The United States is all set to ramp up its military presence in South America with its plans to send an aircraft carrier to the waters off the region. This development marked a massive increase in US firepower in the area to tackle drug trafficking. The move comes as the latest attempt of the Trump administration to counter drug-trafficking organizations in Latin America, the Pentagon said Friday (October 24, 2025).
The latest escalation is followed by Washington’s military campaign in which it targeted boats allegedly used to smuggle narcotics in early September, 2025 destroying at least 10 vessels in a series of strikes.
In a post on social media, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said that 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."
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.
The U.S. military has conducted its 10th strike on a suspected drug-running boat, Hegseth said earlier Friday, blaming the Tren de Aragua gang for operating the vessel and leaving six people dead in the Caribbean Sea.
In a social media post, Hegseth said the strike occurred overnight, and it marks the second time the Trump administration has tied one of its operations to the gang that originated in a Venezuelan prison.
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, according to news agency AP.
Two of the most recent strikes 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.
Will treat you like Al-Qaeda, says Hegseth
“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.”
US focus on Venezuela and Tren de Aragua
The strike drew parallels to the first announced by Washington in September, 2025 by focusing on Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has designated a foreign terrorist organization and blamed for being at the root of the violence and drug dealing that plague some cities.
While not mentioning the origin of the latest boat, the Trump administration has claimed that at least four of the boats it has hit have come from Venezuela.
Ships
The Navy has eight warships in the region — three destroyers, three amphibious assault ships, a cruiser and a smaller littoral combat ship that’s designed for coastal waters.
The three amphibious assault ships make up an amphibious readiness group and carry an expeditionary unit of Marines. As a result, those ships also have on board a variety of Marine helicopters, Osprey tilt rotor aircraft and Harrier jets that have the capability of either transporting large numbers of Marines or striking targets on land and sea.
While officials have not offered specific numbers, destroyers and cruisers typically deploy with a missile loadout that contains Tomahawk cruise missiles — a missile that can strike hundreds of miles from its launch point.
A U.S. Navy submarine, the USS Newport News, also is operating in the broader area of South America and is capable of carrying and launching cruise missiles.
Planes and drones
A squadron of advanced U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II jets have been sent to an airstrip in Puerto Rico. The planes were first spotted landing on the island territory in mid-September.
MQ-9 Reaper Air Force drones, capable of flying long distances and carrying up to eight laser-guided missiles, also have been spotted operating out of Puerto Rico by commercial satellites and military watchers, as well as photojournalists, around the same time. It has been widely reported that the Navy is operating P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft out of the region as well.
Earlier this month, the military released a photo of an U.S. Air Force AC-130J Ghostrider, a heavily armed plane capable of firing its large guns with precision onto ground targets, also sitting on the tarmac in Puerto Rico. There have been a multitude of other military aircraft that have temporarily flown through the region as part of military operations there.
Troops
There are more than 6,000 sailors and Marines who are now operating in the region based on the ships that have been confirmed by defense officials. The Pentagon has not offered specific numbers on how many drones, aircraft or ground crew are in the region, so their impact on that broader figure is unknown.
US military buildup in Caribbean Sea raises speculations
The attacks and an unusually large U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela have raised speculation that the administration could try to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who faces charges of narcoterrorism in the U.S.
In the latest move, the US military flew a pair of supersonic heavy bombers up to the coast of Venezuela on Thursday (October 23, 2025). 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 (1,243 miles) 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.
Trump on drug cartels
President Donald Trump this month declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants 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, as quoted by AP.
The latest escalation is followed by Washington’s military campaign in which it targeted boats allegedly used to smuggle narcotics in early September, 2025 destroying at least 10 vessels in a series of strikes.
In a post on social media, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said that 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."
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.
The U.S. military has conducted its 10th strike on a suspected drug-running boat, Hegseth said earlier Friday, blaming the Tren de Aragua gang for operating the vessel and leaving six people dead in the Caribbean Sea.
In a social media post, Hegseth said the strike occurred overnight, and it marks the second time the Trump administration has tied one of its operations to the gang that originated in a Venezuelan prison.
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, according to news agency AP.
Two of the most recent strikes 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.
Will treat you like Al-Qaeda, says Hegseth
“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.”
US focus on Venezuela and Tren de Aragua
The strike drew parallels to the first announced by Washington in September, 2025 by focusing on Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has designated a foreign terrorist organization and blamed for being at the root of the violence and drug dealing that plague some cities.
While not mentioning the origin of the latest boat, the Trump administration has claimed that at least four of the boats it has hit have come from Venezuela.
US military assets in the Caribbean
More than 6,000 U.S. sailors and Marines are operating in the Caribbean in an unusually large military buildup as President Donald Trump targets drug trafficking, he says is coming from Venezuela.Ships
The Navy has eight warships in the region — three destroyers, three amphibious assault ships, a cruiser and a smaller littoral combat ship that’s designed for coastal waters.
The three amphibious assault ships make up an amphibious readiness group and carry an expeditionary unit of Marines. As a result, those ships also have on board a variety of Marine helicopters, Osprey tilt rotor aircraft and Harrier jets that have the capability of either transporting large numbers of Marines or striking targets on land and sea.
While officials have not offered specific numbers, destroyers and cruisers typically deploy with a missile loadout that contains Tomahawk cruise missiles — a missile that can strike hundreds of miles from its launch point.
A U.S. Navy submarine, the USS Newport News, also is operating in the broader area of South America and is capable of carrying and launching cruise missiles.
Planes and drones
A squadron of advanced U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II jets have been sent to an airstrip in Puerto Rico. The planes were first spotted landing on the island territory in mid-September.
MQ-9 Reaper Air Force drones, capable of flying long distances and carrying up to eight laser-guided missiles, also have been spotted operating out of Puerto Rico by commercial satellites and military watchers, as well as photojournalists, around the same time. It has been widely reported that the Navy is operating P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft out of the region as well.
Earlier this month, the military released a photo of an U.S. Air Force AC-130J Ghostrider, a heavily armed plane capable of firing its large guns with precision onto ground targets, also sitting on the tarmac in Puerto Rico. There have been a multitude of other military aircraft that have temporarily flown through the region as part of military operations there.
Troops
There are more than 6,000 sailors and Marines who are now operating in the region based on the ships that have been confirmed by defense officials. The Pentagon has not offered specific numbers on how many drones, aircraft or ground crew are in the region, so their impact on that broader figure is unknown.
US military buildup in Caribbean Sea raises speculations
The attacks and an unusually large U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela have raised speculation that the administration could try to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who faces charges of narcoterrorism in the U.S.In the latest move, the US military flew a pair of supersonic heavy bombers up to the coast of Venezuela on Thursday (October 23, 2025). 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 (1,243 miles) 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.
Trump on drug cartels
President Donald Trump this month declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants 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, as quoted by AP.
( Originally published on Oct 24, 2025 )
