A task force of 60 ex-special operations forces plotted to capture Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s declared ruler In the early days of May. In an article released Wednesday on The Guardian, one of the captured mercenaries claimed he and his fellow compatriots were “acting under the command of Donald Trump”. The captured American, a man named Luke Denman, claimed the force’s plan was to sneak into the socialist nation through a fleet of fishing boats.
The man said he had flown into Columbia in the middle of January to train Venezuelan paramilitary forces in a town near Venezuela. The team then was going to infiltrate Caracas, and secure the Simón Bolívar International Airport. Then the team would move on to objective C, or securing Maduro. With the airport secured, the team would then set up a security perimeter, and get some air support in. The planes would get them out, once they had the leader under wraps. All of this was said in a confession that was taped and broadcast on state media.
Maduro responded to the incident on Wednesday, in which he compared it to the Bay of Pigs invasion, claimed Trump was behind it, and also claimed his rival, interim president Juan Guaidó, was in on it as well. Maduro justified his framing, saying that Trump had “subcontracted” the “disastrous” invasion in order to “wash his hands” of the situation. Maduro continued, saying that the Americans were probably going to come in like heroes, and liberate the nation. However, this had not gone down as they planned. Maduro said, “But the Venezuelan people … captured them, tied them up, and the police had to intervene so there were no acts of violence against them.”.
The US response went something like this: “We weren’t directly involved in that thing, and we’re going to do everything one can do in order to get our boys back. If we had gotten involved in that mess, it would have gone differently.”. The US accused the leader of being a dictator in the past and has stated it would do everything it could to help change the government in accordance with Guaidó.
Call Of Duty-Inspired Plan?
As many outlets have already stated, this invasion was almost as badly executed as the Bay of Pigs invasion. However, I think this supposed plan resembles another event rather than the 1960s Bay of Pigs. No, instead it feels like this whole plot was planned after someone replayed the first level of Call of Duty: Black Ops too many times.
For those who are unaware, Call of Duty: Black Ops puts the player in the body of Alex Mason, an American military man sent with an elite task force of American covert operators to kill Castro (Yes, I said kill). The team first goes through the streets of Havana, dressed like the Cubans. They fight with Cuban police and military forces until they reach a small base, where the player “murders” Castro, and moves on to the airport-under fire the entire way.
After finally reaching the port, the plane barely escapes-but the player is left behind. Then, it is revealed that the “murdered Castro” was a double, and are sent off to a Russian prison.
Now, let’s see the similarities here. In the actual Bay of Pigs, the American-backed Cuban rebels have some naval and air support-not much, but a little. The rebels never got far enough into Cuba to actually get to Castro, and much less to assassinate him. The Bay of Pigs (in general) showed how well a smaller military force could put down an insurrection without much aid from its allies in Europe. That, and the fact that little American intervention allowed Castro to take hold of the situation.
Planning Problems
The idea that someone could capture a dictator with only 560 men is laughable at best. While Maduro has many enemies, he also has most of his military still under his control. Even after a supposed military coup led by Maduro’s Defense Minister went terribly wrong, Maduro stayed in complete control. So to say that a military with an estimated 128,000 in manpower would not be able to put down a small force of 560 is totally insane.
Now, let’s break down the plans by themselves. First, let’s discuss the so-called “naval invasion” strategy these men tried. We weren’t given the name of the type of boats which were used, so we’ll assume these are larger trawler fishing boats. Large trawlers usually carry a crew of 60 or more men. Let’s assume that the entire force had accumulated and that 560 men were on their way to assault Venezuela in fishing boats. I’m not going to give these boats any big guns; they’re fishing boats, not warships. But I will allow them some smaller arms - let’s say 5 .50 caliber rifles or so on each boat in addition to the normal batch of small arms which are carried by ‘freedom fighters’.
The Venezuelan navy is made up of 49 total assets. This small navy force is made up of 4 frigates, 3 corvettes, 2 submarines, and 29 patrol craft. If we give each trawler 65 men each, this would allow for the invaders to have 8 boats fully loaded, and 1 boat with half capacity.
That’s effectively 9 fishing boats versus (at minimum) 3 patrol boats, a submarine, and probable air support. The top-ranked patrol fleet on globalfirepower.com is North Korea, and Venezuela is at 30th place. To put America into perspective (according to the site), our nation is 44th, with only 13 craft in the patrol category. Now, you may think the site is disregarding some of our assets-but the site does put us at #1 in Aircraft Carriers and Destroyers.
The Venezuelan patrol fleet is made up of 4 Spanish-made Guaiquerí-class patrol boats.
These boats are built standardly with 4 guns: two 12.7-inch machine guns, a Oto Melara 76 millimeter gun, and a × Oerlikon Millennium 35 millimeter “Naval Revolver Gun System”. The article says that 3 of these are currently in service, so that means that the fishing boats already have to deal with 3 lightly armed craft which could probably sink them rather quickly. Add in a submarine, a few aircraft taking off from onshore airstrips, and the invasion force is already facing insurmountable odds.
With that out of the way, let’s move on to the “airport secure” tactic that the imprisoned operative described. The Venezuelan Army in conscripted men alone is 128,000 estimated men. Now, I have no idea what the makeup of a Venezuelan battalion looks like. I have no idea where battalions are based, nor do I have an idea of the firepower of each division. However, one can guess at least. The typical battalion is made up of anywhere from 300 to 800 personnel, and we’ll allow the battalion mainly defending Caracas the maximum of 800. If we are to take the 560 men of the invasion force and put them up against the battalion alone, with no support for either side, then the invaders would most likely either barely survive-or be completely crushed.
Now, that’s not factoring in a whole boatload of preconditions and side factors. We’re not including any local police forces, air support, reinforcements, civilian interference, or weather conditions. And, in addition to all of this, we aren’t factoring in the commonality of losses on the invaders’ side on the way to the city itself. I’m not just talking about being met with forces outside of the city-I’m talking about natural accidents.
Sometimes, nerves and battle fatigue can allow someone to do things they wouldn’t normally do-including fleeing for the hills at the idea of being mowed down by artillery. In addition, the invaders aren’t made up of 560 crack-shot, steel-nerved U.S. Marines or Army Rangers. 500 of the force, arguably a ‘massive, overwhelming majority’, are regular civilians. We could throw in a couple of dozen veterans or something like that, but then again we need to factor that some could be people who’ve never experienced a gunfight in their life.
So who in their right mind would do this? I’m not going to entertain the thought that the U.S. was completely behind this (unlike the Bay of Pigs). Why? Because of what Mike Pompeo said. The U.S. military has screwed up in the past when it comes to involving itself in coup attempts in the past (exhibit A being Cuba, of course). But the U.S. military, even under the worst executive leadership, would never send a force of 60 ex-operatives and just take over a (heavily) defended airport with 500 random natives. That’s just illogical.
Yes, I understand some arguments that “Donald Trump isn’t a military strategist”, and “Donald Trump would be stupid enough to do a thing like this”. I can see how some would think this. However, the President wouldn’t be able to authorize this kind of operation without someone knowing. And don’t you think some crack “I know better than my leader” Defense Department head would have stopped such a plan from being implemented, or at least have leaked the plans to the Trump-hating portions of the media? And even if we were to assume someone did, and the Coronavirus coverage displaced that piece of news, then wouldn’t it be fair to assume someone in the anti-Trump crowd like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren would have raised a riot into a literal covert-ops invasion of a foreign socialist nation?
That’s the issue we’re having so far with this story. A lot of the information we’ve had-the terrible planning, the failed operation, basically (almost) all the facts of the case have come from the captured Americans or the Venezuelan government. And therein we find yet another big red flag. For one thing, the original article claimed that the captured American claimed he was not under duress when indulging in the operation details.
However, we need to consider something. While our government may not waterboard people, use threat of violence (or actual violence) during interrogations, or even mistreat suspects to get information out of them, why should we expect a literal dictatorship to do the same? Venezuela’s President has literally allowed his military forces to fire on demonstrating civilians in the past.
This is a president who’s promised his political opposition will be arrested, and has even rallied his military to be against the United States, who has done little to effectively interfere with the state’s politics and stability. So how can we believe that two supposed enemy combatants (in our nations’ equivalent, domestic terrorists) are being treated well and not being forced to divulge this kind of information?
One last major red flag is the fact that the American captive is divulging as much information as he is. The United States trains its men to specifically “deny military information to the enemy”. Any prisoners are specifically directed to “protect the basic interests of the United States in conducting military and political operations to counter enemy attempts at domination”.
So, knowing all of this, why would an ex-military man first divulge the entire plan (which violates rule number 1), and then tell the interrogator “Oh, and by the way, we’re working at the direction of Donald Trump”? That violates rule 2 and is something no one who isn’t under duress would sanely do.
So what can we take away from this mess? Well first off, don’t base your military strategy on video games. They’re usually never as accurate as we like to think, and besides these were military veterans. You’d think they’d already know this. Second, there’s a likely chance that the prisoners have been treated horribly if they’re divulging literally everything (which is something you’re never supposed to do). Thirdly, this story has so many red flags that it’s quite impossible to miss them, even if you’re not thinking too much. But as always we need to remember to keep an open mind about military operations, as us citizenry are only privy to things the government wants and lets us hear.
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