Landing helicopters off a carrier in an enemy capital and extracting a high value target in less than 4 hours without American casualties that we know of.
It's possible we had inside help, but damn, we certainly weren't able do the same with Osama, Noriega, Saddam, or even Fidel who lived 100 miles away
Looking at it purely from an operations stand point not a legal or political view, this was an insane operation that went off with barely a hitch. I find it very hard to believe though that there wasn't inside help or the Venezuelan military is truly and utterly inept.
There probably was some level of the Venezuelan military just not wanting to fight for Maduro, but it also is partially because civilian military analysts were drastically wrong in Venezuelas military capabilities, as well as the capabilities of the Russian equipment given to them.
Turns out, the US absolutely owns the night still and our technological advantage is still decades ahead of Russia.
There was definitely some level of coordination, but it's not like spies and collaborators are uncommon in other theaters.
If you ain’t cheating you ain’t trying
Maduro was noted for switching sleeping arrangements every night to avoid enemies. He for sure was sold out.
This!
Blowing up a civilian residence is a pretty fucking big hitch though. I'm very curious as to what happened there.
Edit: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/01/07/inside-the-strike-the-us-munition-that-hit-a-residential-building-in-venezuela/
Are you capable of linking a source that says a civilian residence was blown up, because even CNN, AP news, and ABC are reporting that there were 0 civilian casualties with Higoerote Airport being the only civilian target as it had military assets positioned there.
There are plenty of images of it?
Here's an NBC bit on it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mSW_hEsmAzs
Then link them, because the photos I've seen are of destroyed military assets with no houses being destroyed.
Man that was fast, I edited in a link shortly after posting. Most major news outlets had something on the topic.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mSW_hEsmAzs
Here's a more in depth analysis from Bellingcat
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/01/07/inside-the-strike-the-us-munition-that-hit-a-residential-building-in-venezuela/
Remnants of a missile were found
I give you props of actually backing your claims. If the reported death is true, then it looks like even left leaning sources jumped the gun in reporting civilian casualties.
Every civilian death is a loss for the US reputation.
In this case, it's legitimately a larger hit to Maduro and his militaries reputation. It doesn't completely absolve the US of sin, but we know US weapons have an insane level of accuracy and as the second link eludes to, there likely was a military target near the apartment complex because we also know Maduro doesn't care about civilian life.
If the military remains competent isn't that a validation of the leadership, i.e. Hegseth and Trump?
It’s more a testament to how efficient and professional we are, despite their side quests and ineptitude. It makes me sad that these two dipshits have the most powerful military the world has ever seen at their disposal. But like everything else they touch. It too will degrade and turn to shit eventually.
Probably. Think about the moment that birthed modern SOCOM/JSOC. The failed rescue of the hostages on Iran. Ever since then, SOCOM has been training like madmen to go into a hostile country, get some people that the natives do not want to be taken out of there, and then leave. I'd be surprised if there isn't a detailed plan for how to snatch up any high value target imaginable.
The Bin Laden raid was only botched because of problems with an experimental aircraft. Even then they were able to adjust on the fly and still successfully complete the mission.
I thought it was a wall that they’d rehearsed as a fence…
Matt Bisonette discussed it on SRS. Essentially had to do with the atmospheric changes where the compound was, the weight of the stealth blackhawks, and the downdraft due to the atmospheric changes of landing in/near the compound walls.
Little of column A, little of column B, then!
Well, that would still track with it being a wall vs training on a fence. Downwash hits a wall instead of a fence and can't flow through. Comes back up right into the rotor disk and boom, turbulent flow that fucks up the hover and sets up a vortex ring state. So yeah, those are both 100% right.
From an operations standpoint it was extremely impressive no doubt
Only the military deserves credit. Politicians may have ordered it, but the military did 100% of the actual planning and execution. The major issue that follows all military actions, is “what’s next?”. That’s the diplomatic and political element of power in these situations. And that will fail.
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We have to give him credit: he finally managed to keep from spilling the beans on Signal before the operation.
That's my point, exactly.
To step back and let the experts do their job is a skill i didn't think they possessed. It's very hard for a narcissist to not be in the limelight.
Trump even selects the gold paint on the walls of the White House, yet he didn't interfere in a military operation.
Yeah dude.
What Id like is an answer from every single GO that has been advocating to strip SOF of resources because they believe the next LSCO fight, where the US is taking down near peers, will be tanks maneuvering with SOF providing limited support and the era of black helicopters landing on rooftops was something that could only work in a place like Afghanistan and never against a country with even limited air defense systems. Seems like maybe they’re full of shit and just trying to pad massive budgets for antiquated formations that haven’t been relevant since the invention of the nuclear bomb.
Lol what? Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Army will have near-zero play during the next high-end fight (China). It will be almost exclusively maritime in nature.
I never mentioned service at all, this was a joint operation; you missed the point. If we’re fighting china in high warfare the amount of ships or the number of tanks will not matter as the entire globe is absorbed by a nuclear holocaust and everything we know is obliterated. My argument is that we are posturing resources for a fight that will never happen, and if it does, it won’t matter because everyone’s destruction is assured, instead of posturing resources to support the exact thing we saw in Venezuela, something that we will actually do and something that only SOF can do. Meanwhile, SOF is being cut to the absolute bone in the name of building a force that was antiquated the day we split the atom.
I'm a sitting CO of a SOF unit.
Sorry dude, but you have no clue what you're talking about and literally none of what you just said makes sense.
Navy guy goes 100% for a navy fight against China.....seems predictable.
I would bet though, over the next 15 years, our likelihood of going toe to toe against China is much less than another insurgency or terrorism colored engagement.
Has nothing to do with me being Navy and everything to do with understanding the geopolitical context of the China-Taiwan situation and spending most of my career training to it.
You're also incorrect on your latter point, too.
Damn dude is the appeal to authority fallacy your default mode?
Sure hope you're talking to your battle buddy and not me.
Talking to you man. Counter the actual arguments, don’t just appeal to your bonafides. We’re all SOF commanders here.
Except you're not.
Got it...you spend your career training on the conflict your service is oriented to...
Sure seems like the current administration's geopolitical posture is that Taiwan is in China's realm to decide.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5680576-trump-taiwan-china-military-threat/amp/
We arent exactly in the support our allies mode right now. Sell 10 million casualties to the US right now to defend Taiwan...
I just dont see that happening.
Trump has no clue where he is most of the time and the majority of his cabinet are wildly incompetent sycophants.
If you're not taking them with the largest grain of salt ever, you certainly should be.
Military service transcends administrations... this is my 6th.
Yep....23 years, so far, I got it, things change...
The Navy isn't going to dislodge the 73rd Group Army from an urban zone outside of Taipei exclusively through fires.
Me too buddy
Sorry but why would the next lsco have much to do with tanks??
Has any American been quoted as NOT in support of the troops? I haven’t seen any coverage, depriving the military of their credit.
I definitely don’t support any of the assholes that took part in this completely illegal kidnapping/abduction of a sovereign nation’s president.
Four hours of execution, months of planning, work-ups, contingency planning and let’s not forget it was done by dudes who are the most dedicated warriors the world has ever seen.
I can't see any other military in the world to be able to pull such mission.
In terms of the scale and capability of assets actually used in the strike op, UK and France could have done it. US SEAD capability is way better than theirs but they both have the platforms and capabilities to execute the mission as the US did.
I doubt they could have done it alone. The number of aircraft the US had forward stationed alone puts it out of their league.
The French might be able to pull it off out of Guiana but there really isn't a single other country in the world that has that kind of power projection from sea.
Britan still has the virgin islands
This subreddit has been getting brigaded by Reddit activists for the last two years but fuck yes this operation was a masterpiece. No Americans dead yet over 30 elite Cuban guards killed in the gunfight? We just fuckin snatched the dictator like that? It was a masterstroke and yea I fapped to it sue me.
Impressive as hell, tbh.
Extremely impressive, no US losses, a perfect mission nobody else could do.
Super efficient, totally illegal and shortsighted.
But that's the thing, you cannot separate the operation from the politics, because the politics changes everything about the operation. On a technical level, coordination appears to have been perfect, no friendly fire incidents, no visible technical problems (like loss of helicopter in the Bin Laden raid), and very competent, professional work all around. But what exactly was the nature of the operation and the resistance in Venezuela makes all the difference in terms of what the operation actually was.
While it sounds like a conspiracy theory, everything has happened according to the plot revealed by Miami Herald in October 2025. Rodriguez and her brother had already been in talks with the USA, trying to make a deal to preserve Chavismo without Maduro. Part of the deal was to also sideline opposition leader María Machado, the clear winner of the ignored elections, because she was "too principled" to go along with the deal. USA was to be paid in oil, in return for keeping the regime in place and sidelining the opposition.
All this was revealed several months ago and all this happened. Further, we currently know that from the 40-100 people killed in the operation, 32 were Cuban security forces, something like Maduro's praetorian guard who could have caused trouble for the Rodriguez takeover. That's quite a precise attack on just the small part of the military that was on Maduro's side.
Put together, it seems that the whole thing was an inside plot and the operation largely, but not fully theatre. The Cubans were still an unknown element, and possibly other Maduro loyalists. However, it looks like Maduro had already been betrayed by Rodriguez and USA was called in to do the dirty work.
As with all of these "Trump Wars", there's again the feeling that things are not quite how they look. There's a lot of sound and fury, a big media push to sell the story of a unilateral US operation where special forces and high tech win the day like in some Hollywood movie. Yet the details always tell a different story. Here, the report from Miami Herald, which is real, anyone can read it, it sounds like a conspiracy theory, yet is in line with what happened.
The other "Trump War" was bombing Iran. There were reports of Iran being given advance warning, and the bunker busters hit precisely enough to not quite destroy the sites but simply to push the problem forward. With Iran and Israel being at each others' throats, the bombings gave Iran a way to stand down while saving face, and removed Netanyahu's use of the nuclear program as a cause for war. Both sides immediately stood down, the operation was sold as a victory for B2 stealth and high tech bunker busters, yet there were all these details that make it look more like theatre than actual war.
Trump doesn't like war. Make no mistake, he likes killing people, like the smugglers when they cannot resist. But ultimately he's too worried about his own safety to take real risks. Thus, all these operations give the strange feeling of being scripted, of being mostly theatre. He is a showman, so it stands to reason he would use theatrics and illusions more than direct power to fight his battles.
That's the thing. It's too perfect. It doesn't fit with anything we know of trying to forcibly overthrow a dictatorship, even a third world one with old military technology (Cuba is a good example). You see this, and then you see the Miami Herald report, and the aftermath going along just like the plot predicted, and you can't help wonder if this was more about theatrics than combat.
This is spot on. The administration wanted to portray this action as "we can roll up anywhere in the world with overwhelming military power at a moment's notice and do whatever we want." It makes their threats more believable. But anybody with high level planning or Intel experience can see how much inside info and cooperation, not to mention months of planning and prep, went into this to make it work so smoothly.
I didn't know about the Miami Herald piece but it doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
Was discussing this with some coworkers.. the political side is an absolute ass sandwhich and it never should have happened, but the operations side is impressive as hell
Of course.
The thing for me that's really hard to discern is whether or not it was such a large force because it needed to be to succeed...
Or whether it was essentially a large capability show for an establishment regime that is obsessed with military dominance and wanting to do shows of force but used oversized resources.
I think we can actually lean in a little bit of both camps.
There was 150,000 marines on standby during the operation for a boots on the ground assault if the extraction team got KIA or captured. No one talks about this, but hackers from the US Cyber Command shut off their power causing a blackout while the growlers jammed their defense capabilities. Then Delta Force went in and killed all the cuban bodyguards in close quarters after breaching the door. Theres footage on gore sites that show the bodies of the guards and most have headshot wounds. One heli was hit and 7 soldiers injured so it wasn't perfect but it sure was badass!
*Tiny clap* It twas an excellently executed operation. I am very proud of our soldiers.
Still an illegal war and kidnapping.
The US military deserves massive credit. It is an amazing organization built over decades of dedicated service.
However, it would get more credit here if there was more evidence of resistance.
The current US Admin is headed up by a former Reality TV Game Show Host obsessed with ratings, makeup, and personal awards while the DoD ("DoW") is headed up by a former FOX Friend Weekend Host (who also felt a need to immediately add a makeup room to his new office). These guys love any spotlight focused on them (as long as it makes them look really good).
I would love to hear anyone effectively counter the statement that this admin is comfortable, publicly telling self-promoting half truths and lies, of any size and scope.
Given that, would it be a surprise to anyone if this operation had a propaganda based staging element to it?
No politics. Got a participate in a training mission with some bad mfs a few years back. They came through and wiped Op4 up in minutes. It wasn’t even fair. Those cats are spectacular.
If I were a PLA planner, I would be taking copious notes and updating plans for how I'd want zero-hour of the Taiwan invasion to unfold.
Yes. The execution of that operation was incredible. The legality and strategic benefits not so much.
Yes, they did an amazing job right there. Right or wrong, true props to our military.