WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military has amassed an unusually large force in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off the coast of Venezuela since this summer, when the Trump administration first began to shift assets to the region as part of its anti-drug trafficking operations.
In all, U.S. Southern Command says there are around 15,000 personnel operating in the area, in the largest military buildup in the region in generations.
It is part of the Trump administration's escalating pressure campaign on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has been charged with narco-terrorism in the U.S., and includes a series of strikes on alleged drug-running boats that have killed more than 100 people since early September.
Here is a look at the ships, planes and troops in the region:
The Navy has 11 warships in the region — the nation's largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, as well as five destroyers, three amphibious assault ships, and two cruisers.
The three amphibious assault ships make up an amphibious readiness group and carry an expeditionary unit of Marines. As a result, those ships also have on board a variety of Marine helicopters, Osprey tilt rotor aircraft and Harrier jets that have the capability of either transporting large numbers of Marines or striking targets on land and sea.
The USS Ford has multiple squadrons of fighter jets as well as other aircraft and helicopters.
While officials have not offered specific numbers, destroyers and cruisers typically deploy with a missile loadout that contains Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can strike hundreds of miles from their launch point.
A U.S. Navy submarine also is operating in the broader area of South America and is capable of carrying and launching cruise missiles.
A squadron of advanced U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II jets has been sent to an airstrip in Puerto Rico. The planes were first spotted landing on the island territory in mid-September.
More recently, U.S. Navy EA-18G “Growler” electronic warfare jets were photographed flying out of Puerto Rico.
MQ-9 Reaper Air Force drones, capable of flying long distances and carrying up to eight laser-guided missiles, also have been spotted operating out of Puerto Rico by commercial satellites and military watchers, as well as photojournalists, around the same time in September.
It has been widely reported that the Navy also is operating P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft out of the region.
In October, the military released a photo of a U.S. Air Force AC-130J Ghostrider, a heavily armed plane capable of firing its large guns with precision onto ground targets, sitting on the tarmac in Puerto Rico.
There has been a multitude of other military aircraft that have temporarily flown through the region as part of military operations there.
The U.S. Air Force has repeatedly flown B-52 Stratofortress and B-1 Lancer bombers to the region in what the Pentagon has said were training flights. However, at least one such flight was dubbed a “bomber attack demo” in photos online.
Recently, the U.S. military also flew a pair of F/A-18 fighter jets over the Gulf of Venezuela in what appears to be the closest American warplanes have come to the South American country’s airspace since the start of the campaign.
The gulf is bounded by Venezuela and only about 150 miles (240 kilometers) at its widest point. The planes spent more than 30 minutes flying in the area.
All told, about 15,000 personnel are in the region, with nearly 10,000 being the sailors and Marines aboard the warships. U.S. Southern Command refused to offer any formal breakdown of the total figure, citing operational security.
Lt. Col. Emanuel Ortiz, a spokesperson for Southern Command, said in an email that the total figure “includes all military services and government civilians in support of this mission.”
The Pentagon has not offered specific numbers on how many drones, aircraft or ground crew are in the region, so their impact on that broader figure is unknown.
FILE - In this photo provided by the U.S. Navy, the USS Gerald R. Ford embarked on the first of its sea trials to test various state-of-the-art systems on its own power for the first time, April 8, 2017, from Newport News, Va. (Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ridge Leoni/U.S. Navy via AP, File)
The seal is seen on a podium at the Pentagon, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025, in Washington, before Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s “blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers off Venezuela’s coast is raising new questions about the legality of his military campaign in Latin America, while fueling concerns that the U.S. could be edging closer to war.
The Trump administration says its blockade is narrowly tailored and not targeting civilians, which would be an illegal act of war. But some experts say seizing sanctioned oil tied to leader Nicolás Maduro could provoke a military response from Venezuela, engaging American forces in a new level of conflict that goes beyond their attacks on alleged drug boats.
“My biggest fear is this is exactly how wars start and how conflicts escalate out of control,” said Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. “And there are no adults in the room with this administration, nor is there consultation with Congress. So I’m very worried.”
Claire Finkelstein, a professor of national security law at the University of Pennsylvania, said the use of such an aggressive tactic without congressional authority stretches the bounds of international law and increasingly looks like a veiled attempt to trigger a Venezuelan response.
“The concern is that we are bootstrapping our way into armed conflict,” Finkelstein said. “We’re upping the ante in order to try to get them to engage in an act of aggression that would then justify an act of self-defense on our part.”
Trump has used the word “blockade” to describe his latest tactic in an escalating pressure campaign against Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the U.S. and now has been accused of using oil profits to fund drug trafficking. While Trump said it only applies to vessels facing U.S. economic penalties, the move has sparked outrage among Democrats and mostly shrugs, if not cheers, from Republicans.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said Trump going after sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela is no different from targeting Iranian oil.
“Just like with the Iranian shadow tankers, I have no problem with that,” McCaul said. “They’re circumventing sanctions.”
The president has declared the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels in an effort to reduce the flow of drugs to American communities. U.S. forces have attacked 28 alleged drug-smuggling boats and killed at least 104 people since early September. Trump has repeatedly promised that land strikes are next, while linking Maduro to the cartels.
The campaign has drawn scrutiny in Congress, particularly after it was revealed that U.S. forces killed two survivors of a boat attack with a follow-up strike. But Republicans so far have repeatedly declined to require congressional authorization for further military action in the region, blocking Democrats' war powers resolutions.
Sen. Roger Wicker, Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, has essentially ended his panel’s investigation into the Sept. 2 strike, saying Thursday that the entire campaign is being conducted “on sound legal advice.”
Trump announced the blockade Tuesday, about a week after U.S. forces seized a sanctioned oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast. The South American country has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and relies heavily on the revenue to support its economy.
The U.S. has been imposing sanctions on Venezuela since 2005 over concerns about corruption as well as criminal and anti-democratic activities. The first Trump administration expanded the penalties to oil, prompting Maduro’s government to rely on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains.
The state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., or PDVSA, has been largely locked out of global oil markets by U.S. sanctions. It sells most of its exports at a steep discount on the black market in China.
Nicolás Maduro Guerra, Maduro's son and a lawmaker, on Thursday decried Trump’s latest tactic and vowed to work with the private sector to limit any impact on the country’s oil-dependent economy. He acknowledged that it won’t be an easy task.
“We value peace and dialogue, but the reality right now is that we are being threatened by the most powerful army in the world, and that’s not something to be taken lightly,” Maduro Guerra said.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the U.S. planned to enact Trump's order. But the Navy has 11 ships in the region and a wide complement of aircraft that can monitor marine traffic coming in and out of Venezuela.
Trump may be using the term “blockade,” but the Pentagon says officials prefer “quarantine."
A defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to outline internal reasoning about the policy, said a blockade, under international law, constitutes an act of war requiring formal declaration and enforcement against all incoming and outgoing traffic. A quarantine, however, is a selective, preventive security measure that targets specific, illegal activity.
Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he was unsure of the legality of Trump's blockade.
“They’re blockading apparently the oil industry, not the entire country,” said Smith, who represents parts of western Washington state. “How does that change things? I got to talk to some lawyers, but in general, a blockade is an act of war.”
The U.S. has a long history of leveraging naval sieges to pressure lesser powers, especially in the 19th century era of “gunboat diplomacy,” sometimes provoking them into taking action that triggers an even greater American response.
But in recent decades, as the architecture of international law has developed, successive U.S. administrations have been careful not to use such maritime shows of force because they are seen as punishing civilians — an illegal act of aggression outside of wartime.
During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy famously called his naval cordon to counter a real threat — weapons shipments from the Soviet Union — a “quarantine” not a blockade.
Mark Nevitt, an Emory University law professor and former Navy judge advocate general, said there is a legal basis for the U.S. to board and seize an already-sanctioned ship that is deemed to be stateless or is claiming two states.
But a blockade, he said, is a “wartime naval operation and maneuver” designed to block the access of vessels and aircraft of an enemy state.
“I think the blockade is predicated on a false legal pretense that we are at war with narcoterrorists,” he said.
Nevitt added: “This seems to be almost like a junior varsity blockade, where they’re trying to assert a wartime legal tool, a blockade, but only doing it selectively.”
Geoffrey Corn, a Texas Tech law professor who previously served as the Army’s senior adviser for law-of-war issues and has been critical of the Trump administration’s boat strikes, said he was not convinced the blockade was intended to ratchet up the conflict with Venezuela.
Instead, he suggested it could be aimed at escalating the pressure on Maduro to give up power or encouraging his supporters to back away from him.
“You can look at it through the lens of, is this an administration trying to create a pretext for a broader conflict?” Corn said. “Or you can look at it as part of an overall campaign of pressuring the Maduro regime to step aside.”
Goodman reported from Miami. Associated Press reporters Stephen Groves and Konstantin Toropin in Washington and Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump listens before he signs an executive order reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
