The Pentagon is sending the world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, and its carrier air wing to the Caribbean as the Trump administration conducts strikes against boats in the region it says are smuggling illegal drugs.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said on Friday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy’s most advanced aircraft carrier, which was deployed in the Mediterranean, to the U.S. Southern Command (Southcom) area of responsibility to help “dismantle Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) and counter narco-terrorism in defense of the Homeland.”
Parnell wrote in a statement that the presence of the USS Gerald R. Ford’s presence in the region 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.”
“These forces will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle TCOs,” he added.
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