Report: USS Ford's Pilots are Studying Up on Venezuelan Air Defenses

As the carrier USS Gerald R. Ford nears the Caribbean, her air wing's pilots are studying up on the capabilities of Venezuela's air defense network, according to the Washington Post. Talks in the White House continued Friday on whether or not to strike land targets in Venezuela, and President Donald Trump told reporters that afternoon that he had made a decision. "I've already made up my mind. I can't tell you what it will be," Trump told EFE.

Staffers have presented Trump with multiple strike options, and there are plenty of methods to choose from. Along with USS Ford, the U.S. Navy assets in the region include cruisers USS Lake Erie and USS Gettysburg, destroyers USS Gravely, Mahan, Bainbridge,Winston S. Churchill and Stockdale, and three amphibs with embarked elements of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit. At least one U.S. attack submarine is likely in the area as well. According to CSIS' calculations, the U.S. Navy now has nearly 300,000 tonnes (displacement) worth of vessels in the Caribbean - a post-Cold War record.

Together, this task force carries a relatively deep magazine of Tomahawk cruise missiles, often favored for a limited strike. Ford carries four squadrons of F/A-18 Super Hornet strike fighters, the standard tool for extended U.S. Navy airstrike campaigns, along with a squadron of E/A-18 Growler electronic attack aircraft for suppression of enemy air defenses.

Talks in the White House have also included the possibility of special operations missions, the Post reported. Such a foray would likely be limited in scope: the forces currently arrayed in the region are less than what would be expected for a full-scale invasion of a country of Venezuela's size. The invasion of much-smaller Panama in 1989 required 20,000 U.S. troops; at present, the task force has one Marine Expeditionary Unit, which typically totals about 2,200 Marines.

"The long-range firepower available to the United States in the Caribbean is now comparable to levels used in past campaigns of limited scope and duration. There are two likely target sets for such strikes - the cartel facilities and the Maduro regime - with some overlap," assessed CSIS.

Boat strikes continue

In the meantime, the administration continues its campaign of airstrikes on suspected drug smuggling boats. The number has risen to 20 attacks and 80 fatalities as of November 10, and the effort continues. After well-publicized concerns about the legality of the strikes, details about the Justice Department's authorizing brief have begun to emerge in the press. The Wall Street Journal reports that the department's justification for the attacks is based in part on the premise that the boats contain fentanyl, the shipment is intended for the United States market, and that fentanyl constitutes a "chemical weapons threat" that must be intercepted.

In more than a decade of in-person interdictions in the Caribbean, the U.S. Coast Guard has never reported a discovery of fentanyl aboard a smuggling vessel in the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific - only cocaine, with occasional quantities of marijuana. The overwhelming majority of fentanyl sold in the U.S. is manufactured in Mexico and smuggled over the southern land border.

The Justice Department's brief is intended to convey immunity to U.S. servicemembers who are involved in the operation, but some have begun reaching out for independent legal advice. If the attacks are viewed internationally as unlawful killings of civilians - a position taken by the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, among others - then servicemembers involved in the activity could be prosecuted overseas, experts warn.

"If a service member relies on [Department of Justice] immunity, that doesn't mean that a state may not prosecute them for any crimes they commit, or if they travel to another country. If there are allegations that they have committed atrocity crimes, then other countries . . . could invoke their own universal jurisdiction and put them before the national courts of another country," president of the National Institute of Military Justice Lt. Col. Frank Rosenblatt (ret'd, U.S. Army) told PBS.