A 600 soldier battalion from Fort Drum is deploying to Latin America as the campaign against the cartels widens

The drug war the administration has been fighting from the air and the sea is getting boots on the ground.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that a battalion of about 600 soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum in New York, has begun deploying to Latin America as the Pentagon widens its campaign against drug trafficking networks. A senior American official confirmed to Fox News that the troops are being forward staged under United States Southern Command, which will decide where they are ultimately sent. Southern Command itself declined to discuss the deployment, citing operational security.

The first stop is Panama, where the battalion will train at a new jungle warfare facility. From there, the troops are expected to train alongside partner forces in Colombia and Honduras. The Times also reported they may assist American special operations personnel who are advising local militaries carrying out raids against suspected traffickers. Separately, several hundred more soldiers from the same division are expected to help staff a new Western Hemisphere command based in Miami.

The deployment sits inside a larger shift in the region. The Pentagon has moved MQ 9 Reaper drones to Colombia and Ecuador, and American commanders have been planning an expansion of strikes from boats suspected of carrying drugs to targets on land, according to the reporting. American forces have already carried out dozens of strikes across Latin America and the Caribbean in the campaign, killing more than 235 people by the count in the Fox News reporting.

Training and advising missions are how American involvement in a partner's war usually deepens: small footprint, stated limits, and a mission defined by the partner's fight. What is on the record as of October 15 is the movement itself, a battalion out of Fort Drum heading first to a jungle school in Panama, with Colombia and Honduras after it, under a command being built in Miami to run the hemisphere's drug campaign.