Carrier strike group deployment to Caribbean significantly increases US firepower in region
USS Gerald R Ford , shown here conducting flight operations in the Atlantic Ocean, is being deployed into the Caribbean. (Janes/Michael Fabey)
The planned imminent deployment of the Gerald R Ford Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 12, anchored by aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford (CVN 78), to the Caribbean and US Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) area or responsibility (AOR) will markedly increase US firepower in the region.
The Pentagon on 24 October confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had sent Ford and its guided-missile destroyer (DDG) escorts to the region to join a growing armada of other US Navy (USN) warships conducting counter-narcotic and other national security operations.
“The enhanced US force presence in the USSOUTHCOM AOR will bolster US 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 [transnational criminal organisations],” the Pentagon said in a 24 October release.
As part of the current operations to curtail trafficking, the Trump administration and Pentagon have acknowledged a series of US-led attacks on boats, destroying these vessels and in some cases killing those aboard, in the Caribbean and in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
It has been in the Caribbean where the USN and US Marine Corps (USMC) have been amassing the greatest concentration of firepower.
“Defending our homeland is an important mission for the navy,” Admiral Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations (CNO), told Janes on 24 September soon after the USN had deployed a third DDG to the region.
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