Pentagon Orders Carrier Strike Group To Join SOUTHCOM Operations Near Venezuela

This post was republished with permission from Zero Hedge

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has on Friday ordered the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the US Southern Command area of responsibility, joining what is already an unprecedented US military build-up in the southern Caribbean off Venezuela. 

And so after nine attacks on alleged narco-smuggling boats, it looks as if the strikes on cartels will only intensify, also after President Trump suggested that “land” operations could commence against the Maduro government.

“The enhanced U.S. force presence in the USSOUTHCOM AOR will bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere,” the Pentagon says.

“These forces will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle TCOs,” the statement adds.

Below is the list of assets which will join at least eight warships already deployed to the waters, led by the SS Gerald R. Ford:

• Arleigh Burke-Class Guided-Missile Destroyers
  
  
• USS Mahan (DDG-72)
  
  
• USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG-81)
  
  
• USS Bainbridge (DDG-96)

These are being redirected from the Mediterranean Sea to the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) Area-of-Responsibility near Venezuela.

Already the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and several other air and naval assets are currently operating off Puerto Rico with an eye on Venezuela. 

Trump’s Venezuela task-force counts 140,200 tons of ships. That’s more than the UK’s only carrier strike group. The deployment’s firepower is about equal to half of the entire Royal Navy’s warship and attack submarine displacement. pic.twitter.com/dDVLsKUYEo

— barry with the NED (@bonzerbarry) September 8, 2025

President Trump has insisted he doesn’t need a formal war authorization from Congress to conduct anti-Venezuela operations aimed at ‘terrorists’ and ‘narco-traffickers’ and has at various times threatened regime change in Caracas.

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