More than 150 aircraft roared into action as U.S. carrier air wings and land-based squadrons launched a massive wave of strikes on key Venezuelan targets, in what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs described as one of the largest single-day air operations of his tenure. In a nationally broadcast statement, the Chairman said the mission, part of Operation Absolute Resolve, focused on an apprehension operation in Caracas and involved bombers, fighters, ISR platforms, and rotary-wing aircraft flying from roughly 20 bases and ships. Official White House photography from the Situation Room shows senior leaders tracking the strikes in real time, providing rare visual confirmation of how the administration managed the operation from Washington.
Escalation to Operation Absolute Resolve
The road to Operation Absolute Resolve began with a visible buildup of U.S. airpower in the Caribbean, including a surge of F-35 activity at the former naval station at Roosevelt Roads. According to detailed Context reporting from military.com, the Pentagon deployed F-35 fighters and a support footprint that included exactly 35 key personnel to Roosevelt Roads, reviving the Cold War era facility as a forward operating hub as tensions with Venezuela escalated. That presence signaled both a deterrent message and a practical staging point for aircraft that could later support deep precision strikes.
At sea, the carrier USS Gerald R. Ford moved into position to provide the kind of sustained air wing capacity that a 150-plus sortie package requires. Analysis of the carrier’s movements and deck activity, described in Context on the USS Gerald R. Ford, shows how its embarked squadrons were postured to conduct or enable precision attacks on Venezuelan targets. Taken together, the Roosevelt Roads deployments and the Gerald R. Ford’s approach created a layered posture that Helps explain how the United States could generate such a large strike force on short notice.
Execution of the Strikes
The operation shifted from buildup to execution when carrier decks and regional runways began launching the first wave of aircraft for Operation Absolute Resolve. In his official narrative of the mission, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said that “more than 150 aircraft” took part, including bombers, fighters, ISR platforms, and rotary-wing assets, flying from approximately 20 different bases and ships. That figure captures the scale of the sortie generation effort, with carrier air wings, land-based squadrons, and specialized enablers all synchronized into a single strike window.
The Chairman’s description also highlighted a heavy emphasis on electronic warfare and information dominance. According to his account, planners designed Operation Absolute Resolve with a deliberate layering of jamming, cyber, and ISR support to suppress Venezuelan defenses and protect the strike packages as they moved toward their targets. That approach matches the Pentagon’s broader trend toward integrating ISR and electronic effects into kinetic operations, and it helps explain how such a large formation could penetrate contested airspace long enough to hit land-based assets in and around Caracas.
Key Targets and Objectives
In public remarks, the Chairman framed Operation Absolute Resolve as an apprehension mission focused on Caracas, rather than a broad attempt to dismantle Venezuelan infrastructure. His Operation Absolute Resolve narrative emphasized that the primary targets were land-based assets linked to that apprehension objective, suggesting a priority on command nodes, safe houses, and security elements that could shield or move high-value individuals. The decision to employ more than 150 aircraft for what was described as an apprehension mission underscores how seriously the Joint Chiefs treated the risk of resistance or interference from Venezuelan forces.
That risk was not theoretical. A dedicated aviation bulletin from a regional Regulator explicitly warned that U.S. military strikes were targeting land-based assets in Venezuela and that such activity carried a high probability of air-defense and SAM activation. The bulletin cautioned that Venezuelan surface-to-air systems could misidentify civil aircraft and that the engagement envelopes of those SAM systems might spill over into neighboring flight information regions, specifically San Juan, Curacao, and Piarco FIRs. Those warnings show how a mission framed around a single city, Caracas, still had implications for a much wider swath of regional airspace.
Aviation and Regional Risks
Well before the first bombs fell, the FAA had already flagged Venezuelan airspace as a growing concern for civilian pilots. A detailed Major report on FAA advisories described how the agency warned operators about worsening security conditions and heightened military activity in and around Venezuela, including specific references to navigation interference such as GPS jamming and spoofing. Those FAA warnings, issued with clear effective dates, framed Venezuelan skies as an environment where both deliberate interference and state-level military moves were eroding the margin of safety for commercial traffic.
European regulators followed with their own caution. An Official EASA newsroom announcement explained that EASA had issued a conflict-zone information bulletin, or CZIB, for Venezuela, advising European operators to monitor the evolution of risks in that airspace. The underlying EASA CZIB text, referenced in that Evidence chain, laid out concerns about military activity, potential misidentification, and the possibility that conflict-related hazards could extend beyond Venezuelan borders. Together, the FAA and EASA actions show that aviation regulators were already treating Venezuela as a conflict-adjacent airspace even before Operation Absolute Resolve fully unfolded.
Official Oversight and Response
Back in Washington, civilian oversight mechanisms moved quickly to assert a role in scrutinizing the operation. The Senate Armed Services Committee convened a closed briefing on Operation Absolute Resolve, with an Official committee record listing witnesses that included the Director, Joint Staff, deputy directors for special operations and global operations, and the Assistant Secretary of Defense (ASD) for cyber policy. The presence of those specific Joint Staff and ASD officials signals that Congress expected to hear not just about the kinetic strikes, but also about special operations integration and the cyber elements that supported the mission.
Inside the White House, the executive branch’s own oversight played out in front of cameras. A curated set of Official White House images shows the president and senior national security aides gathered in a Situation Room setting as Operation Absolute Resolve unfolded. The metadata attached to that Situation Room photography helps verify who was in the room during key decision points and provides a timeline for when the administration monitored specific phases of the strikes. For an operation of this scale, those images function as both historical record and a public signal that top leadership was directly engaged.
Why It Matters Now
The intensity of the carrier air wing strikes and the breadth of the supporting aircraft raise questions that go beyond a single apprehension mission in Caracas. The FAA’s earlier warnings about worsening Venezuelan security conditions, documented in the Major coverage of its advisory, framed the country as a zone where state fragility, armed actors, and military posturing were already converging. Operation Absolute Resolve added a large-scale U.S. air campaign on top of that volatile mix, increasing the chances that miscalculation or technical failure could affect civilian traffic or third-country forces operating nearby.
Regional neighbors now have to grapple with the spillover risks that regulators flagged in advance. The Regulator bulletin’s concern about SAM activation and potential misidentification in San Juan, Curacao, and Piarco FIRs, reinforced by the EASA CZIB for Venezuela, suggests that carriers serving Caribbean hubs and northern South America may face elevated risk levels for some time. In my view, the combination of large U.S. strike packages, Venezuelan air defenses on alert, and fragile civil aviation infrastructure creates a regional security problem that will not end when the last aircraft from Operation Absolute Resolve returns to base.
Uncertainties and Next Steps
Despite the scale of the strikes and the visibility of the White House response, key questions about Operation Absolute Resolve remain unanswered. The Chairman’s public account focused on the objectives and the composition of the more than 150 aircraft involved, but it did not spell out the extent of physical damage to Venezuelan targets or confirm whether the apprehension mission in Caracas achieved its ultimate aim. Likewise, none of the available records provide a detailed picture of Venezuelan retaliation, beyond the general expectation of SAM activation and air-defense readiness captured in the Regulator bulletin and the EASA conflict-zone documents.
That information gap puts additional pressure on formal oversight channels. The Senate briefing record shows that Congress has direct access to the Director, Joint Staff and the ASD for cyber policy, among others, who are in a position to clarify battle damage assessments, civilian risk mitigation, and the cyber and electronic warfare measures used to shield the strike packages. Further detailed disclosures from the Department of Defense about target selection, proportionality reviews, and post-strike monitoring would help the public and allies understand how Operation Absolute Resolve balanced its apprehension objective in Caracas with the broader obligation to protect civil aviation and regional stability.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
