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Such an action is against international laws of armed conflict and contravenes the policies of the US military.

But Republican senator from Arkansas Tom Cotton said the footage showed the two men trying to flip the boat back around and “remain in the battle”.

“I saw two survivors trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs bound for the United States back over so they could stay in the fight,” he said.

“I didn’t see anything disturbing about it.”

Cotton confirmed there were four strikes against the boat in total, killing 11 people on board. He said Bradley’s team did exactly what the country expected of them.

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“The first strike, the second strike, and the third and the fourth strike on September 2 were entirely lawful and needful,” he said.

“Admiral Bradley was very clear that he was given no order to ‘give no quarter’ or to ‘kill them all’. There was no vocal order either.”

Cotton said that in subsequent boat strikes, survivors who were actually shipwrecked and distressed, and not attempting to continue their mission, were “treated as they should be” and picked up by the US military.

“Our military always obeys the laws of war,” he said.

Democratic senator Mark Warner of Virginia, who was also briefed on the classified material, appeared to share his Democratic colleague’s version of events.

“That video was very disturbing, and I think Congress needs to see it,” he said, adding that the legal opinion underlying the strikes should be made public.

“We all know that our country’s record of interventions in the Caribbean, Central America and South America over the past 100-plus years hasn’t been a perfect record,” Warner said.

On Friday (AEDT), the US Southern Command announced it had conducted another strike against a small boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean – at the direction of Hegesth – following a pause of almost three weeks.

It is the 22nd strike the US military has carried out against boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean that the Trump administration claimed were trafficking drugs.

There were four casualties in the latest strike, according to the social media post, bringing the death toll of the campaign to at least 87 people.

In a video that accompanied the announcement, a small boat can be seen moving across the water before it is suddenly consumed by a large explosion. The video then zooms out to show the boat covered in flames and billowing smoke.

Following Cotton’s comments, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the Post must retract its story alleging Hegseth issued an order to kill everyone on the boat.

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“It’s an insult to the American People & to everyone who wears the uniform of our country,” he wrote on X.

The Post has not retracted the story. “The Washington Post is proud of its accurate, rigorous journalism,” a spokesperson for the newspaper has previously said.

The developments came as the inspector general for the Department of Defence – or Department of War as it is now known – released a report that found Hegseth breached department rules by sending sensitive, nonpublic operational information to a Signal group chat this year.

The finding related to operational details about imminent air strikes against Houthi rebel targets in Yemen. Unbeknownst to Hegseth, the group chat created by then national security adviser Michael Waltz included a prominent journalist, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.

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Hegseth’s use of his personal mobile phone to conduct official business and send sensitive information risked “potential compromise” and endangered US military personnel, the report found.

“The secretary’s actions created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed US mission objectives and potential harm US pilots,” it said.

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