Four months after former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was removed from power, the United States military has carried out a rapid response drills in Venezuela’s capital Caracas, involving Marine Corps personnel and hybrid military aircraft.
The exercise centered on two MV-22 Osprey aircraft — tiltrotor vehicles that combine the vertical takeoff and landing capabilities of a helicopter with the long-range, fuel efficiency of a fixed-wing plane. The aircraft flew over the recently reopened U.S. Embassy in Caracas before touching down in the embassy’s parking lot, where strong downdrafts from their rotors sent tree branches swaying across the area. After landing, uniformed Marine personnel exited the aircraft to complete the exercise’s operational drills.
In a public statement posted to its official Instagram account following the drill, the U.S. Embassy emphasized that maintaining sharp, rapid response military capabilities is a core pillar of operational readiness for U.S. forces, both deployed in Venezuela and across all global U.S. mission locations. Venezuela’s interim government had pre-announced the exercise earlier in the week, with Foreign Minister Yván Gil clarifying that the drill was framed as a preparation to respond to potential medical or large-scale catastrophic emergencies in the capital.
This military exercise comes just two months after the U.S. formally reopened its diplomatic mission in Caracas. The embassy reopening marked the full restoration of bilateral diplomatic ties between Washington and Caracas, a step that followed Maduro’s ouster from office in early January. The last time U.S. military aircraft operated over Caracas was on January 3, when U.S. elite special operations forces rappelled from military helicopters to capture Maduro and his wife. The pair were subsequently extradited to New York to face international drug trafficking charges, and both have entered formal pleas of not guilty to the allegations against them.
The drill drew mixed reactions from local residents on Saturday. Dozens of Caracas locals gathered near the embassy compound to observe the aircraft and exercise activity, while a separate group of several dozen protesters assembled at another location across the city to demonstrate against the U.S. military operation. Protesters carried a large Venezuelan flag emblazoned with the phrase “No to the Yankee drill” to voice their opposition to the deployment of U.S. forces on Venezuelan territory.