US Coast Guard Seizes 20K Pounds of Cocaine

Operation Pacific Viper launched in August and is a combined initiative between the Coast Guard and Navy that seeks to counter the flow of illegal drugs to the US in alignment with President Donald Trump’s broader effort to crack down on drug cartels in Latin America.

As of October, the Coast Guard reported it had snatched 100,000 pounds of cocaine in the eastern Pacific Ocean under Operation Pacific Viper.

That translates to roughly 1,600 pounds of cocaine nabbed daily, according to the service.

The Coast Guard’s Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron snipers are used in missions to disable vessels carrying illicit drugs by targeting and shooting at their engines with rifles to cripple them.

Disabling potential drug vessels paves the way for other Coast Guard assets to board and capture drugs stowed away on the boats.

Go-fast vessels are common vessels employed to ferry drugs in the Caribbean.

The Coast Guard reported in November it had seized almost 510,000 pounds of cocaine in fiscal year 2025, the largest amount of the drug snatched in the service’s history.

The amount the service seized translates to 193 million potentially lethal doses, enough to jeopardize more than half of the US population, according to the Coast Guard.

Additionally, it amounts to more than three times the service’s annual average, which comes out to roughly 167,000 pounds of cocaine each year.

The Trump administration has adopted a hard-line approach to dealing with drugs coming into the United States and designated drug cartel groups like Tren de Aragua, Sinaloa and others as foreign terrorist organizations in February.

Separate from Operation Pacific Viper, the Trump administration also has conducted at least 22 strikes against alleged drug vessels in Latin American waters since September.