Analysts Warn: Cartels Have Become Terrorist Armies, Not Mere Criminal Groups

Treat them as such. Democrats are ignorantly incensed that President Trump isn’t treating the Latin American drug cartels as common criminals deserving of due process and a strictly law enforcement approach, the same tactics employed unsuccessfully by every administration before him.

Instead, Trump and his national security team are correctly prosecuting the cartels with military force. The problem is that despite the administration designating these drug cartels as narco-terrorists, the administration hasn’t properly explained or described what makes the modern cartels different from the criminal organizations that preceded them.

The 2024 cartel drone ambush, reportedly followed by an infantry-style ground attack, in a remote community in Mexico, exemplifies this new cartel military threat.

Understanding that the current Mexican and South American cartels are more akin to a terrorist army or paramilitary force than common criminals is key to understanding why Trump is right. We must treat the cartels as a military enemy, not just a drug-smuggling criminal group.

As Secretary of State Marco Rubio correctly said in an interview last month:

We cannot continue to just treat these guys as local street gangs. They have weaponry that looks like what terrorists, in some cases, armies, have.

And he is absolutely right. Since the mid-2000s, Mexican drug cartels in particular have evolved from organized criminal organizations focused primarily on drug dealing and smuggling into militarized hybrid entities focused on territorial control and myriad criminal activities.

This all began when Los Zetas, a cartel group formed by former elite Mexican army troops, brought battlefield discipline, encrypted communications, and heavy weaponry to organized crime.

That forced their rivals to do the same. And now they all employ a wide array of powerful military weapons — at times sourced from the U.S. black market — and employ tactics designed to establish territorial control and inflict extreme terror.

As Stephen Honan recently wrote for the Atlantic Council: “Cartels are no longer merely criminal syndicates; they increasingly resemble hybrid entities blending organized crime, paramilitary force, and terrorist tactics.”

Cartel arsenals have expanded from using simple standard civilian or police style firearms to military-grade hardware, often acquired through complex smuggling networks, from the United States and abroad.

Even The New York Times just noted how the Mexican cartels have become similar to small armies.

In September, a news article, “With Drones and I.E.D.s, Mexico’s Cartels Adopt Arms of Modern War,” the paper explained how, “Under pressure from the government and each other, some of Mexico’s most powerful criminal groups are amassing homemade mortars, land mines, rocket-propelled grenades and bomber drones.”

The Times reported:

…despite their disagreements about what actions to take, officials and security analysts in both countries [U.S. and Mexico] agree that cartels are amassing new levels of firepower, transforming some groups into full-fledged paramilitary forces.

Drug smugglers and cartel gunmen no longer wield just handguns or automatic rifles, officials and experts say, but also Claymore land mines, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars built from gas-tank tubes and armored trucks mounted with heavy machine guns. They are burying improvised explosive devices to kill their rivals and modifying drones bought online to make attack drones, loaded with toxic chemicals and bombs.

So how exactly are these new military cartels armed, and what tactics are they now employing?

Weapons of the Cartels

Small Arms & Rifles: The most common weapons are high-powered, military-style semi-automatic rifles like AR-15s and AK-47 variants, many of which are illegally modified to be fully automatic.

Heavy Weaponry: The cartels now frequently use Barrett M82 or M95 .50-caliber sniper rifles (anti-materiel rifles capable of piercing light armor), M2 Browning .50-caliber heavy machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

Explosives & Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs): Cartels have adopted modern warfare explosives, including homemade mortars, land mines, and vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) similar to those that plagued U.S. and allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Drones: Weaponized commercial drones, often loaded with bombs or toxic chemicals, are used for surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeted aerial attacks against rivals and government forces.

Recently, we learned that the cartels have sent their members to fight with Ukraine’s military to learn deadly, cutting-edge drone tactics in the high-intensity war against Russia. Or they recruit Colombian veterans of that conflict.

Just last month, three cartel drones rigged with explosives and targeting an anti-kidnapping unit detonated outside a prosecutor’s office in Tijuana, Mexico.

The surge in drones and IEDs used by the Mexican cartels also coincided with the arrival of other Colombian nationals, former U.S.-trained soldiers who fought narco terrorists back home, now recruited to train cartel fighters. 

Armored Vehicles: Cartels utilize heavily modified armored trucks, known as “narco-tanks,” and military-grade steel is illegally imported to build more efficient, lighter armored vehicles.

Advanced Systems: While officials often deny it, reports suggest some cartels may have access to sophisticated anti-tank missile systems like the U.S.-made Javelin, capable of downing low-flying helicopters.

Other sources believe the cartels may have man-portable anti-aircraft missiles similar to the U.S. Stinger missile, or will get them soon. The cartels also reverse-engineer some complex weapons, sometimes 3-D printing the parts to build them.

Tactics of the Cartels

Modern hybrid militarized cartel tactics blend traditional criminal activities with paramilitary strategies, focusing on territorial dominance, psychological warfare, and overwhelming force. These new cartels don’t just deal in illegal drugs; they are also involved in extortion, kidnapping, as well as sex and labor trafficking.

This is in sharp contrast to the older transactional cartels.

As Nathan P. Jones, author of “Mexico’s Illicit Drug Network and the State Reaction,“ explains, those older cartels were “more focused on the arbitrage of the drug business, the logistics of trafficking, and making a profit exclusively through those means. In short, they move drugs from point A to point B, buy and sell, and make their money that way.”

The Guadalajara Cartel, the main Mexican cartel responsible for smuggling marijuana and cocaine into the United States from 1980-1989, embodied this operational model.

That old cartel model is long gone. What we have now are:

Militarized Engagements: The recruitment of ex-military personnel (such as the former special forces who founded the Zetas cartel) has led to the adoption of sophisticated military tactics, including ambushes, establishing defensive positions, and small-unit tactics and operations like the one in 2024 noted earlier.

But the military transformation of the cartels became crystal clear as far back as 2015, when cartel gunmen in Jalisco State brought down a Mexican Army helicopter with an RPG, killing six soldiers. It was the first time a criminal group had destroyed a military aircraft in Mexico.

Extreme Violence & Intimidation: Cartels use violence strategically as a brutal form of psychological warfare and propaganda. This includes public, graphic executions (often shared online via videos or photos), torture, and massacres to instill fear in rivals, civilians, and authorities.

Territorial Control & Depopulation: Cartels fight fiercely to control strategic trafficking corridors (“plazas”). In some areas, such as Michoacán, they use attacks to depopulate communities and facilitate a complete takeover.

Corruption & Coercion: They employ their vast financial power to influence and corrupt local law enforcement and government officials through bribery and intimidation. Large sectors of the Mexican economy are interwoven with cartel finances.

Information Operations: Cartels master social media and use it to flaunt their power, recruit members, and spread propaganda.

Infrastructure Attacks: In events such as the “Culiacanazos,” cartels have launched coordinated attacks across cities, blocking highways, burning vehicles, and firing on security forces and even civilian aircraft to achieve specific objectives, such as securing a leader’s release.

Cyber Operations: Cartels are increasingly using “cybercrime as a service” to infiltrate government and commercial institutions, gather intelligence, and disrupt operations.

The upshot of all this is that the cartels’ increasing use of drones, IEDs, armored vehicles, and military-grade weaponry, and territory seizing and controlling tactics, points to modern cartels extending far beyond any traditional ideas of organized crime. And they aren’t only a Mexican problem.

We are seeing similar cartel developments in South American countries such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia.

And this is why we can no longer treat these cartels as a law enforcement problem. They must be attacked as a military threat.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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