Pentagon is Sending a Naval Carrier Strike Group to the Caribbean

Articles | October 24, 2025 | by Catholics for Catholics

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The Department of Defense said it will fight drug-smuggling and other illegal activities by sending one of the most advanced warships ever built.

By Catholic for Catholics

Escalating its efforts to combat alleged drug-smuggling vessels, the Trump administration is sending one of the American Armada’s largest and most advanced warships and a strike group to patrol the seas.

The USS Gerald R. Ford, which is considered one of the most state of the art carriers ever built, will be redeployed from its current site in the Mediterranean. According to The Washington Times, the warship is part of Carrier Strike Group 12, which also includes the aircraft squadrons of Carrier Air Wing 8, the USS Normandy, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, along with the guided missile destroyers USS Mahan, USS McFaul, and USS Oscar Austin.

The enhanced U.S. presence “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 said in a social media post.

Ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Parnell said the action will “enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking” and “degrade and dismantle” transnational criminal organizations.

🚨BREAKING: The Pentagon has deployed the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Caribbean.

Drug cartels have pushed their luck for far too long and now they’re facing serious consequences.

All they had to do was stop flooding America with narcotics.

The destruction of… pic.twitter.com/3WfzpfBiq5

— Digital Gal 🌸 (@DigitalGal_X) October 24, 2025

The move follows a U.S. ordered overnight strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean that killed six, bringing the total number of vessels hit to 10. The attack is escalating the Trump administration’s campaign against drug trafficking and transnational criminal networks to another level, since the strikes started in September.

Venezuela’s Defense Minister, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, conceded that with the growing U.S. Naval presence in the Caribbean sea, his country is confronting its most ominous threat in more than 100 years. But he added that its armed forces are ready to protect the country. 

“We are here steadfast and very determined to continue defending every inch of our sovereignty, and that is why we are preparing every day,” Lopez said Thursday on state-controlled television. “We do not want war here in Venezuela or in the world; we want peace.”