Trump’s attention flitting towards Nigeria isn’t a sign of some broader withdrawal from the Caribbean. The neocon eye of sauron has been pointed at Venezuela for more than a decade. It’s not going to stop over the whims of one man. Rubio’s personal actions are a much better proxy for how badly the neocons want to do a war in the western hemisphere.

Air launched antiship missiles are fraught. I sincerely doubt Venezuela will shoot first, so their airframes are vulnerable to any opening salvo from the US. American ISR and F35s and formidable against Venezuelan fighters, regardless of how finite they are.

Venezuela is a very hard target for military invasion on many levels. The US military, meanwhile, is a cowardly force that only wants easy pickings. If Venezuela keeps the US on their toes and makes them second guess serious action, the machine is going to turn its gaze elsewhere. But I don’t think Nigeria is going to be much easier, given its gargantuan population. There’s 8x as many Nigerians as Venezuelans and Africa is not easy terrain for large scale imperial operations.

I do wonder if they drank too much of their own kool aid and thought they “need only kick in the door to collapse the whole rotten structure.” The successful mass mobilization and Russian weapon supplies may indeed have given them second thoughts. After everything that has happened over the past few years, I doubt the US can afford a whole new sustained war.

It’s very possible that they will still try to kidnap or murder Maduro, though. He is one of the main things holding the revolution together, and the line of succession is questionable.

I’m just going to copy/paraphrase my comment from the now locked previous megathread. All estimates based on publicly available information.

Wouldn’t say so, Venezuela has had these Kh-31/AS-17 Krypton supersonic anti ship missiles ever since they bought the Su-30. You can find images of Venezuelan Su-30s equipped with Kh-31 from 10+ years ago. Russian military or Wagner technicians may have helped Venezuela restore these capabilities, but they have possessed them for some time.

Their relatively short range of 40-60 nautical miles(nmi)/70-110km, and dependence on being air launched by Su-30s mean that it’s unlikely they’ll have any effect on a conflict. At most, Venezuela could score some lucky hits, similar to Argentina in the Falklands war. Though when Argentina did that, they were up against combat air patrols (CAPs) of Harriers. Venezuela is up against F-35B CAPs, a much better aircraft for air to air engagements, supersonic, stealth and already shown to be armed with AIM-120D AMRAAM air to air missiles, with a maximum range of 90-100nmi/160-180km. That’s not mentioning the anti aircraft and anti missile capabilities of AEGIS onboard the destroyers and cruisers. SM-6 missiles launched by AEGIS (anti aircraft and anti ship) have a maximum range in excess of 200nmi/370km.

What Venezuela needs is a longer stick, and an ability to use it after conflict breaks out. The P-270 Moskit (Kh-41) and P-800 Oniks (Kh-61) supersonic anti ship missiles offer significantly more range and can be air launched or ground launched. Kh-41 is said to offer a maximum range between 135-160nmi/250-300km when air launched and flying on a combined high-lo trajectory. Export variants of the Oniks/Kh-61 offer similar maximum ranges and flight profiles. Modernised Russian versions of the Oniks/Kh-61 offer maximum ranges of 320-430nmi/600-800km. A ground launch or lo-lo flight profile will significantly reduce this theoretical maximum range. Though modifying the Su-30s to carry and launch them like Russia’s Su-33s can, or transporting missile batteries/ground launch infrastructure alongside the missiles for ground launch, would be a significant task. I don’t think the effort will be made, it’s quite unlikely. But it is theoretically possible. Ground launched modernised P-800 Oniks would be their best bet here realistically, gives them a long range option not dependent on aircraft. Hezbollah apparently had some export variants of this.

Su-33/Su-27K with Kh-41 in between the engine intakes/nacelles, and Kh-61 on the weapons trolley:

Person for scale with a Kh-61, massive missiles, an Su-33 can only carry one Kh-41 or Kh-61 on the centreline:

For improved anti aircraft capabilities, the Su-30s Mech radars would need to be replaced by the Irbis-E, so they can fire the R-37M active radar guided air to air missiles. Currently they only have the active radar guided R-77 and semi active R-27. There’s no point in supplying R-37Ms without a radar replacement, they can fly much further than the Mech radar can see. Again, very unlikely.

I do wonder if there’s any comparisons that can be made between Yemen and Venezuela, in terms of predicting how a conflict would go

Because on paper, Yemen is very disadvantaged compared to the US (and indeed can only get missiles through to the US navy by depleting interceptors first) but in practice has been a monumental thorn in the US’s side when trying to reassert control over the Red Sea; merely bombing Yemen hasn’t seemed to achieve much either militarily or politically, and certainly not compared to the material costs in terms of manpower and drones and interceptor missiles and the constant expensive maintenance that bombing raids require (as we all know, money itself is no object to American imperialists, but the materials and time to manufacture the weapons certainly matters)

Does Venezuela have any kind of comparable missile or mass drone production capable of engaging in gradual attrition against the US, or would such an attritional war only really arise if the US tries to put boots on the ground (or hires boots inside Venezuela) and then the socialist militias begin resistance operations? I’m assuming here that the Venezuelan air fleet would be taken out fairly quickly, and optimistically would “only” take out a ship or two before no longer being a threat (and indeed might not take out anything at all), which seems like a good assumption to me but I guess depends on what exactly Russia and China decide to do and send them.

I sort of hope so for Venezuelans, and am not familiar enough with Nigeria to know what to think. The government there seems happy to accept help, but I’ve only seen western sources.

But I think there’s a chance this is Trump’s last minute distraction before still attacking Venezuela. I’ll accept my punishment if proven wrong by time, but I’m not convinced he’d give up that fast. Or be allowed to give up I guess

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