The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford has left Croatia. The Pentagon is ordering the carrier strike group to the Caribbean to be part of the administration’s effort to confront transnational criminal organizations. The ship can reach the Caribbean as early as the end of the week.
The carrier left Norfolk in June bound for Europe and the Mediterranean, with stops in France and Norway, while participating in NATO exercises. A normal deployment for a carrier is seven to nine months.
When it arrives, the Ford Strike Group will be part of a massive build-up of roughly 14 U.S. ships in the region. Eight of the ships that will be in the region are based in Norfolk, including the three ships of the USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group with its 4,500 sailors and Marines. The Marines from Camp Lejeune have been participating in exercises in Puerto Rico since leaving Norfolk in August.
Norfolk-based USS Gravely has been in the region repeatedly since March, often partnering with Coast Guard law enforcement teams. The destroyer intercepted a boat carrying drugs in May. The Coast Guard team boarded the vessel and removed the crew, before the destroyer blew up the small craft. The operation is typical of how the U.S. conducted drug interdiction in the region for decades.
That was before a change in strategy by the United States. The Pentagon has announced that several small craft have been destroyed by the U.S. from the air, in most instances killing everyone on board. President Trump has claimed without providing evidence that the boats are moving drugs to the United States, mostly coming from Venezuela.
Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia has introduced a bi-partisan resolution to force a vote to bar a U.S. ground invasion in Venezuela. Kaine said he suspects that the way the Trump administration is operating in the region contributed to the recent decision by the head of U.S. Southern Command, Adm. Alvin Holsey, to step down two years early.
“I was feeling in my stomach a gut feeling that many in the military are having real concerns about the legality of these strikes,” Kaine told NPR.
The White House has not outlined the full scope of its plans for the build up of U.S. forces in the Caribbean.
According to a Defense Department statement, USS Ford “will bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere. These forces will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle TCOs.”
Ford is the Navy’s newest carrier and the largest in the world. It carries a number of F/A 18s from squadrons based in Virginia Beach. Its electromagnetic catapults are designed to launch everything from the latest F-35 fighters to small unmanned drones.
At the moment, Navy ships are dispersed around the area of the Caribbean. Open source ship tracking websites showed the Norfolk–based USS Fort Lauderdale, part of the Iwo Jima ARG, sailing into Mayport, Florida, late last week.
Over the weekend, USS Gravely came into the Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago, according to a release by the local government. The port is less than seven miles from the coast of Venezuela. The Venezuelan government has called out the entire U.S. operation a provocation.
