Inside Operation Absolute Resolve And The Capture Of Nicolás Maduro

A defended capital went dark, the radars filled with ghosts, and minutes later the target was airborne over open water. We take you inside Operation Absolute Resolve, our most detailed breakdown yet of how stealth ISR, electronic warfare, and Tier 1 aviation converged to capture Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores from the heart of Caracas without igniting a regional war.

We start with the long game: RQ-170 Sentinels threading radar seams while Space Force and NGA built a living map of habits, routes, and rooms. From there, EA-18G Growlers and the Next Generation Jammer flipped Venezuela’s integrated air defense system on its head, projecting believable phantoms while F-35s fused emissions and cued AARGM-ER shots to surgically decapitate fire-control radars. Air superiority, locked by F-22 Raptors, made any scramble a non-starter. With the shield broken, B-1B Lancers used precision JDAMs to silence command nodes and cut high-altitude comms, turning coordination into chaos.

Then the blades arrived. The 160th SOAR’s MH-47Gs and MH-60Ms rode terrain-following radars through the valleys, flared into Fuerte Tiuna, absorbed fire, and answered with DAP miniguns while Delta isolated the compound and secured the principals. We unpack the mission’s biggest mystery—an 114-minute ground window—through two lenses: a hardened safe-room breach that demanded thermal tools under pressure, and a clandestine lily pad refuel and cross-deck that extended range and security through the mountains. We also address the sonic weapon rumors and lay out the more likely culprit: pressure-wave injuries from overlapping precision fires in an urban canyon.

Finally, we connect a haunting anniversary. Thirty-six years after Noriega’s capture, the legal logic looks familiar, but the mechanics are transformed—from sledgehammer invasion to scalpel-like spectrum dominance, where cyber, EW, stealth, and rotorcraft choreography achieve strategic effects with a zero-footprint signature. If you care about modern air combat, integrated air defense suppression, special operations aviation, and the future of high-value targeting, this deep dive is your playbook. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves airpower, and leave a review telling us your take on the 114-minute gap—standoff, lily pad, or both?

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Caracas Became The Target
• 1:42 Phase 1: Building Total Awareness
• 3:24 Phase 2: The Electronic Takedown
• 6:05 Phase 3: Raptors And Lancers Strike
• 7:25 Phase 4: Night Stalkers’ Midnight Grab
• 9:06 Phase 5: The 114-Minute Mystery
• 11:10 Sonic Reports And The Pressure Wave
• 13:06 Lessons From Noriega To Today
• 15:20 Spectrum Dominance And Future War

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

On 3 January 2026, exactly 36 years to the day after US forces captured Manuel Noriega in Panama, the United States military executed the most complex aviation-led law enforcement operation in modern history. This wasn't shock and awe. There was no massive weeks-long bombing campaign. Instead, it was a surgical decapitation strike, codenamed Operation Absolute Resolve. Its objective, the capture of Nicolas Maduro and Celia Flores from the heart of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. To do it, the US had to dismantle one of the most sophisticated integrated air defense systems in the Western Hemisphere, a network of Russian S-300 VMs and Chinese stealth-detecting radars, and they had to do this without triggering a full-scale regional war. To accomplish the mission, over 150 aircraft and at least half a dozen naval ships were used. The combat aircraft sorted from 20 different launch locations across the hemisphere. This massive effort took months of planning and intel gathering, which involved the total integration of space, cyber, conventional, and special operations. Today, we're breaking down the aviation assets that made the impossible grab possible. We're looking at how 5th gen stealth fighters like the Lightning and Raptor played key roles along with the wizardry of the Growler, and how the 160th Sword Night Stalkers executed a mission that will be studied in Top Gun and at the Air Force Weapons School for decades. This is the anatomy of Operation Absolute Resolve, the aircraft that flew it in the echoes of a similar mission in 1989. Let's take a look.com. Phase 1, the Long Game. Every successful strike begins months before the first engine starts. Starting in August of 2025, the US began a massive intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance or ISR campaign. The primary eyes over Caracas was the RQ-170 Sentinel, a stealth throne. While the MQ9 Reaper has been called the Workhorse of the Middle East, its lack of stealth made it a non-starter against Venezuela's S-300 batteries and radar systems. The RQ-170, also known as the Beast of Kandahar, however, was spotted by local enthusiasts operating out of Curaco and Puerto Rico on its way to using its slow observable design to loiter over Fuerte Tuina, a key Venezuelan military complex. But that was only half the story. Space Force and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, or the NGA, utilized the Vantur satellite constellation to provide 24-7 pattern of life data. Not often talked about, the NGA provides Geospatial Intelligence, or GeoInt, for our warfighters. These teams weren't just looking for Mabuto, they were looking for his habits and routines. For example, which of his six hideouts was he staying at each night? Which door did he use? What was the shift chain schedule of his presidential guard? By December, the Pentagon had a digital twin of every floor in the Casa de los Sueños bunker. The goal was simple: total situational awareness. Before Delta Force ever stepped onto an MH-47 or Blackhawk, the US knew exactly which bedroom Maduro was sleeping in. The stage was set and the intelligence was target grade. Now, they just had to open the door to the most dangerous airspace in South America. Phase 2, the electronic takedown. To understand how the 160th Special Operation Aviation Regiment or SOAR units, better known as the Night Stalkers, reached the heart of Caracas, we have to talk about the most dangerous part of the mission: dismantling the front door. Venezuela's integrated air defense system, or IADS, was anchored by Russian-made S-300s, known by NATO as the SA-23 Gladiator, and supported by the Buck M2E and Chinese JY27A stealth detecting radars. The electronic takedown began with what electronic warfare officers call the sponge phase. EA 18G growlers from the USS Gerald R. Ford and land-based out of Puerto Rico flew passive collection orbits just outside territorial waters. Using their ANALQ 218 tactical jamming receivers, they recorded the specific pulse fingerprints of individual Venezuelan batteries. On the night of the raid, we saw the first large-scale combat employment of the ANALQ 249 Next Generation Jammer Midben or NGJMB. Unlike the Legacy ALQ99, which uses brute force noise jamming, the NGJMB uses ASA technology to steer high-power jamming beams with surgical precision. As the strike package approached, the Growlers saturated the Venezuelan 9S15M billboard radars. Instead of screens going blank, radar operators saw thousands of ghost targets. This digital deception allowed the actual ingress of the 160th helicopters to be completely masked within electronic clutter. Meanwhile, F-35A, B, and C models acted as forward nodes with their sensor fusion, identifying coordinates of any radar that tried to burn through the jamming. Once a battery attempted to lock on a ghost, it became a beacon for the AGM 88G AARGM ER, which is a seriously upgraded harm that can fit inside an F-35's internal weapons bay. These missiles targeted the 9S32M fire control radar specifically. Within minutes, the Venezuelan air defense system was decapitated. The front door was wide open. Phase 3 The Hammer. While the Growlers were fighting their electronics war, the heavy metal of the US Air Force moved into position. Now the bombers that would make the ingress were not flying without cover. Their air superiority umbrella was anchored by F-22 Raptors from the first fighter wing. These 5th gen fighters were the bouncers of the operation. Flying with their transponders off, they sanitized the airspace. If a Venezuelan Su-30 or Flanker G even thought about taxiing, the Raptors were positioned to neutralize the threat before it even left the ground. But the most audible part of the phase came from the B-1B Lancer, launched from the 7th Bomb Wing straight out of Dais, Texas. These supersonic bombers were there for precision destruction. While the growlers blinded the radar and the lightnings punished any emitter that got too loud, and raptors were circling overhead looking for a fight. The Lancers went in and dismantled the Venezuelan military's ability to coordinate a counterattack. Using J Dams, the B-1Bs targeted command and control nodes and military infrastructure across northern Venezuela, including the high-altitude communications antennas at El Volcán. By taking out these nodes, the U.S. turned off the lights for the Venezuelan High Command. The Lancers created a buffer of chaos that kept the Venezuelan military pinned down and confused. With the air sanitized by raptors and the ground command structures in ruins, the environment was set for the 160th midnight run. Phase 4, the grab and analysis. At 2.01 local time, the night stalkers of the 160th Soar crossed the coastline. Flying at barely 100 feet AGL and probably lower knowing those Hilo guys, MH-47G Chinooks and MH60M Blackhawks utilized their onboard AN APQ-187 Silent Night Radars to navigate the terrain in total darkness. The target, Fuerte Tuina. As the Blackhawks flared for landing near Maduro's residence, the situation turned kinetic. One MH-60M took hits from small arms and a mobile anti-air unit. The pilot kept the bird steady, while an MH-60 direct air penetrator or DAP responded with what we will now call overwhelming force, essentially using the M134 miniguns to suppress the perimeter. On the ground, Delta Force achieved total surprise. They captured Maduro and Flores within 30 minutes. The extraction force banked hard towards the Caribbean and was back over international waters by 3.29 a.m. Maduro was transferred to the USS Iwo Jima and then flown to New York on a DOJ Boeing 757. Now, Operation Absolute Resolve proved that integrated defense systems are not invincible. By layering 5th gen stealth, next generation EW, and elite rotary wing skill, the US demonstrated a zero footprint capability to strike a defended capital. The intelligence execution window was so tight that by the time the Venezuelan High Command realized they were being jammed, their president was already 50 miles offshore. But there are some questions that remain, which we're going to talk about next. Phase 5, the 114-minute gap or the siege of the vault. The most puzzling part of Operation Absolute Resolve isn't how the US got in. It's why they stayed for so long. Official timelines from the Department of War show extraction teams on the ground for nearly two hours. In the world of Tier 1 special operations, two hours is an eternity. There are two competing theories at this point: a standoff and a lily pad. First, let's look at the standoff theory. Here's a breakdown of what could have happened behind those compound walls. The breach, 0-30 minutes. Upon landing at 2-11, the Delta Force and FBI HRT encountered immediate resistance from Maduro's personal security, 32 of whom were Cuban Special Forces. In this theory, the spectacular part of the raid wasn't the landing. It was the high-intensity firefight required to isolate the fortress house. The panic room standoff from 30 to 90 minutes after landing. Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, reportedly fled toward a steel reinforced safe room. This is where the 114-minute clock starts to make a little sense. Unlike a wooden door, a hardened vault requires thermal lances or specialized breaching charges. JSOC reportedly trained on a full-scale mock-up of this exact room for months. The gap was likely the time it took to physically cut through inches of reinforced steel, while the 160th Littlebirds provided a literal wall of fire outside to keep the Venezuelan reinforcements from the 311th Infantry Battalion at bay. There's also speculation that Meduro didn't make it to his safe room, but a standoff here of some kind still makes sense. Another factor that could explain the time gap in the standoff theory is the SSE or sensitive site exploitation. Once the vault was breached, the mission transitioned to intelligence recovery. Operators likely seized encrypted hardware and documents to map out the regime's financial networks before finally exfiltrating at 0329. Next we'll look at the lily pad theory. A clandestine pit stop. While the standoff at the compound could account for much of the 114-minute gap, a growing number of analysts point to a lily pad maneuver as the final piece of the puzzle. The flight pass from the compound to the Caribbean Sea requires navigating the jagged peats of the Cordillera de la Costa. For low-flying helicopters burdened with heavy teams and a high value prisoner, fuel can become a very finite resource. The lily pad theory suggests that during the pre-dawn hours, a secondary team of MH-47G Chinooks, often called fat cows, had already secured a temporary clandestine landing zone or LZ in a remote valley southeast of Caracas. The cross-deck. Instead of flying the same hot airframe all the way to the carrier strike group, US forces likely landed at this hidden staging area to cross-deck Maduro. This allows the primary assault teams to refuel and the prisoner to be transferred to a fresh, heavily guarded aircraft with medical facilities on board. This would explain the Bellingcat footage showing helicopters traveling east toward a sparsely populated region rather than north directly over the coastal defenses. By establishing a temporary lily pad inside the Venezuelan territory, JSOC effectively moved the border of the operation 100 miles inland, ensuring that by the time the Venezuelan Air Force could even scramble, the trail was already cold. While time will eventually reveal the truth of those 114 minutes, there is another puzzle that we need to piece together. The sonic mystery, high-tech myth or next-gen reality. As the dust settled in Caracas, a strange report began to circulate among Venezuelan social media and military hospitals. Soldiers weren't just suffering from gunshot wounds, they were suffering from intense disorientation, severe nausea, and phantom brain injuries. This quickly birthed a rumor that the US had deployed some secret sonic weaponry during the raid. So let's look at both the case for and against these secret weapons. The case for sonic weapons, those who believe that secret weapons were used point to the sheer speed of the collapse. They argue that elite units like the 311th Infantry Battalion, seasoned troops, seemed frozen or physically unable to coordinate a counterattack despite being just minutes away. But this theory is further backed up by reports of Havana syndrome-like symptoms, dizziness, memory loss, and inner ear pressure among the survivors of the raid. This suggests something beyond standard flashbangs. We know the US has been developing their active denial systems or ADS, a non-lethal directed energy weapon that creates an unbearable heating sensation on the skin, and LRADs, long-range acoustic devices that can incapacitate people with sound. If there was ever time to field test a militarized helicopter-mounted version of this tech, Absolute Resolve was definitely in. The skeptical reality known as the concussion effect. Seasoned military analysts offer a much more grounded explanation. The pressure wave. When you have a coordinated strike involving hellfire missiles, GBU-39 small diameter bombs hitting nearby garages, and the 160th Sword helicopters firing M-134 miniguns in a tight urban valley, not to mention those B-1 drop J Dams. The sonic symptoms that have been reported, headache, vision problems, and dizziness, are the textbook definition of traumatic brain injury or TBI, which can be caused by overpressure from explosives. During the 2020 Iranian missile strike on Al-Assad Airbase, over 100 US troops suffered these exact symptoms without a single sonic weapon being fired. You also have to remember that in the fog of war during a digital blackout, when your power is cut and your radio is jammed and the air is literally shaking from hellfires, the human brain often perceives the chaos as a physical, invisible force. In my opinion, the pressure wave was what caused these reports. Let me know what you think in the comments below. Next, let's talk about anniversaries. The ghost of 1990, 36 years to the day. The date, January 3rd, now holds a unique place in military history. Back in 1990, following an operation that began in late 1989, the US successfully captured and indicted Latin American dictator Manuel Noriega of Panama. Exactly 36 years later, on that same calendar day in 2026, they repeated the feat. While the legal justification, narco trafficking, indictments remain the same for both operations, the execution shows a radical evolution in American power projection. To understand the shift, we need to look at how the mechanics of the high value extraction have transformed over the last three decades. Same changes, different centuries. In 1989, Operation Just Cause was a brute force invasion, 26,000 troops, heavy collateral damage, and leveled neighborhoods. Fast forward at 2026, and Operation Absolute Resolve looks like a ghost story. Instead of an army, the US sent 200 operators, and instead of bombs, they used cyber attacks and electronic warfares to blind the enemy. While Panama was about overwhelming numbers, Venezuela was about relative superiority, achieving total dominance in a single surgical window with zero US lives lost. Think of it this way: in 1990, the US had to break a nation to catch a man. In 2026, the US used 150 aircraft and a digital blackout to simply reach into a sovereign capital and pluck the target out. It's the difference between a sledgehammer and a scalpel. Operation Absolute Resolve has rewritten the rulebook. For decades, regime change meant years of occupation, thousands of casualties, and trillions of dollars. Caracas proved that in the 21st century, spectrum dominance, the ability to control the air, the net, and the lights allows for the achievement of strategic goals without the forever war aftermath. The resounding success of Operation Absolute Resolve is a testament to the training, skill, planning, and capabilities of our men and women in uniform. At the end of the day, the ghosts of Panama and Caracas are now linked by more than just the date. In many ways, they represent the beginning and the end of an era of warfare. What do you think? How has cyber warfare changed the battle space? Are we gonna see more use of drones and AI in future conflicts? Let me know in the comments below.com