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Incidentally that would be why I DON'T expect Trump to pull something audacious and highly risky, since he's presumably sensitive to how a failure would crack his popularity and image. He has been VERY blessed in the success of his deployment of U.S. forces into dangerous situations. Hasn't had to reckon with a version of the Benghazi or Black Hawk Down situations, let alone the Iran Hostage Crisis. Biden even did him the favor of a hasty Afghanistan withdrawal in the interim.
I'm still in awe of the Venezuela gambit, he must have been assured there was such a disparity in capability (or they had SO MANY insiders to help out) that it would be virtually impossible to truly fail.
I'm not exactly sure what sort of material support for the protestors is most likely to help them succeed, but I do like that this tangibly reduces the likelihood of a real boots-on-ground invasion, from my perspective.
They literally didn't turn on their air defences. It's not impressive from a military angle at all.
Long-range air defenses are not very effective against low-flying aircraft* (unless essentially colocated with the target, in which case they don't perform better and may perform worse than other cheaper systems) – you can see this in Ukraine, where Russian and Ukrainian aircraft have been able to operate despite the presence of air defenses much superior to those of Venezuela. Being able to get in, yoink a leader defended by small arms and MANPADS (as Maduro was) and fly off without (allegedly) loss of life or destruction of equipment is impressive. Frankly, just coordinating a joint-services time-on-target operation is difficult enough without any sort of resistance at all.
*you might be wondering "what's the point of long range missiles then?" and the answer is that is if all you are doing is forcing the enemy to do risky nap-of-the-earth operations where they will be susceptible to small-arms fire and have worse performance then your long-ranged missiles have paid for themselves already.
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Did all of Maduro's security forget to take their guns off 'safe' as well?
Sorry what? I don't follow. If it wasn't clear, I was implying that the "disparity" was assured because the other side did not engage in a defense.
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Now do Greenland, lol [cries].
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15452323/Donald-Trump-orders-army-chiefs-plan-invade-Greenland-President.html
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