Supercarrier USS Gerald R. Ford Enters U.S. Southern Command’s Area Of Responsibility
The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and its air wing have officially joined the enhanced counter-narcotics mission under U.S. Southern Command’s (SOUTHCOM) purview, the command said in a statement on Tuesday. The carrier had been ordered to the Caribbean, but it stalled for a number of days off Africa before proceeding. You can catch up with our previous reporting on this operation, which is also designed to pressure Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, here.
The Ford, the first in the newest class of aircraft carriers, is now in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility (AOR), the command stated, without giving the ship’s precise location. It transited from the Mediterranean region through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic on Nov. 4.
The AOR extends as far northeast as near the Cape Verde islands, about 2,000 miles from Venezuela and just a few hundred miles from Africa. We asked SOUTHCOM for additional details about the carrier’s location and will update this story if it responds.
“The enhanced U.S. force presence in the USSOUTHCOM AOR will bolster U.S. 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,” said Chief Pentagon Spokesperson Sean Parnell in a statement on Tuesday. “These forces will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle Transnational Criminal Organizations.”
On Oct. 24, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the Ford, which had previously been stationed in the Middle East region, to the Caribbean.
The Ford brings a great deal of additional capability to the Joint Task Force assigned to the counter-narcotics operation. There are four squadrons of F/A-18 Super Hornets, a squadron of E/A-18 Growler electronic warfare jets, a squadron of E-2D Advanced Hawkeye airborne command and control aircraft, MH-60S and MH-60R Seahawk helicopters and a detachment of C-2A Greyhound Onboard Delivery planes.
In addition to those assets, several other elements of the Ford Carrier Strike Group will take part in this operation.
“Destroyer Squadron Two’s Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyers USS Bainbridge (DDG 96) and USS Mahan (DDG 72), and the integrated air and missile defense command ship USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG 81)” will join the Ford. Two other Arleigh Burke class destroyers assigned to the strike group – the USS Forrest Sherman and USS Mitscher – were still operating in the Red Sea, a U.S. official told us last week.
While it is unclear where any of these vessels are, online ship watchers have located the Bainbridge at about 800 nautical miles northeast of Trinidad and Tobago.
The Trump administration’s plans for the Ford and its escorts are still unknown. President Donald Trump has wavered between saying he won’t order an attack on Venezuela to answering in the affirmative if he thought Maduro’s days were numbered. If Trump does order strikes in Venezuela, he has several options, The Washington Post noted on Tuesday. They range from hitting Venezuelan military bases to cocaine refinery labs, clandestine airstrips or guerrilla camps.
Regardless of the intention, the Ford and its escorts will join a growing array of U.S. military assets in the region “under a Joint Task Force, created to defeat and dismantle criminal networks that exploit our shared borders and maritime domains,” the Pentagon stated.
There are at least seven Navy surface vessels, a special operations mothership and aircraft, including F-35B stealth fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, and AC-130 Ghostrider gunships deployed to the region. Beyond that, there are “site surveys ongoing to see if more military assets should be sent to the region,” a U.S. official told The War Zone Friday morning.
In addition to the counter-narcotics operation, at least one of these vessels in this flotilla, the San Antonio class amphibious transport dock ship USS San Antonio, is supporting humanitarian relief efforts in Jamaica following the devastating Hurricane Melissa, SOUTHCOM announced.
To date, the Pentagon has limited its kinetic operations in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific to attacking suspected drug boats. The U.S. carried out two more in the eastern Pacific on Monday that War Secretary Pete Hegseth said killed all six people aboard, raising the total in about 20 such attacks to more than 70 deaths. The majority of those strikes were carried out by the MQ-9s and some by the AC-130 Ghostriders, as we have noted and as CNN reported today.
These attacks, however, have been criticized for being extrajudicial strikes without Congressional authorization. The administration has justified the strikes by declaring drug cartels to be “unlawful combatants,” and Trump has claimed, without proof, that each sunken boat has saved 25,000 American lives, presumably from overdoses.
Meanwhile, the U.K. “has stopped sharing intelligence with the U.S. about suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean because it does not want to be complicit in US military strikes and believes the attacks are illegal,” CNN is reporting.
“…shortly after the U.S. began launching lethal strikes against the boats in September… the U.K. grew concerned that the U.S. might use intelligence provided by the British to select targets,” the cable network suggested. “British officials believe the US military strikes, which have killed 76 people, violate international law, the sources said. The intelligence pause began over a month ago, they said.”
The U.K. controls several territories in the Caribbean where it bases intelligence assets, the cable network noted. They have “helped the U.S. locate vessels suspected of carrying drugs so that the U.S. Coast Guard could interdict them. That meant the ships would be stopped, boarded, its crew detained, and drugs seized.”
We reached out to the White House, the U.K. MoD and the Pentagon for comment.
“We don’t discuss intelligence matters,” the Pentagon told us. Neither the White House nor MoD immediately responded to our queries.
Meanwhile, in the midst of the growing U.S. pressure against him, Maduro has ordered his forces to prepare for a “guerrilla-style resistance or sow chaos in the event of a U.S. air or ground attack,” Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing “sources with knowledge of the efforts and planning documents seen by Reuters.”
While no one knows for sure what Trump will do about Venezuela, he has a large and growing array of assets to carry out the missions he selects.
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