“Just Following Orders at Sea”: Are U.S. Troops Personally Liable for Strikes on Suspected Drug Boats?

The Legal Dilemma of U.S. Maritime Drug Strikes Explained

As Washington turns drug interdiction into a shooting war on the high seas, the sailors, drone operators, and pilots carrying out lethal strikes find themselves caught between a duty to obey — and a legal obligation to refuse unlawful orders.

By Dexter Dow

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Introduction: A New Kind of “War on Drugs”

Beginning in September 2025, U.S. forces launched a series of lethal strikes on small vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, described by the administration as “drug boats” moving cocaine and fentanyl toward U.S. shores. By mid-November 2025, at least 80 people had been killed across more than 20 strikes, according to Pentagon briefings and press reports.(Reuters)

Behind the scenes, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) produced a classified opinion declaring that U.S. personnel involved in these strikes are not legally liable for their actions. The memo, disclosed in reporting by The Washington Post and Reuters, argues that the operations are part of a “non-international armed conflict” against designated narcotics cartels and are lawful under the president’s constitutional authority.(Reuters)

But critics — including United Nations human rights experts, leading international law scholars, and some members of Congress — say the strikes look much less like law and much more like summary execution at sea. UN officials have called the attacks “extrajudicial executions” that violate international human rights law and the law of the sea.(UN Human Rights Office)

Lost in the high-level legal trench warfare is a very specific, very personal question for the men and women actually pushing the buttons:

When a drone operator or naval officer is told to destroy a suspected drug boat, are they personally liable if that order turns out to be unlawful? And do they have a legal duty to refuse?

This analysis looks at how maritime drug enforcement is supposed to work, what has changed with the new strike campaign, and how U.S. and international law treat the age-old defense of “just following orders.” The answer is not comforting: while the law clearly says service members must disobey “manifestly unlawful” orders, the murky legal status of these strikes means the greatest risk may fall on the very people the OLC memo claims to protect.

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From Boarding Ladders to Missiles: How Maritime Drug Interdiction Is Supposed to Work

For decades, the primary U.S. response to drug smuggling at sea has been law enforcement, not warfare.

The Coast Guard’s Law Enforcement Model

Under U.S. policy, the Coast Guard is the lead federal agency for maritime drug interdiction. A Department of Homeland Security overview describes the mission starkly: detect, monitor, and seize drugs — not vaporize suspect boats.(Department of Homeland Security)

The legal backbone is the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act (MDLEA), enacted in 1986 and codified at 46 U.S.C. Chapter 705. The MDLEA:

• Makes drug trafficking on certain vessels a federal crime, even on the high seas and even when the vessel and crew have no obvious U.S. connection.(U.S. Code)
• Permits the United States to assert jurisdiction over stateless vessels or foreign-flagged vessels where the flag state consents.(Legal Information Institute)

A typical interdiction sequence, described in Coast Guard testimony and operational manuals, looks like this: detect via aircraft or radar, hail the vessel, escalate through warnings, fire disabling shots if necessary, then send a boarding team to search, arrest, and seize contraband. Lethal force is tightly constrained and framed within a law enforcement paradigm — the ultimate goal is prosecution in court, not destruction of the suspect and evidence.(Factually)

Internationally, the UN’s drug control treaties and maritime security guidance reinforce this law-enforcement framing. The 1988 UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs encourages cooperation on boarding and seizure, not high-seas attack.(OUP Academic) The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) trains maritime police forces to interdict and investigate, emphasizing human rights and fair trials.(UNODC)

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The New Campaign: Killing at Distance

The current U.S. campaign is a sharp break from that model.

According to Pentagon statements and investigative reporting, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted more than 20 air or missile strikes on small vessels in international waters in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific between September and mid-November 2025, killing at least 80 people.(Reuters) Many of these vessels were unflagged or semi-submersible “narco-subs,” but some appear to have been fishing-style craft. Two survivors of an Oct. 16, 2025, strike were repatriated to their home countries, Colombia and Ecuador, and prosecutors in Ecuador declined to charge one of them.(Politico)

The Justice Department’s OLC memo, drafted in summer 2025, concludes that:

• The U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with certain drug cartels designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
• The president’s Article II powers and existing authorizations allow the use of lethal force against those groups’ boats on the high seas.
• U.S. personnel who carry out such strikes in good-faith reliance on this legal framework should not face criminal liability in U.S. courts.(Reuters)

The administration has echoed that framing publicly. President Trump has declared that the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with narcotics cartels, characterizing them as unlawful combatants and tying some operations to Venezuela’s government.(AP News)

International Pushback

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has taken a very different view, stating that “over 60 people have reportedly been killed” in attacks that “find no justification in international law.” His office argues that the U.S. is operating under a law enforcement paradigm at sea, where lethal force is permissible only as a last resort to protect life, not as a primary tool of interdiction.(UN Human Rights Office)

A group of UN special rapporteurs went further, calling several strikes “extrajudicial executions” that violate the right to life and the international law of the sea, and warning of a dangerous precedent for other states.(Reuters)

Legal think tanks echo this skepticism. Analysts at Chatham House and Just Security argue that drug trafficking, by itself, does not meet the threshold of “armed conflict” under the widely accepted Tadić test — which requires protracted armed violence and organized armed groups — and that invoking the law of armed conflict to justify boat strikes stretches existing law past the breaking point.(Chatham House)

So whose law matters most to the sailor on the console?

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What the Law Says About Obeying — and Disobeying — Orders

The UCMJ: Lawful vs. Unlawful Orders

At the core of U.S. military law is a simple formula:

• Service members must obey lawful orders.
• They must disobey unlawful orders.

Article 90 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) criminalizes willful disobedience of a lawful command from a superior commissioned officer. Article 92 similarly punishes failure to obey any lawful order or regulation.(U.S. Code)

That qualifier — “lawful” — is doing enormous work.

The Manual for Courts-Martial and subsequent military case law make clear that an order that requires commission of a crime or clearly violates the Constitution or the law of armed conflict is not lawful and must be refused.(Factually) A recent explainer for service members, published by a military justice firm, notes that if an order is “manifestly illegal,” the duty flips: obeying it can itself be a crime.(UCMJ Law)

Human Rights First, summarizing this doctrine, puts it bluntly: U.S. service members “are required to disobey orders that violate the law,” and the oath is to the Constitution, not to any individual commander.(Human Rights First)

Nuremberg and the Death of the “Just Following Orders” Defense

This duty isn’t just an internal Pentagon policy; it’s grounded in international law.

After World War II, the Nuremberg Tribunal rejected the argument that Nazi officials were shielded from liability because they were following Hitler’s orders. The “Nuremberg Principles,” later endorsed by the UN’s International Law Commission, codify that “the fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”(Wikipedia)

That principle is now widely accepted. Legal scholars and military law organizations point back to Nuremberg whenever the “superior orders” defense reappears — whether in debates over torture, drone strikes, or the current drug-boat operations.(The Law To Know)

Lessons from My Lai: When Soldiers, Not Commanders, Pay the Price

History also shows that the duty to disobey is not theoretical. In the wake of the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, where U.S. troops killed hundreds of unarmed civilians, only one officer — Lt. William Calley — was convicted, despite his claim that he was acting under orders.(Wikipedia)

Military law advocates still cite Calley as a cautionary tale: in practice, it is often the junior officers and enlisted personnel who end up in the dock when unlawful orders are carried out, not the architects of the policy.(Military Law Task Force)

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Law of War vs Law Enforcement: Which Rules Apply at Sea?

The crux of the legal dispute over the boat strikes — and, by extension, the liability of the personnel carrying them out — is which legal paradigm applies.

Armed Conflict Paradigm (Law of Armed Conflict / IHL)

If the U.S. truly is in an armed conflict with certain drug cartels, then the law of armed conflict (also called international humanitarian law, or IHL) would apply to the use of force against those cartels’ fighters and assets.

Under IHL:

• Members of an opposing armed group who have a continuous combat function can be targeted as combatants.
• Lethal force need not be a last resort; the standard is whether the target is a lawful military objective and whether incidental civilian harm is proportionate.(ICRC)

Some scholars have argued that, in contexts like Colombia or Mexico, cartel violence has occasionally risen to the level of a non-international armed conflict (NIAC) under the Tadić test: protracted armed violence between state forces and organized armed groups.(International Review of the Red Cross)

The OLC memo appears to lean heavily on this logic, treating certain cartels as organized armed groups and their drug-running boats as military objectives.(The Washington Post)

Law Enforcement / Human Rights Paradigm

But outside of recognized armed conflict, state use of lethal force is governed primarily by international human rights law and law enforcement standards. Those rules are much stricter.

The UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms state that law enforcement officials may use firearms only as a last resort and “only when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.” Governments are urged to protect officials who refuse unlawful orders to use force, and to treat arbitrary or abusive use of force as a crime.(UN Human Rights Office)

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and human rights bodies emphasize that, in law-enforcement settings — even during internal unrest — the test for lethal force is necessity and proportionality with respect to protecting life, not achieving mission success.(ICRC)

UN human rights officials say the U.S. boat strikes fall squarely into this law-enforcement paradigm: these are suspected criminals on the high seas, not opposing fighters in a shooting war. That’s why they label the killings “extrajudicial executions” and stress that the MDLEA and related treaties envision boarding, arrest, and trial — not preemptive destruction.(UN Human Rights Office)

Can Drug Trafficking Be an “Armed Attack”?

Even if cartels are extraordinarily violent, does their drug trafficking into the U.S. amount to an “armed attack” that justifies armed conflict or self-defense under the UN Charter?

A recent law-review analysis of proposals to bomb Mexican drug labs concludes that drug trafficking and related crimes, standing alone, do not qualify as an armed attack under current international law.(Taylor & Francis Online) Chatham House reaches a similar conclusion for strikes on drug boats at sea, arguing that attempts to shoehorn them into the self-defense or armed-conflict boxes simply don’t fit.(Chatham House)

If these critics are right, then the U.S. boat-strike policy exists on very thin legal ice — and the personnel executing it may be further out from shore than they realize.

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Are the Orders Themselves Unlawful?

For an individual service member, though, high-theory debates matter only if an order is so clearly unlawful that its illegality would be obvious to a reasonable person in their position.

Military law resources often refer to this as the “manifestly illegal” standard. Examples include orders to intentionally kill civilians, torture detainees, or falsify official documents — things any trained service member should recognize as crimes.(The Military Justice Center)

So: is “destroy that suspected drug boat” manifestly illegal?

The Case for Lawfulness (from the Operator’s Perspective)

From inside the U.S. chain of command, the answer may look like “no.”

• The president has formally declared an “armed conflict” with designated cartels and labeled them unlawful combatants.(AP News)
• The OLC — the government’s top internal legal authority — has issued a detailed memo blessing the strikes and promising immunity to those who carry them out.(Reuters)
• Military and civilian lawyers reportedly spent months reviewing the operational plans, suggesting to operators that any remaining doubts have been resolved by experts.(The Washington Post)

In other words, the system is loudly telling the drone pilot or weapons officer that these orders are lawful. Under long-standing doctrine, reliance on official legal advice, while not an absolute shield, can weigh heavily when assessing criminal liability.

The Case for Illegality

On the other hand, a different set of signals point the other way:

• UN human rights mechanisms and independent experts have explicitly condemned the strikes as violations of the right to life and the law of the sea.(UN Human Rights Office)
• International humanitarian law scholars dispute that an armed conflict with cartels exists, meaning the more restrictive law-enforcement paradigm likely applies.(International Review of the Red Cross)
• Fact-checking organizations and legal commentators highlight that the foundational U.S. drug-control treaties and the MDLEA are built around interdiction and prosecution, not summary destruction.(Factually)

From that perspective, authorizing missiles against unarmed crews who have not fired on U.S. forces looks very close to a textbook example of arbitrary deprivation of life — the very thing human rights law is designed to prevent.

Where Does the “Manifestly Illegal” Line Fall?

Here’s the uncomfortable reality: the more complex and lawyered-up an operation is, the harder it becomes for an individual service member to see an order as “manifestly” unlawful, even if outside observers think the operation itself violates international law.

Military law experts interviewed in recent commentaries on illegal orders stress that most real-world disputes are not clear-cut; legality is often decided years later in courts or tribunals. The Military Law Task Force bluntly notes that the only way to know for sure whether an order is legal “is to obey, or refuse to obey, and see what is decided after the fact by a military court, a civilian court reviewing a military decision, or a war crimes or human rights tribunal.”(Military Law Task Force)

For the operator in the moment, that’s a brutal coin flip.

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Domestic Immunity vs. International Responsibility

The OLC memo promises that U.S. troops involved in the strikes will not be criminally prosecuted in American courts. As a matter of domestic law, that probably carries real weight: federal prosecutors typically treat OLC opinions as binding within the executive branch, and Congress has so far not moved to criminalize this specific conduct.(BostonGlobe.com)

But international law is not impressed by internal memos.

Nuremberg Principle II explicitly rejects the idea that domestic law — or the lack of a domestic penalty — can erase responsibility for what international law defines as a crime.(Wikipedia) States may choose not to prosecute their own officials, but that does not prevent other states, or international bodies, from asserting jurisdiction.

In practice, this could mean:

• Foreign prosecutions under “universal jurisdiction” statutes, if crews or commanders travel to countries whose laws allow trials for serious international crimes committed abroad.
• Regional human-rights cases, particularly in the Inter-American system, which has repeatedly condemned excessive use of force and militarization of drug enforcement in the Americas.(Lieber Institute West Point)
• Potential exposure to future international tribunals, should political winds change dramatically.

Realistically, the probability of a rank-and-file sailor being hauled before a foreign court is low in the short term. But it is not zero — and the growing international record criticizing the strikes lays groundwork for future cases.

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The Human Factor: Training, Doubt, and Moral Injury

Beyond courtrooms, there is the quieter legal and moral terrain inside the mind of the operator.

Surveys of U.S. troops indicate that a large majority understand, at least in principle, that they have a duty to disobey illegal orders, grounded in their oath to the Constitution and in Article 92 of the UCMJ.(Military.com)

Yet the same training that instills that duty also emphasizes obedience and mission accomplishment. Military boot camps drill recruits to execute orders quickly and without argument; hesitating at the wrong moment can get people killed.

In situations like high-speed maritime strikes, the operator is often:

• Thousands of miles from the target, relying on intelligence they cannot independently verify.
• Operating under standing rules of engagement and specific strike authorities that they are told have been legally vetted.
• Surrounded by superiors and colleagues who treat the mission as lawful and necessary.

That’s not the environment in which most people are likely to stand up and say, “This looks like an extrajudicial execution; I refuse.”

Veterans and psychologists have warned that when the legality and morality of a mission are contested — especially after the fact — service members may suffer moral injury, a deep sense that they have violated their own ethical code. Similar patterns emerged after controversies over drone strikes against suspected militants and participation in enhanced interrogation programs.(Law Offices of David P. Sheldon)

Here, too, the people at the consoles may pay an invisible price for decisions taken far above their pay grade.

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Accountability Gaps: Who Bears Responsibility?

Command Responsibility in Theory

International criminal law embraces the doctrine of command responsibility: superiors can be held liable when they knew or should have known that their subordinates were committing crimes and failed to prevent or punish them. This doctrine has been applied to military commanders and, in some cases, civilian leaders.(Wikipedia)

Ideally, this means that if the boat-strike policy is illegal, liability would track up the chain — to the commanders issuing the orders and the civilian officials who designed the campaign.

Practice: The Path of Least Resistance

Historically, however, the system often finds its scapegoats lower down. My Lai is the canonical example: Lt. Calley was the only person convicted for a massacre planned and covered up at multiple levels.(Wikipedia) Similar patterns occurred in abuse cases at Abu Ghraib, where low-ranking guards were punished while senior officers and policymakers largely escaped criminal liability.

Critics of the boat-strike campaign worry that a future shift in political winds could produce a familiar outcome: today’s legally shielded operator becoming tomorrow’s convenient symbol of excess, while architects of the “narcoterrorist” strategy retire comfortably.

Naval commentators have also warned that a policy of “execution at sea” undermines the U.S. claim to be a rule-of-law maritime power and invites other states to adopt similar justifications for killing their own suspects at sea — with their own troops in the crosshairs of future tribunals.(USNI News)

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Policy Options: How to Protect Both the Law and the Sailor

If the U.S. insists on treating certain forms of drug trafficking as a grave national-security threat, there are still ways to reduce legal ambiguity and the burden on individual service members.

1. Re-Center the Coast Guard and Law-Enforcement Paradigm

Reaffirming that maritime drug trafficking is fundamentally a law-enforcement problem would align policy with the MDLEA, UN drug treaties, and long-standing practice. That means prioritizing detection, pursuit, disabling fire, boarding, and arrest — and reserving lethal force for situations where suspect vessels pose an imminent threat to life, such as ramming attempts or hostile fire.(Department of Homeland Security)

In that model, the operators’ orders are more clearly lawful, and the risk of manifestly illegal commands drops sharply.

2. Demand Transparent Legal Justifications

If the administration believes armed-conflict paradigms truly apply, it should publish at least an unclassified framework explaining why, grounded in widely accepted tests for armed conflict and self-defense. Independent scholars and allies could then scrutinize the reasoning.

Opaque classified memos create the worst of both worlds: they reassure operators that “lawyers approved this” while offering little chance for democratic or international correction.(The Washington Post)

3. Strengthen Training on Illegal Orders in Non-Traditional Contexts

Current training tends to focus on obvious atrocities (shooting civilians, torture). As military roles blend with law enforcement — especially in counter-drug and counter-migration missions — training should explicitly address borderline cases, including maritime interdiction, cyber operations, and remote warfare.

Materials from organizations like the Military Law Task Force and Human Rights First already attempt to translate complex legal rules into practical guidance for service members. Incorporating such content into official training could help operators better recognize when “just following orders” crosses into dangerous territory.(Military Law Task Force)

4. Protect Whistleblowers and Objectors

The UN Basic Principles urge governments not to punish officials who refuse unlawful orders to use force.(UN Human Rights Office) U.S. law could go further in shielding service members who, in good faith, decline to participate in operations they reasonably believe to be unlawful — especially when those operations sit in gray zones between war and policing.

Without credible protections, the message to operators is clear: obey now, worry about legality later. That’s a recipe for both legal risk and moral injury.

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Conclusion: The Sharp Edge of Ambiguity

On paper, the law is categorical: U.S. service members must obey lawful orders and disobey unlawful ones. Nuremberg, My Lai, and a generation of military law doctrine have tried to bury the “just following orders” defense for good.

On the water, it’s not so simple.

The campaign of lethal strikes on suspected drug boats pushes U.S. practice away from a long-standing law-enforcement model and toward a contested vision of armed conflict with criminal cartels. Domestic lawyers in Washington insist the strikes are lawful and shielded; international bodies and many experts say they violate the right to life and the law of the sea.

In between those clashing interpretations sit the drone operators, weapons officers, and sailors who actually fire the shots. They are trained to obey, told that their missions are legal, reminded that disobedience is itself a crime — and simultaneously informed, in more abstract terms, that they must refuse unlawful orders and that “following orders” will not save them if the law turns against them later.

That is not a stable equilibrium.

If maritime drug enforcement becomes a domain where legality is a matter of political fashion, the people most exposed will not be the authors of classified memos or the politicians announcing “armed conflict” at press conferences. It will be the young specialist in a dim operations room, staring at a green blip on a screen and trusting that the law has kept pace with the missile.

For their sake — and for the credibility of the rule of law at sea — the United States will eventually have to choose. Either drug interdiction is still law enforcement, with lethal force as a last resort, or it is war, with all the legal architecture and accountability that implies.

What it cannot be, indefinitely, is both at once.

Related: “Shoot the Boat”: Inside the New War on Drug Smugglers at Sea

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References:

Amnesty International. (2015). Use of force: Guidelines for implementation of the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials.(Amnesty International USA)

Chatham House. (2025). Attacks on “drug boats” are pushing the US away from the consensus on the rules of international law.(Chatham House)

Factually. (2020). What are the rules of engagement for maritime drug enforcement?(Factually)

Factually. (2025). Are military members legally required to disobey an illegal order?(Factually)

Human Rights First. (2015). “Following orders” is no defense to war crimes: The duty to disobey illegal military orders.(Human Rights First)

International Committee of the Red Cross. (2013). The use of force in armed conflicts: Interplay between the conduct of hostilities and law enforcement paradigms.(ICRC)

International Committee of the Red Cross. (2015). The use of force in law enforcement operations.(ICRC)

International Law Commission. (1950). Text of the Nuremberg Principles adopted by the International Law Commission.(United Nations Legal Affairs)

Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild. (2025). FAQ on refusing illegal orders.(Military Law Task Force)

Papastavridis, E. (2016). The illicit trafficking of drugs. In The IMLI Manual on International Maritime Law: Volume III. Oxford University Press.(OUP Academic)

Türk, V. (2025). US attacks in Caribbean and Pacific violate international human rights law [Press release]. Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.(UN Human Rights Office)

UN General Assembly. (1990). Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials.(UN Human Rights Office)

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2024). Maritime law enforcement training catalogue.(UNODC)

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (n.d.). Legal framework for drug trafficking.(UNODC)

United States Coast Guard. (2023). Counter-drug operations overview.(Department of Homeland Security)

United States Government Accountability Office. (2023). Coast Guard: Drug interdiction mission challenges (GAO-24-107785).(Government Accountability Office)

United States Code. (n.d.). 10 U.S.C. § 890 – Article 90: Willfully disobeying superior commissioned officer.(U.S. Code)

United States Code. (n.d.). 10 U.S.C. § 892 – Article 92: Failure to obey order or regulation.(U.S. Code)

United States Code. (n.d.). 46 U.S.C. Chapter 705 – Maritime Drug Law Enforcement.(U.S. Code)

U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel. (2025). [Classified opinion on legal immunity for U.S. military personnel in boat strikes], as reported in The Washington Post and Reuters.(Reuters)

U.S. Navy Institute (USNI). (2025). Drug boats: Where questions of lethality and legality meet.(USNI News)

Voluntary sources used for context and historical background include reporting from The Washington Post, Reuters, AP News, and background pieces on William Calley and the My Lai court-martial by Military.com and other reputable outlets.(Wikipedia)

Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a dated note identifying what changed and when. The corrections policy and the corrections register are public, and correction notes are never removed.