‘This was surgical’: The tactics behind the Maduro mission
By Eve Sampson
Jan 6, 2026, 05:33 PM
The entire mission hinged on a narrow break in Venezuela’s weather.
When that window opened, the U.S. military moved fast, launching more than 150 aircraft from 20 bases in a high-risk operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from the country’s populated capital over the weekend.
After a tightly synchronized mission that lasted less than five hours from authorization to exfiltration, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken Saturday by U.S. forces from their Caracas compound, according to President Donald Trump and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Videos purportedly show the RQ-170 Sentinel returning to Puerto Rico after the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
By Stephen Losey
One defense expert, who was not involved in the operation, said that unlike past regime-change operations that involved the deployment of troops en masse, this operation appeared to have been designed to be precise.
“This was surgical,” Carlton Haelig, a fellow with the defense program at the Center for a New American Security, told Military Times. “But in terms of the tactical and support elements surrounding it, it was still relatively large scale.”
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/01/06/this-was-surgical-the-tactics-behind-the-maduro-mission/
