Topics: Donald Trump
'Good luck and Godspeed' was the four-word sign-off given by President Trump as he gave special forces the green light to carry out the most audacious military operation since SEAL Team Six took out Osama bin Laden in 2011.
The operation had been months in the making but fulfilled a years-long goal of the intelligence services to remove President Nicolás Maduro from power and reopen Venezuela's oil reserves, the largest in the world, to US business interests.
Careful planning, covert infiltration by CIA assets, and an overwhelming use of force resulted in zero fatalities for the Delta Force operative who stormed the dictator's compound, with Trump also claiming that no US helicopters, jets, or drones were downed during the nighttime op.
Personnel had been on high alert since Christmas Day, when the president first authorized the military to take action as soon as an opportunity presented itself, but due to bad weather, they were forced to delay.
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Then, following a call from the Commander-in-Chief at 10.46pm on Friday night (January 2) at Mar-A-Lago, Operation Absolute Resolve began.
In the pitch black of night, 150 aircraft took off from military bases and the USS Gerald Ford carrier group to begin their mission, with F22 Raptors, F-35 stealth fighters, and Navy F-18 Hornets working to quickly take out the sovereign country's air defenses.
Tomahawk missiles were also fired from Navy ships gathered off the coast to eliminate Russian-made surface-to-air missile sites to ensure air superiority for when Delta Force moved in.
A source told the Sun that Cuban short-range missile batteries were also taken out in the strikes.
This opening salvo took place in the hour after 1.00am, with explosions and plumes of smoke seen across Caracas by 2.00am as a number of targets were struck to cause chaos across Venezuela's capital city.
Carlota airbase and the main military complex, Fuerte Tiuna, were hit by the waves of assault aircraft, drones and ship-launched missiles, as well as transport locations in the city of La Guaira, where the national airport and main port are located.
But although this might have looked like the opening shots of a major invasion, this explosive chaos worked as a smokescreen for the real mission - to capture the leader of Venezuela and his wife.
This chaos had all been to benefit the crews of the Black Hawk (MH-60) and Chinook (MH-47) helicopters from the US Air Force 160 Special Operations Regiment, which had launched from the carrier group that had been in the Caribbean since November.
Ahead of their rapid assault on the compound containing the Venezuelan president, a cyber operation, as well as a fleet of jammer and stealth drones, had turned the lights out across large swathes of the country, something confirmed by Trump yesterday.
The president revealed in a press conference: “The, uh, lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have. It was dark, and it was deadly."
Before the Delta Force team had even landed, sources told the New York Times that the soldiers involved had spent months carrying out drills using a one-to-one replica of Maduro's safe house
Some of those soldiers had focused on increasing the speed at which they could make it through the steel doors of the compound, a piece of vital intelligence that had been gathered by a surprisingly effective CIA operation on the ground.
The intelligence agency had managed to map Maduro's 'patterns of life' in the months before the operation, noticing that the dictator would move between six or eight locations as he became increasingly anxious about US action.
But the Delta Force troops had trained specifically for Maduro's residence, which meant they had to wait until the CIA could confirm that he was inside the compound.
At 2.01am, after months of training, they finally arrived. The highest-ranking member of the military, General Caine, said their helicopters came under fire as they swooped in, but the threat was neutralized with 'overwhelming force'.
Delta Force disembarked by abseiling from their helicopters into Maduro's compound, accompanied by CIA agents. They then fired flashbangs to disorient their enemy and took out a group of bodyguards, who had been taken by surprise.
Maduro initially attempted to flee into a safe room behind a steel door, but Delta Force operatives prevented this and detained him.
It took them three minutes in total to make it through the compound and arrest the heavily-guarded foreign leader and his wife.
By 4.29am, he was safely aboard the USS Iwo Jima and on his way to the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York, where he is being imprisoned.
He now faces charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.
