Welcome to Flight Global Focus, the essential podcast for
trusted aviation insight. I'm Ryan Finnerty, Flight
Global's America's defence reporter.
And in our first episode of 2026, we're looking at the
United States audacious raid to capture Venezuelan dictator
Nicolas Maduro and remove him from power.
Dubbed Operation Absolute Resolve by the Pentagon, the
successful mission has shocked the world both for its technical
complexity and level of risk. Washingtons reversion to the
muscular imperialist tactics of the 19th and early 20th
centuries is also casting doubt on the future of the current
geopolitical order. Joining me today to discuss the
raid and its implications are Flight Global's managing editor
for defence, Greg Waldron, who's based in Singapore, and our
European Defence editor Craig Hoyle in London.
Hey guys, good to speak with you again.
Hey, happy new year Ryan and Craig.
Great to be back and the year is literally starting with a bang.
Yes, Happy New Year to all the people out there and yeah,
exciting times. Yeah, happy new Year, guys.
Certainly not a slow start to 2026.
So here's what we know about the Caracas raid that captured
Maduro. There were over 150 aircraft
involved in the operation, according to the Pentagon, and
those aircraft launched from 20 different bases and ships around
the Western Hemisphere. Bombers and strike fighters hit
targets in Venezuela, including air defence radars, opening a
path for a flight of special operations helicopters to
deliver the assault force on the night of 2 January.
We know those helicopters came from the US Armies elite 160th
Special Operations Aviation Regiment, which provides Rotary
wing aviation support to U.S. special operations forces.
And we also know the helicopter assault force launched from a
naval vessel that could be either the amphibious assault
ship the USS Iwojima or the secretive MV Ocean Trader, which
is a floating special operations base known to be operating in
the region. Video posted online by
Venezuelan civilians clearly shows twin rotor MH47 GS, the
special operations variant of Boeing's Chapter 47 Chinook
heavy lift helicopter. Within the US military, the
MH47-G is only flown by the 160th.
That video also shows the distinct outline of several
Blackhawk helicopters, likely the specialised Sikorsky MH60
variants, also flown by the 160th.
Separate footage shows what appears to be a small attack
helicopter carrying out air to ground strikes at low altitude.
These could be the Armed Direct Action Penetrator variant of the
One Sixtieths, MH 60S or Bell AH1Z Vipers, which were embarked
from the US Marine Corps Amphibious Assault group that
has also been operating off the coast of Venezuela for months.
Other video has emerged of Lockheed Martin's stealthy RQ
170 flying wing drone operating from Puerto Rico, likely
providing intelligence and reconnaissance support to the
raid. After securing Maduro, the
extraction force reboarded helicopters and flew to the USS
Iwo Jima light carrier that was waiting offshore.
The top American military officer, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Kane, described the operation as
one that quote only the US military could undertake.
Craig, what has been your reaction upon seeing all of that
footage coming out of Venezuela? Yeah, it was an interesting
start to the weekend. I was up and watching the TV and
we had a breaking news item from the BBC saying there'd been
explosions in Caracas. So my, my initial reaction was
to think, oh, hey, this is going to be a little slap on the wrist
because obviously the US had been building up its forces off
the coast and in the Caribbean for several months beforehand.
So didn't think it was going to be an anything particularly
substantial wrong. Then the next thing I saw was
the formation of the helicopters and thought, oh, you know,
maybe, maybe that's Maduro trying to get away.
But as you said, you know, it very clearly was Chinooks and
Blackhawks and Venezuela doesn't fly either of those types.
So very clearly this this was AUSAUS activity.
I mean looking at it, yeah, it is pretty bold to fly package
like that. So tightly grouped helicopters.
I'm not sure how many there were, you know, good half dozen
or so flying low over the city. Clearly they were very confident
that all the supporting elements had done their job.
So they'd already taken out the surface to our missile systems
that Venezuela had. Anything like a fixed air
defence position also would have been struck in advance.
I think it's really key to note that while this is a special
operations raid, it was part of a wider integrated force, and
that was key to it succeeding. So by contrast, the last time we
really saw helicopters going in like that was when Russia
invaded Ukraine in early 2022. Of course, it did it rather
differently. And it had lots of aircraft shot
down because it hadn't prepared the ground for them.
And then it flew them in at low level and in broad daylight.
So it showed the the US sort of did things definitely smarter.
So during the operation itself, despite having taken out things
like the surface to our missile systems, they still would have
been at risk from small arms fire or maybe a lucky shot if
someone had been there with an RPG.
But it all looks to have taken place really quickly and it
either caught the Venezuelan military completely off guard,
or possibly they weren't that keen to fight a vastly better
equipped adversary. The nation's air bases had
already been targeted also, so there was no opportunity for
Venezuela to get jets into the air.
But it's worth noting it only has maybe 3 or 4 operational F
sixteens and they're old and maybe about 20 SU 30s, which I I
don't expect you can scramble in a hurry.
So arguably, the Air Force wouldn't have been much use in
this operation anyway. Yeah, I think that's a really
interesting comparison to Russia's invasion of Ukraine,
Craig, and that that 2022 opening phase air assault that
was ultimately unsuccessful. And we recently did an episode
back in December looking at the future of helicopters in combat,
with a particular focus on whether helicopters can survive
in a modern contested environment.
And we looked at that battle quite extensively, the battle
for Hostamel Airport. As part of that reporting, I
spoke with a former U.S. Army general who at one point in
his career commanded a battalion of the 160th.
His name is Jeffrey Schloser, and he's now an executive at
Bell and remains a believer in the power of the helicopter.
And he told us that addressing the survivability question is
all about proper planning. It is the willingness to use,
you know, modern day tactics and techniques in the cockpit
combined with a broader operational manoeuvre concept
that has to be done at a higher headquarters that says I'm going
to employ Rotary wing and fix fast wing other aircraft.
I'm going to employ them in ways that allow indirect approaches.
You disperse on the battlefield, you come together for real
reasons that are basically combined with other
capabilities. I, I never operated, for
example, as an Army aviator, as a commander or as a commander of
infantry troops with, with significant aviation and other
and artillery and stuff such as when I had the, the 101st
Airborne Division. I never operated them
separately. I always combined the efforts on
the battlefield maximum, you know, maximum effect.
And that's what's going to be required to change the calculus
there on the battlefield. So it's not just new aircraft.
It's not, you know, and it's also just not great.
An aviator that can fly at night or fly low enough to at speed.
It's going to require this broader concept.
And that broader concept is apparently exactly what planners
of the Caracas mission did, according to General Kane, the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He's the US military's top officer and adviser to the
president. Shortly after the mission
concluded, Kane detailed how the Pentagon coordinated for months
with intelligence agencies and the various military services to
prepare for the raid. We watched, we waited, we
prepared, we remained patient and professional.
This mission was meticulously planned, drawing lessons from
many missions over these last many years.
This was an audacious operation that only the United States
could do. It required the utmost of
precision and integration within our joint force, and the word
integration does not explain the sheer complexity of such a
mission. An extraction so precise it
involved more than 150 aircraft launching across the Western
Hemisphere in close coordination, all coming
together in time and place to layer effects for a single
purpose to get an interdiction force into downtown Caracas
while maintaining the element of tactical surprise.
Failure of 1 component of this well oiled machine would have
endangered the entire mission. So, Greg, the success of this
mission in Venezuela would seem to be a validation of Jeff
Schlosser's contention that helicopters can still operate
safely in dangerous environments.
We know that one aircraft on the mission took some damage, but
none were lost or catastrophically impacted.
What's your sense of the of that reality?
Certainly to Craig's point and also to Keynes point there the
US had total aerial supremacy. You know, they had a vast fleet
of aircraft in the air. Everything was working very well
together. And that was, I think, really
key to getting this done. And as you know, Kamdish
mentioned too, if you had a, you know, one part of the machine
gets out of whack, then you can start having serious problems.
And I'd also add to that, it doesn't only build on the
positive experiences the US has had with these helicopter
missions over the years, but the, you know, some of the
negative missions. I mean, there have been some
very high profile failures over the decades, which are clearly
the US has learned from. I mean, what was it, 1980?
You had the desert one failure where they were trying to get
the hostages out of Tehran. It was a very, again, a very
complex operation. Delta Force, Navy, Air Force,
Marines, and you know, they're going to go out to this remote
salt flat C One 30s would refuel these RH 53D helicopters.
They thought that this would be totally isolated to be nobody
out there, but they were there for maybe an hour and they
started to notice traffic going by in a road nearby.
They hadn't anticipated that. They'd also had a lot of issues
with the weather, specifically dust.
That meant that they ultimately decided there were not enough
helicopters to actually go into Tehran.
So they decide to abort the mission.
But then as they're trying to leave, one of the helicopters
collided with the C 1:30 and 8:00 servicemen died, and it
basically all but destroyed the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
Now, of course, there's the infamous Battle of Mogadishu in
1993. Again, everything goes
perfectly. They come in, everything is just
perfectly timed, everything is exactly precise, but then
suddenly something goes off the rails. 2 MH 60s were shot down
and this like quick 1520 minute raid turns into this 15 hour
battle. Killed 18 Americans, 73 were
wounded and hundreds, maybe thousands of Somalis were killed
in this just because of this failure.
And ultimately it led to the, you know, US withdrawal from
Somali. And it certainly probably didn't
do anything for the, you know, that withdrawal certainly didn't
do anything for the political stability of that country.
But then you go to 2011, you have the textbook raid, the I
think Navy Seal's, they went into Pakistan and they killed
Osama bin Laden. But even that, you know, nearly
was a disaster. An MH60 hit a wall at Osama's
compound. Fortunately, the guys inside the
helicopter survived and they were able to escape.
But allegedly that tale, which was one of the stealthy MH 60s,
might have made its way to China, which helped them form
their stealth programmes. So I think when these missions
go really well, they're spectacular.
Things work great. But the problem is, if something
goes wrong, it's very easy to go from like a very successful
mission to a total failure. If, as Craig pointed out,
somebody had been there with an RPG or was able to get a lucky
shot on one of the helicopters going into this thing and they
had a few helicopters going down into Venezuela.
I mean, it could have been a very, very different outcome.
And it could have been a very difficult thing for the Trump
presidency. So I wouldn't go as far as to
say that the US got lucky because they certainly pull out
of preparing. A lot of professionalism went
into doing this. But to a degree, you know,
things went very well for them. Spectacular success.
But of course, success in such an operation is really balanced
on a knife edge. Yeah.
And from some of the the other reporting that's that's come out
in the day since the raid, it seems that there was at least
one insider source high up in the Venezuelan government,
whether in in the military or a Maduro advisor that seems to
have been working with the CIA to provide intelligence for this
raid. And so you have to wonder if if
maybe there was an order given to some of the Venezuelan armed
forces not to engage because it does seem like there was
relatively light resistance. And we know the Venezuelan
forces do have man portable air defence systems and and larger
ground based air defences from Russia that clearly were either
ineffective or not employed. So definitely some some intrigue
on that front. And you have to wonder clearly
with the Ukraine case that you mentioned that Craig mentioned
earlier, a relatively small number of defenders armed with
those shoulder fired guided missiles were able to severely
disrupt an air assault operation.
And I think the the mention of the Desert 1 mission that you
brought up, Greg, is also really interesting to rescue the
American hostages in Tehran. Because the failure of that
mission is actually what led to the creation of the 160th
Regiment within the US Army to specialise in those type of high
risk aviation missions that need a very particular set of skills
operating at night in any kind of weather, maybe urban
insertions and extractions. And General Kane, Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did give some light details about
the conditions the aviators faced on the Caracas mission.
Launching over water at night, flying very low, going through
the mountains with a very narrow weather corridor and kind of
everything that goes along with that.
So definitely a validation of the creation of that specialised
type of unit that you really couldn't pull off this type of
operation without the aircraft and the the aviators who have
those very particular skills. In the Iran case, they were
using pilots from the Marine Corps, from the US Marine Corps,
as Greg mentioned. And there's a great book by Mark
Bowden who wrote Black Hawk Down called guest of the Ayatollah.
And he, he really details kind of the, the behind the scenes
planning of that mission. And the way he reported it was
that the Marines were picked basically in an effort to
include them in a make make the the rescue operation fully
joint, have Air Force, Navy, Army and Marines be involved.
And that the helicopter pilots were not really adequately
prepared for the type of conditions they face.
So that led to the creation of the 160th, which has pulled off
this and several other successes that Greg mentioned.
Looking forward guys, it seems like the US administration, the
Trump administration in Washington is is definitely
feeling emboldened by this success.
We just saw in the the week following the raid, U.S. forces
have seized a Russian flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic
with help from the UK Ministry of Defence.
It would seem like this is, is setting a precedent, a pretty
clear precedent that powerful countries can do what they want
in, you know, what might have formerly been called their
sphere of influence. We've obviously got a hot war in
Europe where you're based, Craig, and a potential conflict
in Asia around Taiwan. How do you see this, Craig,
particularly looking at the, the Russia situation in Europe?
And how do you think Russia's going to react to the US taking
this step? Yeah, it's really interesting
because we've, I think when you when you think back to say the
the Chavez administration in Venezuela previously that relied
a bit on, you know, having Russian support.
And so I think you'd have maybe at one point thought, well, the
US can't go and do anything in Venezuela because it will annoy
the Russians and the Russians will poor forces in that
Russia's obviously too busy with other things.
Currently. Equally with the oil tanker
seizure, there was a Russian vessel accompanying it, rather
dubious that had been re flagged as a Russian vessel at sea.
So I, I think they didn't really have a legal leg to stand on.
But yes, previously you would have thought, hey, there's no
way the US will go and seize a ship or the Russians are
accompanying it. But they went ahead and did it.
So yes, I think as you said, they're feeling emboldened.
I mean, the other key discussion point around the Venezuelan raid
is how everybody else is going to react to it and how they
interpret, you know, what actually went on.
There's been a lot of concerns. Certainly the UN stated that the
rules governing the use of force have not been respected.
Pretty direct words from the UN of, you know, this is a bit
shady what went on here. I mean, more broadly, we've got
China probing Taiwan's defences on pretty much a daily basis.
Beijing views it as a breakaway province presided over by puppet
administration, which it doesn't consider legitimate.
Russia's already seized Ukrainian territory using the
argument that it needs it for its own security.
Sound familiar? To protect itself from an ever
eastward expanding NATO. Last year we saw Russian drone
incursions along the alliance's eastern flank into each of the
Baltic states, Poland and Romania.
Putin will certainly continue to test its defences.
So it feels like I'm going down a political Burrow.
But we've been used to trotting out phrases like belligerent and
expansionist when we talk about the leadership in Moscow and
Beijing. But that really clouds when the
president of the United States kind of glibly suggests that
he's going to take over Greenland or Canada and is now
running Venezuela and it's oil supplies.
You know, there's a rules based order and it's there for a
reason. So it was wrong when Argentina
invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982, when Iraq went into Kuwait
for its oil in 1990. And while Russia tries to
subsume Ukraine, and obviously it'd be bad if Russia decided it
wanted to take Alaska back from the USA, but it's different if
the self declared ruler of the Western Hemisphere does it.
So I mean, I think people would just question what what is
Trump's ambition here? Is it national security,
controlling global oil supplies, distracting people from other
things? Or is it a sort of empire
building frenzy to add territory to the USA for ego or legacy?
I mean my part of the world. This is spooking people in
Europe, definitely. Let's say Trump gets Greenland,
whether that's by buying it or sending in the military, what
happens that next? You know, it has a big impact on
NATO and NATO's viability. But so he gets Greenland.
Iceland's also very important strategically and doesn't even
have a military. So, you know, maybe he'll take
or buy that as well. And then what?
Ireland, Scotland, they're pretty nice.
It's madness and it's it's, it's pretty concerning.
Yeah, Craig, sometimes I think with some of the US military
missions, it's like they look at the missions that the US
military is capable of doing, which are very broad and very
vast, and they decide which ones are the cool ones.
And these are the ones that they play out and then they kind of
brag about them. This is kind of a, you know,
sort of a gut impression I get. But, you know, really, you know,
around the Taiwan thing, China has made very clear that it has
its intention to take over Taiwan.
They call it reunification. That's debatable whether that's
the correct term. But of course, they've built up
this, you know, very significant Air Force capability.
They've really invested in the sea power that would be able to
get across the straits, establish a beachhead and then
of course, hope maybe resupply that beachhead.
But the one take away, I think that they might get from this
raid, of course, any US response should it come to invasion of
Taiwan would not be of course, be similar to the Venezuela
mission. But of course, it would rely on
a lot of assets kind of coming together and converging to
strike an invasion force around Taiwan.
So you'd have bombers coming in, you'd have fighters and you'd
have tankers, you know, supporting that effort.
And I think the one thing that really give Beijing pause is EU
SS ability to, you know, really come in and have a lot of
firepower at one spot in a very coordinated manner.
Now, this hopefully works towards deterrence in the Taiwan
Strait and maintains peace over there.
So I think that might be 1 take away from this episode for
China. But on the other hand, to
Craig's point, I mean, not to get too much into the politics,
of course, this type of raid does set a bad precedent that
other countries can use to, you know, basically for propaganda
purposes against the US at least.
And then at worst, they can use it to justify this kind of
military adventurism on their own.
And, you know, whereas the US used to have the moral authority
to, like, oppose these kind of unilateral military actions.
I think that's something that's definitely being lost, or maybe
it's lost already. Yeah, you sort of wonder if
moral authority even matters anymore or if we've reverted to
this sort of old world order of empires and carving up the globe
in a smoky room somewhere. Because it's really hard to see
how any future US administration could credibly oppose,
rhetorically oppose a similar action by Russia or China in,
you know, their quote, spheres of influence after what's been
done. And I think the really
challenging aspect for the US, and, you know, this would be the
case in in other democracies as well, but it seems particularly
acute in the US, is that there is now seemingly very little
consistency from 1 presidential administration to the next in
terms of policy and how actions are being conducted.
And so even if, you know, maybe more centrist or conventional
administration returns to the White House at some point, you
have to think that the, the trust and credibility is quite
severely damaged, you know, and, and maybe even permanently so on
the part of our both our allies and our adversaries.
And I think that's one of the interesting things about the
Cold War is that although both sides, the US and the the Soviet
Union were engaged in in these proxy wars and they nearly
became hot a few times, there was sort of a predictable amount
of predictability in the behaviour that kind of kept
things to a manageable level, kept it from from really getting
out of hand. And we seem to have lost that in
this kind of brave new world that we find ourselves in.
Well, guys, I think we'll have to leave it there.
We're about out of time. So it's great to talk with you
and we'll speak again soon. Great podcast, Ryan, really good
talking about this. And with luck, you know the news
outlook for the year gets better from here.
Yeah, let's hope everyone has a prosperous 2026 and yeah,
hopefully we're still here in three weeks time when when we
record the next one. You've been listening to Flight
Global Focus, which is a production of Flight Global with
audio editing by Lucy Johnson. If you want to get in touch with
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podcast, please e-mail podcast at flightglobal.com.
Listen, rate, review and subscribe wherever you get your
podcast. And please join us again next
week for more in depth analysis covering the latest developments
in airlines, defence and aerospace.
I'm Ryan Finnerty, and we'll see you next time for Flight Global
Focus.