Washington DC - Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth "does not know" who the military has been killing in its repeated strikes on boats off Venezuela's coast and elsewhere, a new report alleges.

A New York Times report published this week reveals that the US military knows very few of the identities of the nearly 100 people it has killed in missile strikes targeting small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

Under the leadership of Hegseth, the Department of Defense has abandoned the use of detailed intelligence dossiers, which are intended to make sure military strikes against targets are made using strong intelligence.

Instead, Hegseth's Pentagon has allegedly repeatedly killed people whose identities are unknown. Those killed are believed to be largely low-level drug traffickers or innocent civilians.

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The NYT believes that most strikes against so-called "drug-boats" are generally based on one of two pieces of information – a person aboard the boat believed to be linked to a drug cartel, or the belief that drugs are aboard the vessel.

"Traditionally, our counternarcotics efforts have always been targeted at the head of the snake," Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes told the NYT.

"This is obviously the opposite of that. Now we're going after the tail of the snake. We're going after some, you know, poor ex-fishermen who took 300 bucks to run a load of cocaine to Trinidad."

"One would hope that you might have some qualms about killing innocent people," Himes said. "If the United States is sending the signal that life doesn't matter, that’s coming back to us, that is absolutely coming back to us."