The US military is deploying an aircraft carrier to the waters near South America as the Trump administration continues its military buildup in the Caribbean and its push toward war with Venezuela.
Sean Parnell, a US War Department spokesman, wrote on X on Friday that the USS Gerald Ford and its strike group, which includes five destroyers, will be heading to US Southern Command’s area of responsibility to “bolster US 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 Gerald Ford has been deployed in the Mediterranean Sea, and according to a ship tracker, it is currently off the coast of Croatia in the Adriatic Sea. According to USNI News, it would take the aircraft carrier at least a week to reach SOUTHCOM’s area of responsibility from Croatia.
The deployment of the aircraft carrier and accompanying warships will mark a significant escalation of US military power in the region amid reports that the US is soon planning to bomb Venezuela with the goal of ousting President Nicolas Maduro.
The US has been stepping up the military pressure on Venezuela by flying bombers near its coast and continuing its bombing campaign against alleged drug boats in the region.
Also on Friday, War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the 10th US airstrike against a boat that he claimed was carrying drugs. The Pentagon has provided no evidence to back up its claims about what the boats it has been bombing are carrying, and has also not provided any information about the identities of the people it has been killing, who are labelled as “narco-terrorists” to justify their extrajudicial execution.
Hegseth said the latest boat strike targeted a vessel in the Caribbean and killed six “narco-terrorists,” bringing the total number of people extrajudicially executed by the US military in the region since September 2 to 43, according to numbers released by the Trump administration. “If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat Al-Qaeda. Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down, and kill you,” the US war chief said.
President Trump and his top officials have framed the bombing campaign and push toward war with Venezuela as a response to the large number of overdose deaths in the US, but the deaths are primarily caused by Fentanyl and other opioids, which do not come from Venezuela. A US official has told Drop Site News that US intelligence has assessed that little to no of the fentanyl trafficked to the United States is being produced in Venezuela.
Trump officials have also been claiming that the boats they are targeting are attempting to carry drugs to the US, but the official speaking to Drop Site said many of the boats targeted for strikes do not even have the requisite gasoline or motor capacity to reach US waters.
