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As the U.S. continues to raise the heat on Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, online flight trackers tonight have noticed several F/A-18 Super Hornets and a U.S. Air Force RC-135V Rivet Joint electronic surveillance plane flying close to the South American nation’s coastline. A U.S. official told us these flights are part of the pressure campaign ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump against Maduro and specifically to test Venezuela’s air defense capabilities and response times. This is a staple tactic that is critical to assessing the status, locations, operating procedures, and sensitivity of an enemy’s defenses. The data garnered is especially critical for planning offensive operations.

You can catch up with our most recent coverage about what has been dubbed Operation Southern Spear in our story here.

“They are normal operational training flights from the aircraft carrier USS Ford and platforms performing training exercises,” the official told us. “They are also testing Venezuelan sensors and responses, and it is part of the pressure campaign to show U.S. capabilities in the Caribbean.”

In addition to the Super Hornets and Rivet Joint, spotters also tracked B-52H Superfortress bombers in the region as well. The flight is the latest in a series of bomber sorties that have been flying near Venezuela since October 15.

“For operational security reasons, we do not comment on the movement of aircraft supporting ongoing operations,” an Air Force Southern Command spokesperson told us earlier today when we asked about the flights. “We refer you to the…press release for information about Operation Southern Spear and the Joint Task Force established to conduct the operation.”

The flights are part of a massive U.S. presence in the Caribbean for an operation that was ostensibly launched to counter the flow of narcotics into the U.S. but has morphed into a huge show of force aimed at Maduro. In addition to the Ford, there are at least seven surface combatants, a special operations mothership, and several support vessels. There are also F-35B stealth fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, P-8 wartime patrol aircraft, AC-130 Ghostrider gunships, P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, among other assets, and about 15,000 U.S. personnel deployed to the region.

Thursday evening, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told OAN news that the looming designation of Cartel de los Soles as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, alleged to be headed by Maduro, “brings a whole bunch of new options to the United States.” That designation goes into effect on Nov. 24 unless challenged by Congress.

OAN to Air Exclusive Sit-Down Interview with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in Prime Time — Watch tonight at 5 pm EST, 7 pm EST, and 11 pm ESThttps://t.co/tdOmMHEBFZ

— One America News (@OANN) November 20, 2025

RC-135 Rivet Joints are no strangers to this part of the world, as we have written about in-depth before. But the aircraft’s arrival at this time, along with tactical fighters and bombers, and many other aircraft that do not show up on tracking systems, is of great interest. The fact that some of these aircraft are showing up on tracking sites at all is clearly a conscious choice in messaging. Even more so, the fact that a U.S. official confirmed the aircraft were stimulating Venezuelan defenses in order to gather critical intelligence is also a very rare admission. Such activities go back many years and happen around the globe regularly to this day to varying degrees of sophistication. But this appears to be a more complex operation, especially considering Venezuela is on high alert for an impending military operation. It’s worth noting that the RC-135 would also have had fighter cover for its collection mission, which could have been provided by USS Gerald R. Ford’s Super Hornets.

By gathering this type of intelligence, and the RC-135 is arguably the best asset on earth to do it, commanders have an up-to-date assessment of the enemy’s electronic order of battle. Once again, this includes the status, types, geolocations, tactics, and readiness of these systems. That intelligence is critical for planning strikes as it informs what air defenses need to be suppressed or destroyed in order for missiles and/or aircraft to best make it to their targets. It also directly dictates what routes those missiles and/or aircraft would take.

At this time, we have no indication that this is all prelude to an actual offensive military operation that strikes into Venezuela, but it is certainly one indicator. And that may very well be the point, as it puts extreme pressure on Maduro, signaling that his reality could shift dramatically in the coming days.

For both tactical and psychological operations reasons, it won’t be surprising if the RC-135 and its fighter escorts and ‘stimulators’ don’t become a relatively common sight off the Venezuelan coast over the coming days.

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Images show that a large tiltrotor drone called the R6000, being developed by United Aircraft in China, has now entered flight testing. The design notably features swiveling rotors that are extremely similar to the ones found on Bell’s V-280 Valor. United Aircraft says it is working on uncrewed and crewed versions of the R6000, primarily for civilian applications, but that also have clear military potential.

Imagery of what is said to be the first tethered hover test of the R6000 first began circulating on social media yesterday, but when exactly the milestone was reached is unknown. Just over a year ago, a picture emerged showing the first completed prototype at the Wuhu United Aircraft Production Workshop in the Wuhu Aviation Industrial Park in China’s eastern Anhui province. United Aircraft unveiled the design, also referred to as the UR6000 and Zhang Ying (or Steel Shadow), at the 2024 Singapore Airshow.

The images of the hover test show various parts of the aircraft stripped down, as well as it lashed to the ground at four points. Tethered hover testing is a common element of initial flight envelope expansion for vertical takeoff and landing designs, especially larger uncrewed ones. Doing so to start offers an additional margin of safety.

The tilting rotor assemblies are notably exposed, but also blurred out in the newly emerged imagery. As mentioned, the design of the R6000’s swiveling rotors looks to be heavily inspired by, if not copied directly from the V-280. The U.S. Army’s future MV-75A tiltrotor, also known as the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA), is a derivative of the V-280. When Bell first showed the V-280 demonstrator, it also blurred out parts of the rotor assemblies.

Bell has also shown renderings of other tiltrotor concepts in recent years with somewhat similarly configured rotors and nacelles, where only a portion actually pivots up and down. This is distinct from most other tiltrotor concepts, including the U.S. V-22 Osprey, with nacelles that rotate as a complete unit, or even have fully articulating wings.

The rotor and nacelle arrangement seen on the V-280 and now the R6000 is said to offer benefits in terms of reduced complexity and increased reliability, as well as a boost in general performance. Tiltrotor designs are famously complicated, and the V-22’s checkered record is a testament to the challenges this can present. At the same time, tiltrotors offer similar point-to-point flexibility to traditional helicopters, but with the range and speed of a fixed-wing turboprop.

United Aircraft’s website does provide dimensions and other specifications for the R6000, putting it at just under 39 feet long and with a total width (including the wings and rotors) of around 57 feet. The expected maximum takeoff weight is near 13,450 pounds, and it is designed to be able to cruise at just under 297 knots. A maximum range of around 2,485 miles and a mission radius (with an unspecified load) of 932 miles are also projected.

However, it is unclear whether the specifications apply to the uncrewed or crewed version of the design, or both. The specifications do describe a design, broadly speaking, in the same category as the crewed AW609 tiltrotor being developed by Leonardo in Italy, and in a class below the V-22.

United Aircraft has been presenting the R6000’s crewed and uncrewed variations as ideal for moving commercial cargo and as VIP transports, among other non-military roles. A design like this could be well-suited for aeromedical evacuation, especially if it features a pressurized main cabin, and aerial firefighting tasks, as well.

As TWZ discussed in earlier reporting on the R6000, the design also has clear military potential. A tiltrotor design, crewed or uncrewed, that can fly at approaching 300 knots and with a combat radius nearing 1,000 miles would offer a new way to support People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces at far-flung locations that have limited access via conventional airstrips. For years now, Chinese aviation companies have been pushing ahead with the development of a growing number of fixed-wing logistics drones, which are dependent on at least some form of runway. The PLA has a particularly significant requirement to move cargo and personnel around a constellation of island outposts in the South China Sea. Militarized versions of the R6000 could also support day-to-day operations in other parts of the Pacific, as well as remote locales within China, especially near disputed border areas.

R6000s could also support a variety of PLA expeditionary operational scenarios, including regional ones like an intervention against Taiwan, or missions further from the country’s shores. The design’s payload capacity would open the door to configurations capable of missions beyond logistics, including surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare, signal relay, or even potentially kinetic strike. Tiltotors like the R6000 would also be especially well-suited to operations from the PLA Navy’s growing fleets of big-deck amphibious assault ships. This includes the Sichuan, so far the only example of the super-sized Type 076 design, which just completed its first three-day sea trial.

The R6000 is also just one of several tiltrotor designs, crewed and uncrewed, not in development in China. Just today, a picture said to show another, smaller uncrewed design from United Aircraft emerged online, details about which are currently scant. Pictures showing flight testing of another crewed tiltrotor design, possibly being developed by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), also appeared on social media earlier this year. There are some broad parallels here to recent tiltrotor developments in the United States, which go beyond Bell’s aforementioned V-280 and the V-22.

If nothing else, the start of R6000 flight testing is another example of the continued push by Chinese companies to enter the tiltrotor market space with designs that could be attractive for various military and non-military roles.

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Nov. 6 (UPI) — President Donald Trump’s calls to ramp up nuclear weapons testing last week have put nuclear watchdogs and world leaders on alert while experts say the United States has little to gain.

In a post on Truth Social on Oct. 29, Trump said he is ordering the Department of Defense to immediately begin testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis.” What this means remains unclear, though Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in an appearance on FOX News these would not be full-scale explosive tests.

“These are not nuclear explosions,” Wright said. “These are what we call non-critical explosions.”

The comment by Wright echoes the stance Brandon Williams, under secretary of energy for Nuclear Security in the Department of Energy, shared during his Senate confirmation hearing in May. Williams said testing nuclear weapons above the criticality threshold would not be advisable.

According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor, the United States possesses more than 5,000 nuclear weapons. It has performed 1,054 explosive nuclear tests, more than any other country.

The type of testing the president is calling for is an important distinction to make, Dylan Spaulding, senior scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told UPI. The delivery systems of nuclear weapons and the components of the weapons are commonly tested.

Subcritical tests are also performed. These are tests that do not yield a sustained nuclear reaction that would cause an explosion.

“He did mention testing on an equal basis,” Spaulding said. “If that’s the case, in fact the United States already does conduct all the kinds of tests of our nuclear delivery systems and even the components of the weapons themselves that other countries do.”

The United States and most of the rest of the world, aside from North Korea, have refrained from full-scale nuclear weapons testing for more than 30 years. In 1993, the United States signed a unilateral moratorium on explosive testing under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Breaking from the treaty is likely to open the door to escalation in the form of other countries, including adversaries like China and Russia, openly testing nuclear explosives, Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, told UPI.

“What if those countries decided that maybe this is a cue for them to test?” Sokolski said. “Would that provoke any of the larger states that signed [the treaty] but didn’t ratify to test?”

The only country to break from the agreement in this treaty is North Korea, conducting six nuclear tests concluding in 2017.

Sokolski argues that the United States has the least to gain by breaking the moratorium and setting off a precedent for open nuclear weapons testing. The United States’ research in the field is extensive, beyond that of any other country. Other countries, such as Russia, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea stand to benefit the most from more explosive research while the United States would likely gain little more knowledge.”

“I spend a lot of time talking to weapons designers about this. You don’t test for reliability testing generally,” Sokolski said. “That requires 10 to 20 datapoints. That means 10 to 20 tests of each design. That seems kind of wasteful. You don’t design to prove things you’ve already proven.”

“If you’re doing a design that is totally radical, that’s something different, but we’re not,” he continued. “We’re fiddling with yield-to-weight ratios. There are countries like Israel who have tested once, in 1979, one test. Are you telling me their stockpile is unreliable and doesn’t work? If you want to make weapons you can do it very cheaply and quickly without testing.”

Spaulding agrees that full-scale testing is not necessary, adding that scientists continue to analyze data from the repository of the United States’ nuclear weapons testing history.

“We are still learning from those underground tests,” he said. “Other countries don’t have that advantage right now but we would be essentially giving them permission to catch up by returning to testing.

The argument for more live-testing of nuclear weapons capabilities is that it can insure and assure that the stockpile of weapons is reliable.

The United States has the Stockpile Stewardship Program that already tests the reliability and safety of its nuclear weapons. Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told UPI the scientific community is “very confident” in the program.

While the United States is one of only nine countries that have not ratified the treaty, it is legally bound as a signatory to not violate the object or purpose of the agreement, Kimball said. He is doubtful that this will deter Trump.

Of the 1,054 explosive nuclear tests performed by the United States, 928 have been conducted at the Nevada Nuclear Site in south-central Nevada about 65 miles outside of Las Vegas. The site is the only candidate for hosting further nuclear testing, according to experts.

The last explosive test was conducted in 1992 before the United States began observing the international moratorium.

Past tests at the site yielded observable health and environmental impacts on residents of the region and beyond.

“Anyone born in ’63 or earlier, they were exposed to some level of strontium 90, which was showing up in the baby teeth of American children in the 50s and 60s,” Kimball said. “It accumulates in the teeth because you drink milk and it gets concentrated in the teeth.”

The United States joined the Soviet Union and United Kingdom in the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, in part because of the baby teeth study. The treaty banned nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater.

Subjects of the baby teeth study were children in the St. Louis area, more than 1,600 miles from the Nevada nuclear test site.

With the atmospheric testing ban in place, explosive testing was moved underground in deep boreholes. This was meant to limit nuclear fallout, lessening environmental and health implications.

The vertical testing shafts are reinforced to limit geological impacts but the powerful explosions still generate fractures in the earth and the leakage of radionuclides, a hazardous radioactive material.

People who lived downwind of the Nevada test site, known as downwinders, have experienced higher than average rates of cancer.

“These downwinders, in their second generation, they’re still suffering from some of these adverse health effects,” Kimball said. “They are particularly angry. Trump’s announcement is a slap in the face to them as they see it. They want to see all forms of testing, above and below ground, concluded.”

Restarting full-scale testing would be no small task, Sokolski said. What he refers to as a “quick and dirty” test, one that provides an explosion but little in the way of research, would take months and millions of dollars to prepare.

“To get data, depending on how much data, we could be talking about one to two years and much, much more money, maybe approaching a higher order of magnitude, a billion [dollars],” Sokolski said. “Those stumbling blocks are the ones of interest.”