The son of opposition leader Juan Pablo Guanipa, Ramon Guanipa, speaks to the press in Maracaibo, Venezuela, on February 10. Juan Pablo Guanipa was at his residence in the city of Maracaibo, where he will serve house arrest after being detained hours after his release from prison, his son, said. Photo by Henry Chirinos/EPA
Feb. 18 (UPI) — Human Rights Watch urged Venezuela’s government led by Delcy Rodriguez to dismantle what it described as the country’s repressive state apparatus and implement deep judicial and electoral reform.
The group noted that recent political prisoner releases have not dismantled mechanisms used to suppress dissent.
The rights group said the releases mark progress, but warned that institutions responsible for arbitrary detentions and political persecution remain active amid what Venezuelan authorities call a process of “national pacification.”
The organization called for the removal of Attorney General Tarek William Saab, saying he “led the state action that resulted in human rights violations” after the 2024 presidential election and describing him as part of “the government’s repressive machinery.”
The statement follows the Jan. 3 capture of former President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, during a U.S. military operation and the subsequent release of hundreds of detainees held for political reasons.
The Trump administration has continued working with former Vice President Delcy Rodriguez in what it describes as a plan with phases of “stabilization, recovery and transition,” focused largely on reforms in Venezuela’s oil sector, the organization said.
“The release of political prisoners is an important relief, but the repressive apparatus used to detain them remains in place,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.
“Venezuelan authorities must carry out real reforms of their laws and judicial and electoral institutions,” she said. “Anything else would amount to a simulated transition that may serve the interests of the governments of Venezuela and the United States, but will not vindicate the rights of the Venezuelan people.”
Human Rights Watch said some 600 people remain imprisoned for political reasons, and that an amnesty bill under debate in Venezuela’s National Assembly, the country’s legislature, does not guarantee unconditional release for all those arbitrarily detained for political events dating to 1999.
“Its discussion should not be used as an excuse to delay the unconditional release of political prisoners or the structural reforms needed to restore democracy in Venezuela,” Goebertus said.
The organization said many people released from prison remain under criminal investigation and face restrictions on free expression and political participation. Some have been placed under house arrest, including opposition leader Juan Pablo Guanipa, who was freed Feb. 9 and detained again hours later after calling for protests.
Human Rights Watch also called for measures to restore judicial independence, which it said was weakened after a 2004 reform under then-President Hugo Chavez, and reiterated its demand for Saab’s removal, saying his continued tenure is incompatible with meaningful reform.
The group further urged steps to ensure free and fair elections, including a review of the National Electoral Council, the body responsible for organizing elections, whose members backed Maduro’s reelection and blocked opposition candidacies such as Maria Corina Machado.
Human Rights Watch said only sustained structural reforms will allow a credible political transition and full restoration of human rights in Venezuela.
The Joint Inter-Agency Task Force 401 (JIATF-401) released the three-page document on “Physical Protection of Critical Infrastructure” last Friday. The Pentagon established JIATF-401 last August to coordinate counter-drone efforts across the department and help accelerate the fielding of new capabilities. Last week, the Pentagon also announced new authorities for military base commanders, expanding their options for responding to drone threats more broadly.
The new guidance from JIATF-401 talks about “critical infrastructure” mostly in terms of civilian sites ranging from power plants to sports venues. Drones do present real and still growing threats to critical civilian infrastructure, something TWZ has been calling attention to for years now. The Pentagon explicitly said the document had been released as part of work it has been doing in cooperation with the White House’s FIFA Task Force, which is preparing for the United States to host the World Cup later this year. However, it is made clear that the contents are equally applicable to helping protect military facilities from uncrewed aerial systems.
“When we talk about Homeland defense, we’re not just talking about military bases, power grids and ports; we’re talking about places where Americans gather. With major international events like the World Cup on the horizon, the security of our stadiums, for example, is a national priority,” U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, Director of JIATF-401, said in a statement accompanying the release. “Whether it’s a forward operating base, an outdoor concert venue or a stadium hosting the World Cup, the principles of risk assessment and physical protection outlined in this guide remain the same. This new guidance provides a common playbook for our forces to work closely with federal and local partners to ensure a safe and secure environment against the growing challenge of nefarious drones.”
The new counter-drone guidance’s central concept is a framework called HOP, standing for Harden, Obscure, Perimeter.
“Hardening does not mean enclosing an entire facility, but selectively introducing obstacles that disrupt predictable aerial access,” the document explains. “Even modest obstacles can deter low-cost, consumer-grade drones and force higher-risk flight profiles.”
As noted, the guidance highlights nets and tensioned cables as examples of this kind of cost-effective hardening. It also recommends closing retractable roofs and otherwise covering any other roof openings where and when it is feasible to do so. Underscoring the immediate focus on the World Cup, the document notes that “netting used to protect fans from projectiles can be repurposed to disrupt sUAS [small uncrewed aerial systems] flight and observation.”
The section on hardening from the recently released counter-drone guidance. US Military
The guidance also recommends the construction of more substantial “permanent or semi-permanent structural shielding, including concrete walls, enclosures, or hardened roofs designed to protect critical systems from overhead approach, observation, or objects released from a UAS.”
We will come back to all of this in a moment.
The “Obscure” component of the HOP framework focuses on making it harder for drones and their operators to find their targets in the first place. This can include an array of different tactics, techniques, and procedures, such as physical camouflage and decoys, as well as regular changes to how personnel and assets move through a facility. “If a drone cannot easily identify targets, crowds, or critical systems, its effectiveness drops sharply,” the new guidance notes.
The obscuration section from the recently released counter-drone guidance. US Military
Lastly, there is the “Perimeter” portion of the HOP framework, which is centered on expanded security zones around a specific site and ways to improve general situational awareness. “Pushing the effective perimeter outward forces drones to operate at greater distance, which strains battery life, degrades video and control links, increases the chance of operator exposure, [and] creates a larger safety buffer if a drone is downed.”
The portion of the recently released counter-drone guidance discussing perimeter-related aspects of the HOP framework. US Military
As an aside, the recently announced new counter-drone authorities for the commanders of U.S. military bases include the ability to respond to threats inside expanded zones beyond the facility’s immediate “fence-line.” The right-sizing of perimeters around domestic facilities and their enforcement has been a particularly complex issue for the U.S. government when it comes to counter-drone policies in recent years. Potential second-order impacts to surrounding areas, especially in densely populated urban environments, have to be taken into account and mitigated. This all imposes limits on the kind of assets that can be employed to neutralize drone threats once they’ve been detected, as you can read more about here.
The counter-drone guidance released last week includes this annotated satellite image of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, outside Los Angeles. The red circle reflects a traditional inner security zone perimeter, while the yellow circle shows the boundaries of an expanded perimeter to help better protect against uncrewed aerial threats. US Military
“We will have the need for bases, the main operating bases from which we operate,” U.S. Air Force Gen. Kevin Schneider, head of Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), said during a panel at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2025 Warfare Symposium last March. “The challenge becomes, at some point, we will need to move to austere locations. We will need to disaggregate the force. We will need to operate out of other locations, again, one for survivability, and two, again, to provide response options.”
Schneider added at that time that his service was faced with the need to “make internal trades” in how to apply available funding, including “do we put that dollar towards, you know, fixing the infrastructure at Kadena [Air Base in Japan] or do we put that dollar towards restoring an airfield at Tinian.”
A US Air Force F-16 sits in a hardened aircraft shelter at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany. USAF
“I got tons of airfields from tons of allies, and we have access to all of them. The problem is, I can only protect a few of them,” now-retired Air Force Gen. James Hecker, then head of U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), another member of that same panel, had also said. “We can’t have that layered [defensive] effect for thousands of airbases. There’s just no way it’s going to happen.”
“I’m not a big fan of hardening infrastructure,” Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, then head of PACAF, had also said at a media roundtable at the Air & Space Forces Association’s main annual symposium back in 2023. “The reason is because of the advent of precision-guided weapons… you saw what we did to the Iraqi Air Force and their hardened aircraft shelters. They’re not so hard when you put a 2,000-pound bomb right through the roof.”
It is worth noting here that traditional high-end guided missiles and other precision-guided munitions are no longer necessarily required to carry out strikes of this kind. Drones costing thousands of dollars, and able to be launched from very long distances away, can now execute precision attacks.
Wilsbach is now Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the service’s top officer.
The U.S. military has faced pushback from Congress on the topic of hardening. Multiple independent assessments have also raised alarms. TWZ has been following this often-heated debate closely.
There have been signs that the U.S. military’s position on hardening, and that of the Air Force’s more specifically, has been shifting already. In 2024, authorities at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina both put out contracting notices asking for information about nets and other physical barriers to stop potential drone attacks. Langley had become a focal point for the drone threat discussion by that point after the base was subjected to weeks of still largely unexplained drone incursions in December 2023, which we were first to report.
A graphic included a contracting notice put out by authorities at Langley Air Force Base in 2024 showing how sunshade-type shelters at the base might be equipped with anti-drone nets. USAF
Last year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) announced that it had developed upgrades for a family of modular, rapidly deployable protective structures specifically to improve their effectiveness against drone attacks.
Elements of the U.S. Army’s Modular Protective System-Overhead Cover (MPS-OHC) modular structure system is subjected to a live-fire test. US Army Corps of Engineers
“The technology is not going to solve this problem for us. We can’t field a system that will stop every drone,” JIATF-401 director Brig. Gen. Ross told TWZ and other outlets during a press call in December in response to a direct question about physical hardening from this author. “At the end of that would be protection, which would be netting or fencing or physical barriers that would prevent a [sic] unmanned system from having its intended effect.”
Brig. Gen. Ross had said that this was among the things JIATF-401 had discussed in meetings with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies as part of World Cup preparations, presaging the release of the new guidance last week.
“As you think about protection, I would go all the way down to protective protection type assets, those will be included in our marketplace. And so if somebody wants to buy a $10,000 radar that has limited range, they’ll be able to buy it on the marketplace. If they want to buy a low cost interceptor for … [small drones] that just uses kinetic energy to defeat a drone – that’s a drone that hits a drone for $1,000 – they’ll be able to buy it on our marketplace,” he added. “If they want to buy physical barrier material, whether it’s a fishing net or a chain link fence, they’ll also be able to buy that as part of that counter-UAS marketplace.”
The central “marketplace” mentioned here, through which elements of the military and other U.S. government agencies can source counter-drone capabilities, is a key initiative that JIATF-401 has been working on and that you can learn more about here.
It is important to stress that U.S. military officials are unified in their position that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to countering drones. Physical hardening is just one part of a layered approach and is not a ‘silver bullet’ solution to protect against all types of drone threats. Active defenses, including electronic warfare jammers, drone-like interceptors like Brig. Gen. Ross mentioned, and more traditional anti-aircraft assets, are still part of the equation, to differing degrees, for defending against drones at home and abroad.
Elements of a counter-drone kit that U.S. Northern Command has been deploying for domestic use that includes drone-like interceptors and various sensors. US Military
At the same time, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine has shown that even limited, lower-cost measures like netting can be useful for disrupting attacks by smaller kamikaze drones and loitering munitions in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
In Shebekino, Belgorod region, 41 apartment buildings have been covered with anti-drone nets. The local creatures are loving it – they joke about it and, as always, endure it with classic patience. pic.twitter.com/Q26fwKX1ut
The russian terrorist state no longer has the ability to produce Tu-95s or any kind of strategic bomber. This is a tremendous victory for Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/SVeQE78v0h
Outside of the United States, among adversaries and allies alike, there has also been a growing trend toward more physical hardening at air bases and other facilities. China has embarked on a particularly extensive effort to build new hardened and unhardened shelters at air bases across the country. The Chinese have been observed building other kinds of hardened infrastructure, including a new pattern of protected air defense sites along their disputed border with India, as well. Even before the unprecedented drone attacks last year, Russia had also been working to add new shelters, hardened and unhardened, to various air bases, but with a focus on ones closer to the fighting in Ukraine.
Structures that are sturdy enough even just to protect against shrapnel could have broader value, too. Just over a year ago, the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., published a report assessing that 10 missiles with warheads capable of scattering cluster munitions across an area with a 450-foot diameter could be enough to neutralize all exposed aircraft on the ground and critical fuel storage at various key airbases. Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan and Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, as well as Langley in Virginia, were specifically highlighted, as seen below.
Hudson Institute
Overall, the Pentagon’s counter-drone prescriptions are still evolving, especially when it comes to defending bases and critical civilian infrastructure within the United States. At the same time, despite public stances that officials have taken in the past, hardened structures and other kinds of physical defenses have become an important part of the current counter-drone playbook.
