The aviation tracking service Flightradar24 showed that two US F-18 fighter jets entered Venezuelan airspace for 40 minutes, before returning to their base, the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford, which is in international waters in the Caribbean.

The flight The two F-18 fighter jets flew over the Gulf of Venezuela around noon (16:00 GMT), 160 kilometers from Maracaibo, Venezuela's second most populous city, according to EFE. They also flew over two regions of Venezuela's energy sector, Zulia and Falcon, as part of the pressure Washington is exerting on the government of Nicolas Maduro. A US drone was conducting reconnaissance. The Venezuelan press emphasized that an MQ-4C Triton drone was observed early in the morning conducting reconnaissance off the Venezuelan coast near Maiquetia. The newspaper La Patilla reported that the US drone “carried out telecommunications reconnaissance and target identification operations at sea and on land.” Meanwhile, the two F-18 F variant, which are two-seaters, performed several corkscrew maneuvers before flying north to a point about 50 kilometers west of Aruba, where the USS Gerald Ford, the largest and most sophisticated US aircraft carrier, is apparently located, EFE reported. The Pentagon sent the ship a few weeks ago, which joined a huge contingent that Washington has maintained in the southern Caribbean since the end of summer, representing its largest deployment in the region in decades. “Its days are numbered.” The overflight by the US fighter jets is part of Operation Southern Spear, in which the Trump administration deployed some 15,000 troops in waters near Venezuela, arguing that it is an anti-drug operation.