This “operational legal review” is first in a series of essays examining the legal basis for current or potential U.S. military operations. This is not an official legal review; however, the format and analysis are representative of the legal advice that judge advocates (uniformed lawyers) provide military commanders when advising on the legality of specific uses of military forces. The content of this review is not based on any actual legal review or on any classified information; all facts are drawn from publicly available sources or are (stated) assumptions of the author. The law applied to those examined facts is real. As former judge advocates, the authors will draft these documents to illustrate the kind of advice they would have given their commanders in each situation. The Former JAG Working Group offers it in the hope that everyone who reads it will ask whether current or future uses of the United States military are supported by comparable legal analyses and, if not, why not.
This “operational legal review” depicts what a staff judge advocate’s advice would and should have been prior to the first reported strike on an alleged narcotrafficker “go-fast” vessel on September 2, 2025, killing eleven purported members of Tren de Aragua. In the subsequent two months, similar drone-executed air strikes were repeated at least twenty-one times, killing at least 83, in both the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean. Other than imagining that these strikes lay in the future, all other background facts on which the review relies are true. We are aware that the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) has reportedly issued a lengthy opinion contending that the campaign we are calling “OPERATION RECIPROCITY,” including the sinking of alleged drug boats and killing of persons on those boats, is legal. That OLC opinion has not been made public.
Former JAG Working Group, prepared by Dan Maurer, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army (ret.), Associate Professor, Ohio Northern University Pettit College of Law
