"US forces that executed a raid in Venezuela to capture its now-former leader walked away with no aircraft lost to the country's Russian-made air-defense systems and Chinese-made radars. In the aftermath, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that it "seems those Russian air defenses didn't quite work so well, did they?" He didn't elaborate any further, but in briefings, the top US general spoke about how US forces dismantled and destroyed enemy air defenses."
"While the US can draw a certain degree of confidence in its capabilities from the success of the mission, there's a risk of reading too much into that success, especially when it comes to weapons made by American rivals in the hands of other militaries. Some of the failures of the Venezuelan-operated foreign air defenses, for example, have been attributed to issues like inactivity, incompetence, and a dearth of functional cohesion between different systems."
The raid to capture former president Nicolás Maduro and his wife involved over 150 aircraft, including F-35 and F-22 stealth fighters, F/A-18 jets, EA-18 electronic attack jets, E-2 airborne early warning planes, bombers, and drones. US aircraft struck Venezuelan air defenses as forces approached Fuerte Tiuna in Caracas. The operation saw no US aircraft lost to Russian-made air-defense systems or Chinese-made radars, and US briefings describe dismantling and destroying enemy air defenses. Venezuelan failures have been attributed to inactivity, incompetence, and poor cohesion among systems. Successes against Venezuelan or Iranian-operated systems may not predict outcomes against Russia or China.
Read at Business Insider
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