THIS is the moment a US Coast Guard sniper fired on a narco boat, before seizing thousands of pounds of cocaine.
The shocking footage shows the drug packed vessel wading through the Pacific Ocean as a US Coast Guard helicopter approached.
Footage shows a member of the Coast Guard’s Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron lined up the shot before opening fire several times.
The boat, travelling just south of Mexico on Tuesday, was disabled by the sniper’s bullets, after the propulsion system was struck, rendering the boat useless.
In the video, the boat can be seen languishing in the waves before the Coast Guard pulled up, deploying personnel onboard.
Authorities say more than 20,000 pounds of cocaine was stowed away on the boat, amounting to more than 7.5 million lethal doses.
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This latest capture has bumped up the significant stockpile already collected by the Coast Guard, which said it had seized 100,000 pounds of the illicit substance over a few weeks in October.
That 100,000 pounds is an estimated 1,600 pounds of cocaine seized every day, a military official said.
In November, the Coast Guard reported seizing 510,000 pounds of cocaine in the 2025 financial year.
This is the largest amount of illicit substances snatched in the service’s history.
The USCG has increased its operation in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, as huge amounts of illegal substances are transported between Central and South America, according to the service.
The Coast Guard has begun collaborating with international partners to interrupt the trafficking of cocaine and other criminal drugs, beginning with the US Southern Command’s Joint Interagency Task Force-South.
The task force detects the transit of illicit substances, after which the operation shifts to the Coast Guard to undertake the legal action against alleged traffickers.
The USCG is the lead federal agency for ocean drug interception.
It has recently become a joint task force with the Department of Homeland Security after Donald Trump declared his war on drugs.
Under the Trump administration’s instructions, the Coast Guard has also been conducting air strikes on boats suspected of transporting drugs.
The Don’s decision to fire upon ships from Venezuela on September 2 has been dubbed war crimes, after it was discovered two men were aboard the vessels.
They survived the initial devastating blasts, only to be killed in a follow up bombardment.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was accused of ignoring strict international law regulations regarding follow-up strikes, after he ordered his officers to kill all the individuals on board the boats, leaving no survivors.
Spokespersons from both the White House and Hegseth’s office have refuted the allegations; however, critics have questioned whether the follow-up attacks were necessary.
After footage of the attacks were released, Senator Jack Reed – the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee – said he was “deeply disturbed”.
He followed up, saying the video “confirmed [his] worst fears about the nature of the Trump administration’s military activities”.
Jim Himes, a Democratic House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member also told media he too was deeply disturbed.
“What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things that I’ve seen in my time in public service,” he said.
“You have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, who were killed by the United States.”
The Trump administration has, however, gained the support of Senate Intel Chairman Tom Cotton – a Republican from Arkansas – who on Thursday, declared the four strikes as necessary.
“[They] were righteous strikes,” he said to reporters, after exiting the briefing following the September 2 incident.
“These are narco-terrorists who are trafficking drugs that are destined for the United States to kill thousands of Arkansans and millions of Americans.
“The first strike, the second strike, and the third and the fourth strike on September 2, were entirely lawful and no survivors were needed,” he added.
Cotton continued, saying he saw “two survivors trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs bound for the United States back over so they can stay in the fight”.
“We heard of other narco-terrorist boats in the area coming to their aid to recover their cargo and recover those narco-terrorists,” he said.
If the men were attempting to continue their drug trafficking journey to the US, as the Pentagon and Cotton say, there is a loophole in accepting that they were lawful targets for a secondary strike.
This latest footage comes after Trump stepped up his military threats on Venezuela, vowing to “start with ground attacks” and “take out those sons of bitches”.
The US president’s warning was delivered during a tense, two-and-a-half-hour Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
It marked his sharpest signal yet that Washington is preparing for land operations against Nicolas Maduro’s “narco-terrorists”.
Sitting beside his defense chief Pete Hegseth, Trump dismissed growing outrage over a September 2 mission in which US forces hit a vessel off the Venezuelan coast, then followed up with a second strike that killed the survivors.
Claiming Venezuelan traffickers “killed 200,000 Americans last year”, Trump fumed: “We’ll start with ground attacks. It’ll be much easier that way… to take out those sons of bitches.”