Overview

• A Pentagon letter to Congress states the United States is engaged in a non‑international armed conflict with drug cartels to justify ongoing operations near Venezuela.
• U.S. officials say four suspected smuggling boats were destroyed at sea with at least 17 people killed, a rationale the White House frames under the laws of armed conflict.
• Venezuela's Defense and Foreign Ministries condemned what they called an illegal incursion by U.S. combat aircraft detected about 75 kilometers off its coast, describing the flights as a provocation without asserting a territorial breach.
• Washington has deployed multiple warships in the Caribbean and ten F‑35 fighters to Puerto Rico under its expanded counternarcotics mission.
• Caracas has intensified exercises, mobilized reservists and militias, and prepared an external state‑of‑emergency decree as it rejects U.S. trafficking allegations tied to a $50 million bounty on Nicolás Maduro.