On the 3rd of January, over 150 aircraft from 20 different bases in the Western Hemisphere flew towards Venezuela as President Trump authorised Operation Absolute Resolve, a precise, sequenced military operation designed to detain Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The operation’s success has elicited widespread praise from experts, with Mark Cancian noting that the raid will be regarded as “one of the classics in military history”, highlighting the need to examine the careful planning behind it.
A small CIA team was covertly deployed to Caracas, conducting human intelligence gathering, including pattern of life analysis. They observed President Maduro’s daily habits and movements, whilst a Venezuelan source within Maduro’s inner circle provided his exact location in the days leading up to the raid. The CIA deployed stealth technology, including the RQ-170 Sentinel, to aid intelligence gathering. Its smaller, stealthy design, compared to other platforms such as the MQ-9 Reaper, makes it extremely effective for deep Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) in heavily contested airspace. As such, it played a vital role in pattern-of-life analysis, discreetly tracking Maduro without alerting radar systems. With such intelligence in hand, US forces built a replica of Maduro’s safehouse, even practising their entry route, thus underscoring the importance of ISR gathering for a military operation which requires precision and exactitude.
Yet the primary test for US forces would be their ability to successfully suppress Venezuelan defences. With a range of Russian-manufactured hardware, including S-300 batteries, Buk-M2 medium-range SAMs, and IGLA-S MANPADS, Venezuelan defences were more than capable of striking slow-moving targets such as the Chinooks carrying Delta Force troops. Layering kinetic and non-kinetic effectors, US forces successfully neutralised these threats. Employing electronic jamming technology with the EA-18G Growlers’ dedicated Electronic Attack suite, Venezuelan radar and command-and-control systems were blinded, with operators noting “the monitors of the radars were in interference”. In an attempt to “burn through” the electronic jamming, operators likely increased radar power output, thus enabling US forces to conduct kinetic left-of-launch operations (destroying air defence systems before they could be launched) using the AGM-88 Anti-Radiation HARM missile, specifically designed to hone in on radar emissions, to seek and destroy anti-aircraft batteries. Offensive cyber operations likely disabled Venezuelan power grids, with President Trump stating that the lights in Venezuela were turned off due to a “certain expertise.” The successful Suppression of Enemy Air Defence (SEAD) mission created a safe pathway for inbound helicopters, underscoring the effectiveness of layering multi-domain assets such as electronic attack, kinetic strikes, and potentially offensive cyber capabilities while incorporating stealth assets to provide real-time ISR.
Policymakers must not fall complacent, even as the effectiveness of US platforms to suppress and destroy Russian air defences has proven strong. Venezuelan operators may have lacked the expertise to utilise systems effectively, and the S-300 system is being phased out of Russia’s military arsenal, with the S-400 and S-500 offering longer range and stronger jamming resistance. Additionally, a similar operation is extremely difficult to conduct in a high-intensity, attritional conflict where exquisite capabilities, such as the EA-18 G Growler, which is already limited in number, are expended and require months to be replaced due to lengthy manufacturing timelines and production bottlenecks. The raid does, however, signal that US forces are capable of conducting swift, precise operations, layering cross-domain effectors to degrade Russian-manufactured systems.
Written by Baaz Chandwan
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not represent the views or positions of CISES, its leadership, or affiliated organisations.
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