The United States is dispatching three Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided-missile destroyers—the USS Gravely, USS Jason Dunham and USS Sampson—to waters off Venezuela, according to two sources briefed on the plans cited by Reuters. The warships, accompanied by at least one attack submarine, are expected to arrive within 36 hours as part of a wider push to disrupt Latin American drug-trafficking networks. Roughly 4,000 sailors and Marines will ultimately be involved in the operation, which U.S. officials say could run for several months and include P-8 surveillance aircraft and additional naval assets operating in international airspace and waters. President Donald Trump has made combating drug cartels a centerpiece of his security agenda, expanding military deployments in the Caribbean after designating several regional gangs as global terrorist organizations earlier this year. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whose government is under U.S. sanctions and whose senior officials have been accused by Washington of narco-trafficking, vowed to “defend our seas, our skies and our lands,” calling the move an “outlandish… threat of a declining empire.” The deployment raises the stakes in already tense U.S.–Venezuela relations and underscores the Trump administration’s readiness to use military power against criminal networks it views as a direct threat to U.S. national security.