The Pentagon announced on Friday that the U.S. military is deploying an aircraft carrier to the waters near South America, marking a significant increase in military presence in the area. This move comes as the Trump administration intensifies its efforts against vessels suspected of drug trafficking.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed the USS Gerald R. Ford, along with its strike group, to head to the U.S. Southern Command region. This deployment aims to enhance U.S. capabilities to track, monitor, and disrupt illegal activities that threaten U.S. safety and prosperity, as stated by Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell on social media.

The USS Ford, accompanied by five destroyers, is currently stationed in the Mediterranean Sea. According to a source familiar with the deployment, one destroyer is positioned in the Arabian Sea and another in the Red Sea. As of Friday, the aircraft carrier was docked in Croatia on the Adriatic Sea.

The source, who requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of military operations, did not disclose the timeline for the strike group’s arrival near South America or confirm whether all five destroyers will make the journey.

This deployment brings significant additional resources to a region that has already witnessed a notable U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and near Venezuela. The move, along with the increased frequency of U.S. strikes, including one on Friday, has sparked speculation about the Trump administration’s broader objectives. While officials maintain the operations target drug trafficking, questions linger about potential efforts to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who faces narcoterrorism charges in the U.S.

Moving thousands more troops into the region

There are already more than 6,000 sailors and Marines on eight warships in the region. If the entire USS Ford strike group arrives, that could bring nearly 4,500 more sailors as well as the nine squadrons of aircraft assigned to the carrier.

Complicating the situation is Tropical Storm Melissa, which has been nearly stationary in the central Caribbean with forecasters warning it could soon strengthen into a powerful hurricane.

Hours before Parnell announced the news, Hegseth said the military had conducted the 10th strike on a suspected drug-running boat, leaving six people dead and bringing the death count for the attacks that began in early September to at least 43 people.

Hegseth said on social media that the vessel struck overnight was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang. It was the second time the Trump administration has tied one of its operations to the gang that originated in a Venezuelan prison.

“If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat Al-Qaeda,” Hegseth said in his post. “Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down, and kill you.”

The strikes have ramped up from one every few weeks when they first began last month to three this week, killing a total of at least 43 people. Two of the most recent strikes were carried out in the eastern Pacific Ocean, expanding the area where the military has launched attacks and shifting to where much of the cocaine is smuggled from the world’s largest producers, including Colombia.

Escalating tensions with Colombia, the Trump administration imposed sanctions Friday on Colombian President Gustavo Petro, his family and a member of his government over accusations of involvement in the global drug trade.

US focus on Venezuela and Tren de Aragua

Friday’s strike drew parallels to the first announced by the U.S. last month by focusing on Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has designated a foreign terrorist organization and blamed for being at the root of the violence and drug dealing that plague some cities.

While not mentioning the origin of the latest boat, the Republican administration says at least four of the boats it has hit have come from Venezuela. On Thursday, the U.S. military flew a pair of supersonic heavy bombers up to the coast of Venezuela.

Maduro argues that the U.S. operations are the latest effort to force him out of office.

Maduro on Thursday praised security forces and a civilian militia for defense exercises along some 2,000 kilometers (about 1,200 miles) of coastline to prepare for the possibility of a U.S. attack.

In the span of six hours, “100% of all the country’s coastline was covered in real time, with all the equipment and heavy weapons to defend all of Venezuela’s coasts if necessary,” Maduro said during a government event shown on state television.

The U.S. military’s presence is less about drugs than sending a message to countries in the region to align with U.S. interests, according to Elizabeth Dickinson, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for the Andes region.

“An expression that I’m hearing a lot is ‘Drugs are the excuse.’ And everyone knows that,” Dickinson said. “And I think that message is very clear in regional capitals. So the messaging here is that the U.S. is intent on pursuing specific objectives. And it will use military force against leaders and countries that don’t fall in line.”

Comparing the drug crackdown to the war on terror

Hegseth’s remarks around the strikes have recently begun to draw a direct comparison between the war on terrorism that the U.S. declared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Trump administration’s crackdown on drug traffickers.

President Donald Trump this month declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and said the U.S. was in an “armed conflict” with them, relying on the same legal authority used by the Bush administration after 9/11.

When reporters asked Trump on Thursday whether he would request that Congress issue a declaration of war against the cartels, he said that wasn’t the plan.

“I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We’re going to kill them, you know? They’re going to be like, dead,” Trump said during a roundtable at the White House.

Lawmakers from both major political parties have expressed concerns about Trump ordering the military actions without receiving authorization from Congress or providing many details.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this before,” said Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., who previously worked in the Pentagon and the State Department, including as an adviser in Afghanistan.

“We have no idea how far this is going, how this could potentially bring in, you know, is it going to be boots on the ground? Is it going to be escalatory in a way where we could see us get bogged down for a long time?” he said.

Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, who has long been involved in foreign affairs in the hemisphere, said of Trump’s approach: “It’s about time.”

While Trump “obviously hates war,” he also is not afraid to use the U.S. military in targeted operations, Diaz-Balart said. “I would not want to be in the shoes of any of these narco-cartels.”

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Associated Press writers Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, and Ben Finley and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

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This story has been corrected to show there have been a total of at least 43 deaths from the strikes, not 46.