U.S. Southern Command said that on Sept. 2, 2026, Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, directed by SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan and working with Ecuador, interdicted a vessel operating as a floating refueling station in international waters of the Eastern Pacific in support of illicit at-sea drug trafficking. SOUTHCOM said intelligence tied the vessel to Los Choneros — an Ecuadorian group the United States has designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and Specially Designated Global Terrorist.

Marines and sailors launched from the amphibious transport dock USS San Antonio (LPD 17) “intercepted, boarded, searched, and cleared the vessel without incident,” SOUTHCOM said. Individuals removed from the boat were transferred to Ecuadorian authorities. Once the vessel was cleared, U.S. forces sank it. SOUTHCOM released video of the boarding and the sinking on X.

“This interdiction cuts off a critical node in the traffickers’ logistics chain,” SOUTHCOM said in the post, tying the action to the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition and Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere. Gen. Donovan added: “We are taking decisive action to dismantle and destroy sophisticated logistics networks used by narco-terrorists to traffic drugs and spread violence throughout the Western Hemisphere. This operation demonstrated the elite capabilities and precision of Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, which is on watch in the region to apply total systemic friction on these networks.”

The Sept. 2 boarding is the second such floating-refueling-station takedown in roughly a week. SOUTHCOM previously described an Aug. 28 interdiction and sinking of a similar at-sea refueling node, also coordinated with Ecuador. Fox News and other outlets place both operations inside the broader Trump administration campaign against alleged cartel logistics — including Operation Southern Spear and a tally of strikes in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific that AFP has associated with more than 200 deaths over about a year. That campaign’s public evidence package has not always been definitive for every vessel struck; this boarding, by SOUTHCOM’s account, ended with people transferred alive to Ecuador rather than a lethal strike alone.

In Manta, Ecuador, AFP reported that relatives of fishermen were seeking information about loved ones after losing contact. Olivia Holguin, sister of a ship’s captain, told AFP the men were fishermen trying to feed their families and that the crew had reported seeing helicopters and military boats. AFP said it could not verify whether that boat was the same vessel U.S. forces sank. Treat that thread as unresolved until Ecuador or SOUTHCOM puts names and hulls on the record.

Los Choneros, which grew out of Ecuador in the 1990s into a major cocaine-trafficking and extortion network, was designated an FTO and SDGT by the United States in September 2025, according to reporting on the designations. Ecuador’s government under President Daniel Noboa has cooperated with Washington on cartel pressure, including the Shield of the Americas / Americas Counter Cartel Coalition frame SOUTHCOM cites. A follow-on SOUTHCOM post on Sept. 3 described yet another floating-refueling-station interdiction with Ecuador — separate from the Sept. 2 San Antonio boarding covered here.

Executive use of the military against alleged narco logistics at sea is expanding faster than the open-source proof trail on some targets. For this specific node, SOUTHCOM’s claim rests on its intelligence assertion, a coordinated handover to Ecuador, and released video of a cleared vessel going down — more process than a silent missile hit, still short of a public evidentiary dump. That is the record as of publication.

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