Flight-tracking data places a US defense contractor's drone at the wreck of a bombed Ecuadorian fishing boat

Flight-tracking data shows a V-BAT surveillance drone registered to the US defense contractor Shield AI hovering roughly 500 metres from the burning wreck of the Ecuadorian fishing boat La Negra Francisca within hours of the 17 March 2026 strike, according to reporting from Drop Site News, the US outlet that published the drone finding on 19 August. NASA thermal imagery corroborates an explosion at coordinates 1.5822°N, 87.6958°W, at the same moment the vessel's transponder stopped broadcasting.

The V-BAT is marketed for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. It is also capable of carrying a weapons payload, and it can switch its transponder off to avoid detection. The flight data, as Drop Site described it, shows the drone launching from a nearby boat seven hours after the strike, circling the hull, and repeatedly climbing and descending in a pattern consistent with shipboard takeoff and landing. It switched its transponder off and on during the same window. The aircraft and the flight pattern match the drone and the light descriptions surviving fishermen from La Negra Francisca gave to reporters.

The Washington Post has attributed the broader attacks to a covert CIA operation, and the New York Times has reported a patrol plane flying from a military base in El Salvador toward each of three targeted boats before each attack. The Post identified the aircraft as FENIX 701, a Cessna business jet fitted with surveillance equipment, operating out of Ilopango International Airport, a long-established CIA operations hub. The Post and the Times published their accounts in the week before the drone finding.

Three Ecuadorian fishing boats were hit in the operation. La Negra Francisca went down at 1:02pm on 17 March 2026. Don Maca was struck in March. Fiorella vanished in January 2026 with all hands and has never been found. Ecuador's coast guard had searched and cleared all three before they were struck. No drugs were found on any of them.

Thirty-six fishermen were abducted across the three attacks. The survivors were taken by gunmen in US military uniforms, hooded, handcuffed and starved for eight days aboard a US-flagged ship, then handed to El Salvador's navy hundreds of miles from home. The abduction and captivity were first reported by Drop Site in April 2026. Jordi Flores, a La Negra Francisca crewman, was left with a foot injury that has stopped him working. Erik Coello of the Don Maca has lost 70 per cent of his vision. Drop Site's reporting on the rare survivors carries their accounts.

The drone finding, first published by Drop Site and reflected in a re-report by WRP, lands six days after the Post's CIA-attribution story and on top of the Times's patrol-plane reporting. The flight-tracked presence puts a named US defense contractor inside a chain of attribution that previously stopped at "the CIA." It also breaks the public-rationale frame a covert strike would otherwise carry: vessels Ecuador had already cleared of narcotics, hit anyway, with a weapons-capable surveillance drone circling the wreck hours later.

Shield AI did not respond to Drop Site News's request for comment as of publication. Ecuador has not publicly named a contractor, base, or aircraft.