Currently, key naval vessels such as guided-missile destroyers equipped with the Aegis combat weapons command and control system — including the USS Gravely, USS Jason Dunham, and the USS Stockdale — the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, and the littoral combat ship USS Wichita, are deployed around the Caribbean. The USS Newport News (SSN-750), a nuclear-powered attack submarine which can launch Tomahawk missiles, is also present.
Moreover, Tuesday’s arrival of the Gerald S. Ford carrier strike group, the Navy’s newest, most technologically advanced aircraft carrier with escorts (USS Bainbridge, USS Mahan, and USS Winston Churchill), brings another 4,000 military personnel into the theater, on top of the estimated 10,000 already there.
If anyone benefits from all this, it is the weapons industry.
I suppose we might have enough missiles to land the infantry. But what about artillery munitions to carry the fight forward?
https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/military/venezuela-plans-guerilla-warfare-if-u-s-attacks-sources-say/
Venezuela plans guerilla warfare if US attacks, sources say
- Venezuelan military lacks personnel and equipment
- Units instructed to disperse and hide upon attack, sources say
- Government could also seek to create disorder in the streets
The terrain is a nightmare for modern warfare.
- The country is a patchwork of dense jungle, mountains, flooded plains, and heavily urbanized coastlines.
- Moving troops inland would mean fighting through humidity, disease, and terrain that kills machinery.
- Cities like Maracaibo and Caracas are natural fortresses: dense, chaotic, and impossible to control without enormous civilian casualties.
An invasion of Venezuela would be quick to start but impossible to finish. The terrain, the logistics, and the complexity of the country’s politics make it a trap for any foreign army.
It depends on whether the Venezuelan people will fight like the Vietnamese did under authoritarian Ho Chi Minh. Or collapse as did the Iraqis under authoritarian Saddam.