What the videos and images that keep popping up on social media show Appear The United States is conducting a large-scale military operation around the Venezuelan capital Caracas, which includes multiple large-scale explosions and the presence of American special operations helicopters. While the launch of such an operation has not been officially announced, it comes after months of a U.S. military buildup in the region aimed at putting pressure on cartels and Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
We have reached out to the White House, Pentagon and U.S. Southern Command for comment and will update this story with any relevant information provided.
Video showed the explosion and the resulting smoke covering the skyline.
Other videos show 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) MH-47 Chinook helicopters (and what appears to be an MH-60 helicopter) flying over Caracas, with several explosions erupting in the background.
A full-scale military operation against Venezuela appears to be underway, with dozens of U.S. Army helicopters appearing over the capital, Caracas. pic.twitter.com/kIqfbGjOK4
According to circumstances that have not yet been confirmed by the U.S. government, large-scale dynamic operations in Venezuela appear to have begun, becoming a new phase of the “Spear of the South” operation.
We will update this article with more analysis and information. support.
Update: 2:45 a.m. ET —
The Pentagon and Southern Command responded to our inquiries about what was happening and told us to contact the White House, but had no further comment. We haven’t heard back yet.
cbs news There are reports that Trump ordered the attacks, which included military installations.
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break through @cbnews: President Trump ordered strikes against sites in Venezuela, including military installations, U.S. officials said, as the U.S. government stepped up its campaign against the regime of President Nicolas Maduro early on Saturday. pass @JimLaPorta and me
Some thoughts on the timing of this operation. Flying a special operations helicopter mission deep into contested territory during a nearly full moon is far from ideal. It was not immediately clear if there was any reason for the delay in the timeline for such action. Venezuela’s air defense system is not advanced, but it does pose a threat, and you can read all about it here. The country also possesses many man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), which are particularly problematic for helicopters. Regardless, either the threat is deemed low enough to proceed with helicopter operations, or the risk is worth the potential reward. It’s also worth noting that air strikes could knock out known air defense systems, putting helicopters at risk, but Venezuela’s man-portable air defense systems (if deployed widely) and road-mobile surface-to-air missiles would be much more difficult, and in many cases impossible, to mitigate a pre-planned attack. Electronic warfare and cyber warfare will also play an important role in the operation in weakening air defenses.
The timing here is interesting. The moon was nearly full, which is far from optimal for this kind of thing, especially deep into a metropolitan area like this with a special operations helicopter. The raid may have helped clear their air defenses, but that’s unclear. Goals may have dictated the timeline…
A video showing a helicopter firing rockets at targets on the ground is said to be from tonight’s operation, but we cannot confirm this. This looks like a common MH-60 direct action penetrator or MH-6 Birdie rocket attack run.
