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The plane used by the U.S. mil­i­tary to strike a boat ac­cused of smug­gling drugs off the coast of Venezuela last fall was paint­ed to look like a civil­ian air­craft, a move that ap­pears to be at odds with the Pen­ta­gon’s man­u­al on the laws of war.

The plane, part of a se­cret U.S. fleet used in sur­veil­lance op­er­a­tions, al­so was car­ry­ing mu­ni­tions in the fuse­lage, rather than be­neath the air­craft, rais­ing ques­tions about the ex­tent to which the op­er­a­tion was dis­guised in ways that run con­trary to mil­i­tary pro­to­col.

De­tails of the plane’s ap­pear­ance, first re­port­ed Mon­day by The New York Times, were con­firmed by two peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the sen­si­tive mat­ter.