US sends world’s largest warship towards Caribbean as it ramps up military presence

The US is deploying the world’s largest warship towards the Caribbean, marking a major escalation in what it says is a campaign to target drug traffickers.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier, which can carry up to 90 aircraft, to move from the Mediterranean on Friday.

The US has been increasing its military presence in the Caribbean in recent weeks, and it now includes eight other warships, a nuclear submarine as well as F-35 aircraft.

It has carried out airstrikes on boats it says belong to drug traffickers, including on Friday when Hegseth said “six male narco-terrorists” had been killed.

That operation took place in the Caribbean Sea, against a ship Hegseth said belonged to the Tren de Aragua criminal organisation.

The strikes have drawn condemnation in the region and experts have questioned their legality. The Trump administration says it is conducting a war on drug trafficking, but it has also been accused by experts and members of Congress of launching an intimidation campaign that seeks to destabilise the government of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro.

Maduro is a longtime foe of Trump, and the US president has accused him of being the leader of a drug-trafficking organisation, which he denies.

“This is about regime change. They’re probably not going to invade, the hope is this is about signalling,” Dr Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at the Chatham House think tank, told the BBC.

He argued the military build-up is intended to “strike fear” in the hearts of the Venezuelan military and Maduro’s inner circle so that they move against him.

In its Friday announcement, the Pentagon said the USS Gerald R Ford carrier would deploy to the US Southern Command area of responsibility, which includes Central America and South America as well as the Caribbean.

The additional forces “will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle TCOs”, or transnational criminal organisations, spokesman Sean Parnell said.

The carrier’s deployment would provide the resources to start conducting strikes against targets on the ground. Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of what he called “land action” in Venezuela.

“We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” he said earlier this week.

It comes as CNN reports Trump is considering targeting cocaine facilities and drug trafficking routes inside Venezuela, but is yet to make a final decision.

The aircraft carrier last publicly transmitted its location three days ago off the coast of Croatia, in the Adriatic Sea.

Its deployment marks a significant escalation in the US military buildup in the region. It is also likely to increase tensions with Venezuela, whose government Washington has long accused of harbouring drug traffickers.

The carrier’s large aircraft load can include jets and planes for transport and reconnaissance. Its first long-term deployment was in 2023.

It is unclear which vessels will accompany it when it moves to the region, but it can operate as part of a strike group that includes destroyers carrying missiles and other equipment.

The US has carried out a series of strikes on boats in recent weeks, in what President Donald Trump has described as an effort to curtail drug trafficking.

The strike announced on Friday was the 10th tenth the Trump administration has carried out against alleged drug traffickers since early September. Most have taken place off of South America, in the Caribbean, but on 21 and 22 October it carried out strikes in the Pacific Ocean.

Members of US Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have raised concerns about the legality of the strikes and the president’s authority to order them.

On 10 September, 25 Democratic US senators wrote to the White House and alleged the administration had struck a vessel days earlier “without evidence that the individuals on the vessel and the vessel’s cargo posed a threat to the United States”.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican, has argued that such strikes require congressional approval.

Trump said he has the legal authority to order the strikes, and has designated Tren de Aragua a terrorist organisation.

“We’re allowed to do that, and if we do [it] by land, we may go back to Congress,” Trump told White House reporters on Wednesday.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio added that “if people want to stop seeing drug boats blow up, stop sending drugs to the United States”.

The six deaths in the operation Hegseth announced on Friday brings the total people killed in the US strikes to at least 43.