USS Gerald R Ford’s arrival marks the largest US military presence in the region since the invasion of Panama in 1989
The US navy has announced that the USS Gerald R Ford, regarded as the world’s newest and largest aircraft carrier, has entered the area of responsibility of the US Southern Command, which covers Latin America and the Caribbean.
The deployment of the ship and the strike group it leads – which includes dozens of aircraft and destroyer ships – had been announced nearly three weeks ago, and its arrival marks an escalation in the military buildup between the US and Venezuela.
The regime of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, meanwhile, announced what it called a “massive deployment” of land, sea, air, river and missile forces, as well as civilian militia, to counter the US naval presence off its coast.
This is a really weird criticism in an article about a nuclear-powered carrier.
Aircraft carriers don’t operate alone. They have whole flotillas of support ships, few of which run on nuclear power. Not to mention all the non-nuclear-powered aircraft an aircraft carrier carries.
Even more weird for an article about the vessel parking north of the equator.
all the aircraft and support ships burn oil though