The U.S. military is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America, in the latest escalation and buildup of military forces in the region.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America, in the latest escalation and buildup of military forces in the region, the Pentagon announced Friday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R.
Ford and its strike group to deploy to U.S. Southern Command to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a social media post. The USS Ford is currently deployed to the Mediterranean Sea along with three destroyers. It would likely take several days for the ships to make the journey to South America. Deploying an aircraft carrier is a major escalation of military power in a region that has already seen an unusually , leaving six people dead and bringing the death count for the strikes that began in early September to at least 43 people.The pace of the strikes has quickened in recent days from one every few weeks when they first began to three this week, killing a total of at least 43 people since September. were carried out in the eastern Pacific Ocean, expanding the area where the military has launched attacks and shifting to where much of the cocaine from the world’s largest producers is smuggled. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says another U.S. strike in the Caribbean targeted an alleged drug-running boat operated by the Tren de Aragua gang, killing six people.In a 20-second black and white video of the strike posted to social media, a small boat can be seen apparently sitting motionless on the water when a long thin projectile descends, triggering an explosion. The video ends before the blast dies down enough for the remains of the boat to be seen again. Hegseth said the strike happened in international waters and boasted that it was the first one conducted at night. “If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat Al-Qaeda,” Hegseth said in the post. “Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down, and kill you.”The strike drew parallels to the first announced by the U.S. last month by focusing on Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has While not mentioning the origin of the latest boat, the Republican administration says at least four of the boats it has hit have come from Venezuela.The Trump administration maintains that it’s combating drug trafficking into the United States, but Maduro argues that the operations are the latest effort to force him out of office. Maduro on Thursday praised security forces and a civilian militia for defense exercises along some 2,000 kilometers of coastline to prepare for the possibility of a U.S. attack. In the span of six hours, “100% of all the country’s coastline was covered in real time, with all the equipment and heavy weapons to defend all of Venezuela’s coasts if necessary,” Maduro said during a government event shown on state television. The U.S. military’s presence is less about drugs than sending a message to countries in the region to align with U.S. interests, according to Elizabeth Dickinson, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for the Andes region. “An expression that I’m hearing a lot is ‘Drugs are the excuse.’ And everyone knows that,” Dickinson said. “And I think that message is very clear in regional capitals. So the messaging here is that the U.S. is intent on pursuing specific objectives. And it will use military force against leaders and countries that don’t fall in line.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a roundtable on criminal cartels with President Donald Trump in the State Dining Room of the White House, Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025, in Washington.a direct comparison between the war on terrorism that the U.S. declared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Trump administration’s crackdown on drug traffickers. and said the U.S. was in an “armed conflict” with them, relying on the same legal authority used by the Bush administration after 9/11. When reporters asked Trump on Thursday whether he would request Congress issue a declaration of war against the cartels, he said that wasn’t the plan. “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We’re going to kill them, you know? They’re going to be like, dead,” Trump said during a roundtable at the White House with homeland security officials. Lawmakers from both major political parties have expressed concerns about Trump ordering the military actions without receiving authorization from Congress or providing many details. Democrats have insisted the strikes violate international law. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this before,” said Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., who previously worked in the Pentagon and the State Department, including as an adviser in Afghanistan. “We have no idea how far this is going, how this could potentially bring in, you know, is it going to be boots on the ground? Is it going to be escalatory in a way where we could see us get bogged down for a long time?” he said. But Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, who has long been involved in foreign affairs in the hemisphere, said of Trump’s approach: “It’s about time.” While Trump is a president who “obviously hates war,” he also is not afraid to use the U.S. military in targeted operations, Diaz-Balart said.Associated Press writers Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, and Ben Finley and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.Walmart’s Thanksgiving meal to serve 10 people for less than $40Pilot and his 2 daughters found dead after plane crash in Montana, officials sayHigh school senior shot, killed at park where students were taking photos for homecoming dance, police say
Pete Hegseth Caribbean Strike Us Strike Tren De Argua Gang Venezuelen Presient Nicolas Maduro
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