Would be simple thing I think for the world's greatest military to capture the vessels and take the occupants alive. Besides being great PR when you reveal the drug haul on the deck of a US ship and show the rap sheet of the smugglers you could probably get a good deal of intel as well.
Guess it would depend on your definition of simple.
IIRC at least one of the targetted vessels were in Venezuelan waters.
Venezuela has F-16 and Su-30.
No matter how prepared US is, it's not necessarily a sure thing they could pull that off without death of US personnel. US personnel that had to actually go on the ground were routinely killed in Afghanistan despite absolute force and technology superiority.
The conservative argument I've seen is basically it needs to just blow them up from above because in such case US forces are not risked. While I don't agree with the mission, the strategy makes sense.
