US Attacked Boat With Plane That Looked Like Civilian Plane

Tuesday, January 13, 2026

The Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first attack on a boat that the Trump administration said was smuggling drugs, killing 11 people last September, according to officials briefed on the matter. The aircraft also carried its munitions inside the fuselage, rather than visibly under its wings, they said. The nonmilitary appearance is significant, according to legal specialists, because the administration has argued its lethal boat attacks are lawful " not murders " because President Trump "determined" the United States is in an armed conflict with drug cartels. But the laws of armed conflict prohibit combatants from feigning civilian status to fool adversaries into dropping their guard, then attacking and killing them. That is a war crime called "perfidy."

Posted by qcp at 09:14 AM | 5 COMMENTS | permalink | Comment on This Entry |

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More: Retired Maj. Gen. Steven J. Lepper, a former deputy judge advocate general for the United States Air Force, said that if the aircraft had been painted in a way that disguised its military nature and got close enough for the people on the boat to see it " tricking them into failing to realize they should take evasive action or surrender to survive " that was a war crime under armed-conflict standards.

"Shielding your identity is an element of perfidy," he said. "If the aircraft flying above is not identifiable as a combatant aircraft, it should not be engaged in combatant activity."

The aircraft swooped in low enough for the people aboard the boat to see it, according to officials who have seen or been briefed on surveillance video from the attack. The boat had turned back toward Venezuela, apparently after seeing the plane, before the first strike.

#1 | Posted by qcp at 2026-01-13 09:15 AM | Reply

Trump is the president for whom SCOTUS established its brand new doctrine of sweeping presidential immunity. If they're nice to him, Trump can pardon his goons of federal crimes. Let me put it this way: these pigs don't give a rat's patoot about war crimes. It's just part of their daily grind.

#2 | Posted by Doc_Sarvis at 2026-01-13 09:54 AM | Reply

Rules of War is why we lost in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
--Republicans

#3 | Posted by snoofy at 2026-01-13 10:19 AM | Reply

I'm glad I'm retired. The DoD is unrecognizable to me. This new wrinkle about disguised aircraft means our aircrew won't be entitled to the Geneva Conventions as POWs, but rather as spies who can be summarily executed. The USG did that to several German spies who came ashore to the US in 1942.

These Trumpf wars are designed to enrich himself and his cronies. Imminent attacks on Iran are to benefit Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel, not the hardworking American taxpayer.

The George 'Dubya' Bush lies to get us into Iraq and the enhanced interrogation program in the GWOT were awful enough to deal with, and I paid the price of speaking out against torture.

And I had to advise my colleagues that (Pashtun) Mullah Omar, Afghanistan supremo, was trying to negotiate with the US about surrendering (Arab) Usama Bin Laden to a third country or an international court for a fair trial for orchestrating the 9/11 attacks.

Our side didn't get that info on Faux News and worse, they didn't care.

White Christian Americans had one thing on their mind after 9/11, and it wasn't justice:

#4 | Posted by C0RI0LANUS at 2026-01-13 11:05 AM | Reply

"This new wrinkle about disguised aircraft means our aircrew won't be entitled to the Geneva Conventions as POWs, but rather as spies who can be summarily executed. The USG did that to several German spies who came ashore to the US in 1942."

This is the type of comment that used to get a response from the Republican Constitutional Scholars.

Now they're just Might Makes Right scholars.

#5 | Posted by snoofy at 2026-01-13 11:29 AM | Reply