reason for using an unmarked aircraft to conduct the attack other than exploiting apparent civilian status to gain some tactical advantage,”
he said.
If the answer is no, the strike raises the possibility that the United States itself violated the same war crime standards it has long enforced against others.
