The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford departs Naval Station Norfolk, Va., on June 24, 2025, for a deployment to the European theater. (Anderson W. Branch/U.S. Navy)
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday the U.S. is sending the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to Latin America as part of escalating military buildup in the region.
“The enhanced U.S. force presence in the [U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility] 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,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell posted on X. “These forces will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle [transnational criminal organizations].”
Parnell did not say in his post when the strike group would be moving into the region. The Pentagon did not have further information to provide beyond the statement.
The USS Ford, which has five destroyers in its strike group, is currently deployed to the Mediterranean Sea. A person familiar with the operation told The Associated Press that one of those destroyers is in the Arabian Sea and another is in the Red Sea. At the time of the announcement, the USS Ford was in port in Croatia on the Adriatic Sea.
Deployment of a carrier group marks a major escalation of U.S. forces in a region that has already seen an unusually large military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela. The U.S. force includes eight warships, P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, MQ-9 Reaper drones, an F-35 fighter squadron and more than 6,000 sailors and Marines. A submarine has also been confirmed to be operating in the waters off South America.
If the entire USS Ford strike group arrives, that could bring nearly 4,500 more sailors as well as the nine squadrons of aircraft assigned to the carrier.
As part of the show of force, the U.S. flew a pair of supersonic, heavy bombers up to the coast of Venezuela on Thursday, a little over a week after a group of American B-52H Stratofortress bombers made a similar journey as part of a training exercise to simulate an attack.
Earlier Friday, Hegseth announced that the U.S. had conducted its first night strike on an alleged drug vessel, killing six people in the Caribbean Sea. The U.S. has conducted three consecutive strikes this week.
The latest operation is at least the 10th known strike in the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility since September and has killed at least 43 people.
The Trump administration has asserted that drug traffickers are armed combatants threatening the United States, creating justification to use military force. But that assertion has been met with unease on Capitol Hill.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
