How the US wiped out Venezuela's air defenses so quickly (and why the real war could start)

The “Russian shield” over Caracas, Venezuela’s vaunted air defense, was supposed to be an iron dome, one that would embarrass the United States and sink its ships. But at 04:00 EST on January 3, 2026, the US Navy turned it into scrap metal.

For a decade, defense blogs and the twittersphere have been posting about the S-300VM “Antey-2500”. They told us the Caribbean was a dead zone. They proudly exclaimed that the Su-30s would sink the US fleet before it could reach operating range. But when the first wave of Tomahawks from the USS Gerald R. Ford crossed that coast, those Russian radars were already utterly worthless.

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I didn’t just delete a grid square; I dismantled a talking point. The myth of near-equal air defense in the Western Hemisphere is dead. As I’ve said here before, you can watch other countries fight and say war has changed forever, but that’s because you never see what the US military can accomplish.

But before you start popping champagne and waving the miniature American flag, check your ego. The easy part is over. I just knocked on their proverbial door; if you want to enter another man’s house uninvited, that’s quite another.

Here’s the After Action Report on how we blinded the bear and why the next phase will be a bleed.

Phase 1: “Antey” Blinding

On paper, the S-300VM (NATO: SA-23 Gladiator) is a nightmare. It is a mobile, tracked beast designed to defeat cruise missiles up to 250 km. It was the “FAFO” sign for the US Navy.

So how did “Operation Southern Spear” crack Venezuela’s air defenses in 20 minutes? Physics.

The S-300 is based on the 9S32ME guidance radar, but the radar has a problem to exploit: it has to scream to be heard. Ford’s air wing, Growlers, and F-35Cs didn’t just jam those signals; they drowned them. They forced the Venezuelan operators to develop their power to see anything through static.

That was the bait. The moment those radars turned on, they became beacons for our anti-radiation missiles. The S-300 can track 24 targets, but it can’t hit what it can’t see, especially when its brain has a digital meltdown.

The systems built in Russia (despite the corruption in their military complex) were designed for the flat open beauty of Eastern Europe, not the jagged teeth of the Venezuelan coast. Tomahawks hug the ground. By the time the batteries at La Carlota even noticed the incoming wave, the missiles were already below the radar horizon, using the very mountains meant to protect the capital as cover. This is how the US military thinks and prepares: Your greatest asset becomes a significant, often final, flaw.

The result? The “Russian shield” is scrap metal. We have the sky; everybody knows that; we also dominate the oceans.

Flankers are still hunting

Land sites are smoking, but the Venezuelan Air Force (AMB) is by no means powerless. The real threat to the fleet was never the S-300; it was the Su-30MK2 Flanker carrying the Kh-31 Krypton.

This is an ugly piece of hardware. The Kh-31 is a Mach 3+ anti-ship missile that goes over the waves faster than you’d imagine. Venezuela has 24 Flankers capable of launching them. While we’re smashing the static sites, those planes have probably dispersed to distant swaths of jungle.

If they decide to go out with a suicide squad against Ford, the Standard Missiles will have seconds to react. The air war is not over; it just went from the “suppress” phase to the “hunt”.

welcome to the jungle

And now it’s time for the bad stuff. We’ve spent billions perfecting a way of war that relies on three luxuries: seeing everything from space, talking to anyone instantly, and evacuating the wounded immediately.

The moment we pass the coast, the jungle devours everything.

In the desert, if it flew, I either owned it, took photos of it, or destroyed it. In the Amazon, the triple canopy foliage is a literal roof over the battlefield. A Reaper drone at 20,000 feet can’t see through a hundred feet of mahogany and vines. The enemy knows this. They don’t hide in bunkers; they maneuver freely under that green roof.

Related: Why traditional jungle warfare training needs an upgrade for 2026

Worse, that canopy frees up airspace for the poor man’s air force: swarms of drones. Not military grade Predators, incredibly cheap commercial quadcopters equipped with mortars. In the open desert, you hear them. In the jungle, flora absorbs all sound. You won’t know a suicide drone is there until it rips through the leaves fifteen feet above and aims for your head.

Our doctrine uses data as a crutch. We assume we can call fire instantly because we have a few decades. But the jungle is nature’s Faraday cage. Dense moisture vegetation soaks up VHF and UHF signals like a sponge.

Any patrols heading into the bush will see their comms range cut by at least half; Russian (and probably Chinese) advisors turn on their jammers. Team leaders addicted to battling iPads will find themselves staring at blank screens. We’re going back to the days of the map, the compass, and a runner, skills we’ve let rust during twenty years of desert warfare.

Death Golden Hour

This is the grimmest reality check. For a generation, American fighters operated with the confidence that a MEDEVAC bird was always on the way. In this theater, that timeline is a fantasy and could be devastating to ground troops.

Now read: How the US military’s ‘Golden Hour’ obsession changed civilian medicine

Helicopters cannot land in a lush jungle. Lifting operations are slow, noisy and leave the bird floating like a piñata for MANPADS. If a soldier is hit, they don’t fly out; their colleagues carry them out. Imagine a fifty million dollar helicopter hovering above a canopy for any length of time. There will be a control room full of 20 year olds flying plastic FPV drones at them within minutes like it’s nothing more than a game.

Evacuation becomes a grueling, multi-day hike through skin-rotting mud. “Golden Hour” becomes “Golden Day” if you are not blocked by a constant ambush. Each casualty anchors the unit further, turning a rescue mission into a tactical nightmare where help is a three-day walk.

What’s next

Operation Southern Spear was a technical masterpiece. We have proven that Russian hardware cannot cope with American software. The S-300 is effectively dead and the Ford is coasting.

But don’t mistake air superiority for victory. I just got the front door down, but the house is a maze and the lights are out. The enemy will no longer fight us in heaven. They will wait in the green where our sensors don’t work, our communications fail and our drones are blind.

I bought airspace for a billion dollars this morning; changing the couch at the US government. However, if there are other intentions, the cost could be prohibitive.

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Venezuelan air defense The fire at Fuerte Tiuna, Venezuela’s largest military complex, is seen from a distance after a series of explosions in Caracas on January 3, 2026. (AFP via Getty Images)

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