WASHINGTON — The U.S. military has built up an unusually large force in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off the coast of Venezuela since this summer, when the Trump administration first began to shift assets to the region as part of its so-called war against narcoterrorism.
Here is a look at the ships, planes and troops in the region:
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.
For example, the U.S. Air Force flew a group of B-52 Stratofortress bombers through the region last week for what the Pentagon dubbed as a “bomber attack demo” in photos online.
Troops
All told, there are more than 6,000 sailors and Marines that 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.
Ukraine and Gaza. China and North Korea. Iran and Russia. There was so much to address Tuesday when 800 generals, admirals and their senior enlisted leaders in the U.S. military were ordered into one location from around the world on short notice.
The sudden meeting in Quantico, Va., was called by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. And it was an unprecedented event for unprecedented times, but not in the way that anyone imagined. Hegseth took aim at the packed room’s waistlines, proclaiming that he no longer wanted to see “fat generals and admirals,” or overweight troops.
“Frankly, it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops,” he said to the 800 likely stunned souls in the room. “Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon leading commands around the country and the world.”
Flanked by a portly President Trump, he proclaimed, “It’s a bad look. It is bad, and it’s not who we are.”
President Trump joined his Defense secretary in urging his top military brass to shape up.
(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)
Like a sugary doughnut, the hypocrisy was too tempting to pass up. California Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s X account posted, “I guess the Commander in Chief needs to go!” Newsom also juxtaposed a clip of Hegseth’s speech with a photo of Trump in a McDonald’s restaurant, the president’s stomach protruding over the belt line of his slacks.
The former Fox News personality turned secretary of Defense initially gave no reason last month when he summoned leaders stationed across the globe to attend the meeting, causing concern and conjecture among military and congressional officials about the purpose of the gathering. Trump told NBC that they would deliver a “good message” about “being in great shape, talking about a lot of good, positive things.”
That new “positive” messaging? Terminating restrictions on hazing for boot-camp recruits, toughening grooming standards (no more “beardos”), doing away with racial quotas and raising physical standards for everyone in uniform to a “male level.”
“I don’t want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape, or in a combat unit with females who can’t meet the same combat-arms physical standards as men, or troops who are not fully proficient on their assigned weapons, platform or task, or under a leader who was the first but not the best,” Hegseth said Tuesday.
He added that troops will have to meet “gender-neutral, age-normed, male standard, scored 70% ” fitness levels. “If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it,” he said. But all will be fat-shamed on an equal basis.
“Today, at my direction, every member of the joint force, at every rank, is required to take a PT [physical training] test twice a year, as well as meet height and weight requirements twice a year, every year of service,” he said.
Hegseth’s obsession with appearing ripped and manly is nothing new. The 45-year-old has challenged 71-year-old Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to fitness tests in which the men do 50 pull-ups and 100 push-ups in 10 minutes or less.
The “Pete and Bobby Challenge,” as Hegseth calls it, was posted on the official HHS YouTube account and circulated widely on social media.
Hegseth’s deep message to the troops keeping America safe: “It all starts with physical fitness and appearance. If the secretary of war can do regular, hard PT, so can every member of our joint force.”
Hegseth has repeatedly emphasized that the updated fitness requirements for troops are part of a larger effort to achieve a “warrior ethos” in the U.S. military. Uncle Sam wants YOU! But not until you drop that BMI below 24.9.
Sept. 26 (UPI) — Microsoft has ended a portion of the Israel Ministry of Defense’s access to technology it used to spy on Palestinian civilians’ phone calls in Gaza and the West Bank, calling it a violation of Microsoft’s terms of service.
Late last week, Microsoft told Israeli officials that spy agency Unit 8200 were in violation of Microsoft’s terms of service by storing surveillance data in Azure, a cloud service, The Guardian reported.
Microsoft released a statement that it wrote to employees Thursday about its internal investigation after an article The Guardian published in August that revealed what the Ministry of Defense was using Azure for.
“While our review is ongoing, we have found evidence that supports elements of The Guardian’s reporting. This evidence includes information relating to IMOD consumption of Azure storage capacity in the Netherlands and the use of AI services,” Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, said in the statement.
The Guardian conducted a joint investigation with +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call. The Guardian wrote that Microsoft and Unit 8200 had worked together on a plan to move large volumes of sensitive intelligence material into Azure.
According to The Guardian’s reporting, Unit 8200 built such a large database, it could collect, play back and analyze the cell phone calls of the entire population. So much so that a mantra emerged: “A million calls an hour.”
The information was stored in a Microsoft data center in the Netherlands, but soon after The Guardian’s reporting, the data appears to have been moved out of the country. The Guardian reports that sources said the Israel Defense Forces planned to move the data to an Amazon Web Services cloud.
“We therefore have informed IMOD of Microsoft’s decision to cease and disable specified IMOD subscriptions and their services, including their use of specific cloud storage and AI services and technologies,” Smith said. “We have reviewed this decision with IMOD and the steps we are taking to ensure compliance with our terms of service, focused on ensuring our services are not used for mass surveillance of civilians.”
Microsoft has faced strong pressure to disengage with Israel, including from its employees. In late August, two Microsoft employees were fired for allegedly breaking into Smith’s office.
An online group called No Azure for Apartheid announced on X that Microsoft fired them for “participating in a sit-in at the office of Brad Smith” at the Microsoft location in Redmond, Wash., to demand the company cut its ties to Israel.
Seven people were arrested that day, two of whom were Microsoft employees.
Of course, Trump’s Secretary of Defense wants the name of Harvey Milk, the murdered gay rights pioneer, stripped from a ship.
Never mind that Milk served in the Korean War as a diving instructor, eventually discharged because of his sexual orientation. Or that he had exhibited courage in facing down haters as the nation’s first publicly out elected official. After all, when Pete Hegseth’s not sending confidential war plans via Signal to people who shouldn’t be privy to them, he’s busy bloviating about the “warrior ethos.”
Hegseth is a military veteran, a National Guardsman who did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he’s also someone who has made a career out of telling Americans he, above everyone else, knows what our veterans need and what our armed forces need to defend the U.S. in an increasingly volatile world. So Hegseth may know something about warriors and fighting. So did Milk.
But Hegseth is too busy playing Rambo to recognize it. Instead, he’s weaponizing bigotry to remake the U.S. military as a scorched-earth, hetero-Christian outfit ready to stamp out liberal heretics here and abroad. That’s not befitting anyone who calls themselves a warrior, no matter how many pseudo-patriotic tattoos and American flag items of clothing Hegseth loves to sport.
A true warrior follows a code of honor that allows respect to those they disagree with and sometimes even combat. For Hegseth to specifically ask that the USNS Harvey Milk have its name changed during Pride Month — the same month that he’s requiring all trans service people to out themselves and voluntarily leave their positions or be discharged against their will — does not represent the “reestablishing [of] the warrior culture” that the Navy is citing as the reason for the moves.
Instead, it reveals Hegseth’s Achilles heel, one he shares with Trump: a fundamental insecurity about their place in a country that diversified long ago.
CBS News is also reporting the Navy is recommending the renaming of ships named after civil rights icons Medgar Evers, Cesar Chavez, Sojourner Truth and Lucy Stone along with ships that haven’t yet been built but are scheduled to bear the names of Dolores Huerta, Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Harriet Tubman.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell gave my colleague Kevin Rector the same malarkey he’s giving the rest of the media when asked for comment about this matter: That Hegseth is “committed” to making sure all named military assets “are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos.”
Marine Col. Alison Thompson, left, talks with Jenn Onofrio, center, a White House Fellow to the secretary of the Navy and Patrik Gallineaux, right, of the Richmond/Ermet Aid Foundation prior to the launching of the USNS Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment oiler ship named after the first openly gay elected official in 2021 in San Diego.
(Alex Gallardo / Associated Press)
I can understand the argument can be made that naval ships should be named only after those who served, which would eliminate people like Huerta, Ginsburg and Truth. But there was a beauty in the idea of having the names of civil rights heroes adorn ships in the so-called John Lewis class, oilers named after the late congressman. It was a reminder that wars don’t just happen on the front lines but also on the home front. That those who serve to defend our democracy don’t just do it through the military. That winning doesn’t just happen with bullets and bombs.
That sometimes, the biggest threat to our nation hasn’t been the enemy abroad, but the enemy within. It’s not just my wokoso opinion, either — the oath that all Navy newcomers and newly minted officers must take have them swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
You might not associate Huerta, Truth, and Marshall with the military — indeed, I was surprised the Navy had honored them, period. But I and millions of Americans do remember them for fierceness in their respective battlegrounds, a steeliness any sailor should aspire to. For anyone in Hegseth’s world to even think about erasing their name is a disgrace to the Stars and Stripes — but what else should we expect from a department whose boss evaded military service by claiming to have debilitating bone spurs?
The striking of Milk’s name from an oiler, and proposed renaming of dry cargo ships named for Evers and Chavez, is particularly vile.
Milk joined the Navy in the footsteps of his parents. He was so proud of his military background that he was wearing a belt buckle with his Navy diver’s insignia the night he was assassinated. Evers was inspired to fight Jim Crow after serving in a segregated Army unit during World War II. Chavez, meanwhile, was stationed in the western Pacific shortly after the Good War during his two-year Navy stint.
I called up Andres Chavez, executive director of the National Chavez Center and grandson of Cesar, to hear how he was feeling about this mess. Andres was there in 2012 when the USNS Cesar Chavez was launched in San Diego, christened with a champagne bottle by Helen Chavez, Cesar’s widow and Andres’ grandmother. He said “it was probably the second-most memorable commemoration I’ve seen of my Tata after Obama” dedicated the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in the Central Valley that year.
The USNS Cesar Chavez was the last of the Navy’s Lewis and Clark class of boats, all named after pioneers and explorers. Andres said his family was initially “hesitant” to have a naval ship named in honor of their patriarch “because so much of Cesar’s identity is wrapped up in nonviolence” but accepted when they found out the push came from shipyard workers from San Diego’s Barrio Logan.
“And there’s been so many Latinos who have served in the military in this country, so we accepted on behalf of them as well,” he said.
The Chavez family found out about the possibility of the USNS Cesar Chavez losing its name from reporters.
“We’re just gonna wait and see what’s next, but we’re not surprised by this administration anymore,” Andres said. “It’s just not an affront to Cesar; it’s an affront to all the Latino veterans of this country.”
He pushed back on Hegseth’s definition of what a warrior is by bringing up the work of his grandfather and Milk. The two supported each other’s causes in the 1970s and met “numerous” times, according to Andres.
“They served by creating more opportunities for other people and fighting for their respect,” he concluded. “That’s the definition of a warrior.”
