Name: How did the US get Maduro? Inside Operation Absolute Resolve | BBC Security Brief
Uploaded: 2026-01-10T16:58:59.000Z
Duration: 17 min 8 s
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It was one of the most complex, audacious military operations in decades.

But how did U.S. special Forces take the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro in the dead of night?

I spent many years flying in support of UK Special Forces on similar helicopter assault operations.

We will lift the lid on how Operation Absolute Resolve went down.

he's been doing an awful lot of work breaking down this operation and there's an awful lot to it.

So where do you want to begin, Christian?

Yeah, well, for me there are three key elements.

I'm going to call them phases, if you like.

Phase one was the massive collation of intelligence.

Phase two was all about suppression of enemy air defense called sead.

And then phase three was the helicopter force assault on Maduro's compound.

Okay, well, let's start with the intelligence.

Intelligence is absolutely critical to any, any kind of these type of operations called the Night Stalkers.

The Night stalkers are the 160th saw Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

And it all starts with the collation of intelligence.

And intelligence comes for me in three key forms.

Let's take the first, which is human intelligence or human.

And that's basically informants or assets.

And we do know from the open source reporting that there was a CIA plant within the Venezuelan government.

Yeah, the CIA started collating this human intelligence, this human, back in August 2025, using a source inside the Venezuelan government that they managed to persuade or turn.

And that source basically would have been given.

This is going to come up a lot, Christian, when we're talking about intelligence.

So understanding what Maduro's behaviors were, what his movements were, what the trends were and what his locations were, and

even according to some reporting, what he ate and presumably what his communications were, who he was talking to.

That part is called signals intelligence.

It forms part of what's called the elite spectrum, electronic intelligence.

Signals intelligence is basically listening into communications, triangulating through telephone calls where Maduro was, but

Who within his inner team is he talking to?

Who are the important people that form that, what we call a spider network of intelligence.

And as important, what they were talking about, how do you go about that?

I mean, what sort of equipment would they be using?

I mean, the critical capabilities is a term that we use in the military would be the RQ170 Sentinel stealth drone.

I think we've got some video footage Here it's important to say that you don't see these aircraft very often.

This is very rare and unique footage and I've looked at it quite a few times and it basically appears to be an RQ170 Sentinel drone returning back to Roosevelt Roads Air Base in Puerto Rico in the morning, likely sitting up over Caracas all night sucking up that signals intelligence.

And it's not just about signals intelligence.

This aircraft or this drone is likely what's called dual censored.

So it's got the eel inside the sensor that can listen into signals intelligence, but

it's also highly likely got something called imagery intelligence capability, which is effectively electro optical cameras that can look in daylight and also thermal imagery.

Let's just take a look at an artist's impression of the RQ170 because there isn't a lot of footage out there.

I think what's really key about this is it's called a dual sensor platform.

I don't know it's a dual sensor platform, but

when I was operating inside Iraq, the predators had dual sensors on it.

So it would surprise me if the RQ170 didn't have dual sensors.

So it's got, it's got the ability to have the signals intelligence piece of listening to those communications that we spoke about, but

it'll also have other sensors on it that allow the ability to look.

So you're talking about electro optical cameras that can zoom in by day and then thermal cameras that can track activity at night.

Okay, so that's the intelligence picture.

You've got his movements that have been tracked over several months, which will be passed on to the special ops team that have to carry out this operation.

But that brings us to the next part of this and that is getting in phase two.

The main obstacle faced by US forces in terms of what is going to, what is the biggest threat to their air assets, whether that's drones or aircraft.

Coming off the carrier, is called the S300 missile system.

Let's just take a look at a mock up, a graphic, 3D graphic of that.

The US went about taking these out so they could get or reduce the risk of putting elite forces in.

Now this S300 missile system, it's made by Russia and it's got an incredibly powerful radar to identify a flying target at considerable range.

So it's a critical capability that the US would be going after.

And what do you know, Mikey, about how they were hitting or targeting these missiles?

So you know, we spoke about, about a month Ago, we spoke about the buildup of military capability.

The USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, the largest aircraft carrier in the world that carries an aircraft called the F18 Hornet.

And the specific version that would be tracking these missiles is called the Growler.

We can see here on the screen, it's got a jamming capability on it which allows it to interfere with the S300 radar system, giving the radar erroneous sort of target tracks.

But the other key bit is it carries on its pylons a missile called the AGM88HARM missile.

And what that does is we spoke about this really powerful radar in the S300 and you think that's advantage because it allows the range of its targets that is tracking, identifying to be quite long.

But the disadvantage of that, Christian, is the fact that that radar is super powerful.

So as soon as that radar is turned on, all of the displays and the sensors in that F18 growler will light up and it will allow the weapon system operator in the back of that jet, that US jet, to be able to quickly target identify the S300 and then get one of those HARM missiles off the rail and down the throat of an S300 operator.

So in a sense that it turns into a game of cat and mouse.

So now you've got a situation where, you know, if the S300 operators turn its radar on for too long, they're going to get a lot from that F18 growler and they're going to have a Harm missile looking at them.

So there's, there's obviously been some form of cat and mouse game where eventually the operators have deemed it too risky to turn the radar on and then eventually started to try and evade.

And you know about this personally because you have flown with these HARM missiles.

It was, it was a very unique operation that I was a part of in the mid-90s in Bosnia, based in Aviano Air Force Base.

And I got it, I got invited to fly with the U.S. marine Corps Moondog Squadron.

Now they were flying what's called an EA6B Prowler at the time, which was four crew.

The F18 Growler has taken over from that.

But effectively we went over on a mission in Bosnia and we were looking for those surface to air missile systems using exactly that process of looking out for the radar to be turned on to launch the Harm missile on them.

As it happens, during that mission, no radars did Turn on but.

So again, Christian, about a month ago, one of the, one of the really interesting things we spoke about was that special U.S.

special forces capability buildup off the coast of Venezuela.

I think we can take a look, just a couple of pictures here, just to give the viewers an idea of what we're talking about.

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How did the US get Maduro? Inside Operation Absolute Resolve | BBC Security Brief

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