submarine

US leader says suspected drug traffickers to be sent to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.

President Donald Trump says two surviving “narcoterrorists” from a semi-submersible vessel destroyed by the US military in the Caribbean will be sent to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.

“It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday.

He said that US intelligence has confirmed the vessel was carrying fentanyl and other narcotics.

The vessel was targeted on Thursday in what Trump described as a strike aimed at disrupting a major drug trafficking route.

Two crew members were killed, he said, while two others survived and were airlifted by US forces in a helicopter rescue operation to a nearby US Navy warship.

The US military held the survivors on board at least until Friday evening.

The press office for Ecuador’s government said it was not aware of the plans for repatriation. There was no immediate comment from Colombian authorities.

At least six vessels, most of them speedboats, have been targeted by US strikes in the Caribbean since September, with Venezuela alleged to be the origin of some of them.

Washington says its campaign is dealing a decisive blow to drug trafficking, but it has provided no evidence that the people killed were drug smugglers.

With Trump’s confirmation of the death toll on his Truth Social platform, that means US military actions against vessels in the region have killed at least 29 people.

The president has justified the strikes by asserting that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels. He is relying on the same legal authority used by the administration of former President George W Bush when it declared a war on terrorism after the September 11 attacks on the US. This includes the ability to capture and detain combatants and use lethal force to take out their leadership. Trump is also treating the suspected traffickers as if they were enemy soldiers in a traditional war.

Previous similar strikes have raised concerns from Democratic lawmakers and legal experts who argue that such operations may exceed accepted wartime authority and risk violating international law.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump said the latest targeted vessel had been “built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs”.

US military buildup

The mission comes amid a sharp US military buildup across the Caribbean, involving guided missile destroyers, F-35 fighter jets, a nuclear-powered submarine and about 6,500 troops. The escalation has fuelled accusations that Washington is inching towards direct confrontation with Venezuela.

On Wednesday, Trump confirmed that he had authorised the CIA to carry out covert operations inside Venezuela, intensifying fears in Caracas that the US is attempting to topple President Nicolas Maduro.

Maduro has repeatedly denied involvement in drug trafficking and accused Washington of fabricating a narco-terrorism narrative as a pretext for trying to change the government. He condemned the recent maritime strikes as “a violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty and international law”.

Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, has formally requested the UN Security Council to issue a determination that the US strikes are illegal and to reaffirm Venezuela’s sovereign rights.

U.S. President Donald Trump is deploying a flotilla of warships and other military assets to the waters off Venezuela in an operation aimed at Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The ominous move signals a growing frustration with the Venezuelan leader over the flow of illicit narcotics into the United States. Maduro remains a fugitive from a 2020 U.S. indictment on narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges.

Trump last week ordered at least three Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers, a submarine and other assets to head toward the South American nation, a source familiar with the operation confirmed to The War Zone on Wednesday. Earlier this week, Reuters reported that in addition to the destroyers, some 4,000 Marines aboard an Amphibious Ready Group made-up of three ships were also deploying to the region. If this ends up being the case, it would put a remarkably large, versatile, and powerful armada of U.S. ships off Venezuela’s coast.

While the exact nature of this movement remains unclear, it is part of Trump’s larger effort to get the military involved in the fight against drug traffickers. In response, Maduro on Monday announced the planned deployment of more than 4.5 million militia members around the country. They are volunteers designated to bolster the armed forces’ defense against external and domestic attacks.

“The empire has gone mad and has renewed its threats to Venezuela’s peace and tranquility,” Maduro said at an event in Caracas, without mentioning any specific action.

Trump, whose problems with Maduro date back to the American president’s first term, has accused the Venezuelan leader of being a key part of the international drug trade he targeted as a top priority to fight. The White House considers Maduro a “narco-terrorist.”

“President Trump has been very clear and consistent,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday when asked about the troop deployments and whether the U.S. will put boots on the ground in Venezuela. “He’s prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice. The Maduro regime is not the legitimate government of Venezuela. It is a narco-terror cartel led by Maduro. It is the view of this administration that he is not a legitimate president. He is a fugitive head of this cartel who has been indicted in the United States for trafficking drugs into the country.”

Exactly what the U.S. plans to do with its military assets in regards to Maduro remains murky.

Last week, U.S. officials told CNN that it had ordered naval movements in the region to contain the threat from drug trafficking groups. On Monday, Reuters reported that the USS Gravely, USS Jason Dunham and the USS Sampson and some 4,000 military personnel would arrive at the edge of Venezuela’s territorial waters within the next 36 hours.

“That U.S. official, who was speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the additional commitment of military assets in the broader region would include several P-8 spy planes, warships and at least one attack submarine,” Reuters added. “The official said the process would be ongoing for several months and the plan was for them to operate in international airspace and international waters.” The P-8 is a maritime patrol aircraft, not primarily a spy plane, but it is capable of myriad surveillance tasks.

In addition, the official told Reuters that the naval assets “can be used to not just carry out intelligence and surveillance operations, but also as a launching pad for targeted strikes if a decision is made.”

On Tuesday, however, a US Department of Defense official told CNN there were no U.S. warships in the area, nor have the ships received orders to head there. We have reached out to the White House for clarification and will update this story with any pertinent details provided.

Meanwhile our friends at Task & Purpose (T&P) on Monday reported that the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) “set sail out of Naval Station Norfolk on Aug. 14. The force includes more than 4,500 sailors and Marines on three ships: The Wasp class amphibious assault ship, the USS Iwo Jima, and San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships the USS San Antonio and USS Fort Lauderdale.”

Though T&P noted that the Navy initially described the ARG/MEU movement as a “regularly scheduled deployment,” the outlet added that Reuters and CNN both reported that the Iwo Jima ARG was heading to the southern Caribbean as part of anti-drug trafficking efforts. 

“A defense official familiar with the situation confirmed those reports to Task & Purpose,” the outlet added.

The Iwo Jima ARG’s deployment was interrupted, however, when Hurricane Erin forced it back to Norfolk, USNI reported on Tuesday.

Maduro was indicted in a New York federal court in 2020, during the first Trump presidency. He and 14 others, including several close allies, were hit with federal charges of narco-terrorism and conspiracy with the Colombian FARC insurgent group to import cocaine. 

“For more than 20 years, Maduro and a number of high-ranking colleagues allegedly conspired with the FARC, causing tons of cocaine to enter and devastate American communities,” then-U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr said at the time.

Back then, the U.S. offered a $15 million reward for his arrest. It was later bumped up to $25 million and earlier this month, the Trump Justice Department announced it was increasing the reward to $50 million. In another action against Venezuelan cartels, Trump in February designated that nation’s Tren de Aragua, MS-13 in El Salvador and six groups based in Mexico as foreign terrorist organizations. His administration has also stepped up immigration enforcement against alleged gang members, including sending thousands of troops to the southern border.

While the nature of the U.S. military response is yet unknown, the deployment of an ARG and guided missile destroyers sends a very strong signal to Maduro. The Pentagon could carry out airstrikes, interdict shipments, or even put a limited number of boots on the ground from international waters in a hurry should Trump so decide.

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Certain elements of Jules Verne’s 1870 novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” have become a TV series, “Nautilus,” premiering Sunday on AMC, which picked up the show after Disney+, which ordered and completed it, let it drop. Created by James Dormer, it’s not an adaptation but a prequel, or an origin story, as the comic book kids like to say, in which Nemo, not yet captain, sets sail in his submarine for the first time.

Verne’s imaginative fiction has inspired more and less faithful screen adaptations since the days of silent movies. (Georges Méliès 1902 “A Trip to the Moon,” based partially on Verne’s 1865 “From the Earth to the Moon,” is accounted the first science-fiction film.) For a few midcentury years, perhaps inspired by the success of Disney’s own “20,000 Leagues” — a film they continue to exploit in its theme parks — and Mike Todd’s “Around the World in 80 Days,” it was almost a cottage industry: “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” “In Search of the Castaways,” “Five Weeks in a Balloon.” I grew up watching these films rerun on TV; they are corny and fun, as is “Nautilus,” with fancier effects, anticorporate sentiments and people of color.

We have seen Nemo played by James Mason, Michael Caine, Patrick Stewart, Ben Cross and Robert Ryan, but in “The Mysterious Island,” Verne’s sort-of sequel to “Twenty Thousand Leagues,” he identified Nemo as an Indian prince, as he is shown here, played by Shazad Latif, deposed by an imperial power, his wife and child murdered. The character is usually a bit of a madman, and this Nemo — pigheaded, bossy — is not wholly an exception, though he is also a young, smoldering, swashbuckling hero and a man more sinned against than sinning. We meet him as a prisoner of the British East India Mercantile Company, “the most powerful corporation to ever exist, more powerful than any country,” which is building the Nautilus in India with slave labor, in pursuit, says villainous company director Crawley (Damien Garvey), of “prying open and exploiting the Chinese market.” I’m not sure how a submarine is supposed to do that, but, eh, it’s a reason.

Nemo has been collaborating with the submarine’s inventor, Gustave Benoit (Thierry Frémont), who had accepted the corporation’s money under the promise that it would be used for exploration — scientists can be so dense. Nemo, whom the professor credits as the mind behind the ship’s engine, has his own use for the Nautilus and executes a hasty escape with a half-random crew of fellow inmates in a deftly staged sequence that borrows heavily from “Indiana Jones,” an inspirational well to which the series returns throughout.

And we’re off. On the agenda: escaping, revenge and finding buried treasure to finance revenge.

Joining the Nautilus crew are Loti (Céline Menville) and Humility (Georgia Flood).

(Vince Valitutti / Disney+)

When the Nautilus, hardly on its way, cripples the ship they’re traveling on — under the impression that the sub is under attack — the crew is joined, unwillingly, by Humility Lucas (Georgia Flood), a science-minded British socialite with super engineering skills, who is being packed off to Bombay to marry the abominable Lord Pitt (Cameron Cuffe). She’s accompanied by a chaperone/warder, Loti (Céline Menville), a Frenchwoman who has a mean way with a dagger, and cabin boy Blaster (Kayden Price). And a little dog too. Sparks obviously will fly between Nemo and Humility — bad sparks, then good sparks, as in an Astaire and Rogers movie — and there are actual sparks from a bad electrical connection Humility works out how to fix.

Apart from Benoit, Humility and Loti, a big fellow named Jiacomo (Andrew Shaw), who hails from nobody knows where and speaks a language no one understands, and a British stowaway, the crew of the Nautilus are all people of color — South Asian, Asian, Middle Eastern, African or Pacific Islander. Few are really developed as characters, but the actors give them life, and the supporting players carry the comedy, of which there’s a good deal. One episode inverts the tired old scenario in which white explorers are threatened with death by dark-skinned natives; here, the captors are Nordic warrior women. The show is anticolonial and anti-imperialist in a way that “Star Wars” taught audiences to recognize, if not necessarily recognize in the world around them, and anticapitalist in a way that movies have most always been. (The final episode, which has a financial theme, is titled “Too Big to Fail.” It is quite absurd.)

It can be slow at times, which is not inappropriate to a show that takes place largely underwater. But that its structure is essentially episodic keeps “Nautilus” colorful and more interesting than if it were simply stretched on the rack of a long arc across its 10 episodes. It’s a lot like (pre-streaming) “Star Trek,” which is, after all, a naval metaphor, its crew sailing through a hostile environment encountering a variety of monsters and cultures week to week; indeed, there are some similar storylines: the crew infected by a mystery spore, the ship threatened by tiny beasties and giant monsters, encounters with a tinpot dictator and semimythological figures — all the while being pursued by a Klingon Bird of Prey, sorry, a giant metal warship.

The greatest hits of underwater adventuring (some from Verne’s novel) are covered: volcanoes, giant squid, giant eel, engine trouble, running out of air and the ruins of a lost civilization (Is it Atlantis? Benoit hopes so). Less common: a cricket match on the ice. Apart from a pod of whales outside the window (and, later, a whale rescue), not a lot of time is devoted to the wonders of the sea — the special effects budget, which has in other respects been spent lavishly, apparently had no room left for schools of fish. But these submariners have other things on their minds.

The odds of a second season, says my cloudy crystal ball, are limited, so you may have to accommodate a few minor cliffhangers if you decide to watch. I did not at all regret the time I spent here, even though I sometimes had no idea what was going on or found it ridiculous when I did, as there was usually some stimulating activity or bit of scenery or detail of steampunk design to enjoy. I mean, I watched an episode of “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” recently, a 1960s submarine series, in which guest star John Cassavetes created a superbomb that could destroy three-quarters of the world, and almost nothing in it made any sense at all, including the presence of John Cassavetes. “Nautilus” is actually good.