According to officials who spoke to The New York Times, the Pentagon used a secret military aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first attack last September on a ship that the Trump administration claimed was involved in drug trafficking, resulting in 11 deaths. The aircraft concealed weapons inside its fuselage, rather than attaching them under the wings as is typically done. Legal experts pointed out that the fact that a military aircraft was painted to look non-military is significant because the Trump administration argued that such lethal strikes on ships were legal acts of war, not murder, claiming that President Trump had "determined" that the U.S. was in an armed conflict with drug cartels. However, international humanitarian law explicitly prohibits combatants from disguising themselves as civilians to lull the enemy into a false sense of security before launching attacks and committing killings. Such actions constitute a war crime known as "perfidy." Since then, the U.S. military has used clearly military-looking aircraft for strikes on ships, including the MQ-9 "Reaper" drone, but it remains unclear whether these planes fly low enough to be visible to the targets.
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Original article: toutiao.com/article/1854174693764105/
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