The recent US operation to remove Maduro from power in Venezuela has all sorts of implications in the Great Power competition between the US, China and Russia. But one that hasn't received too much attention, at least in the popular press, is the military implications of the utter failures of the Venezuelan defences.

Venezuela in general and Caracas in particular, were protected by the best systems the anti-US world has to offer. The radar and early detection systems were supplied by China and were billed by China as 'stealth busters' ie they would render the US stealth technology obsolete. The anti-aircraft missile systems were supplied by Russia and were the most sophisticated they had to offer.

Caracas, therefore, was protected by the best the Sino-Russia coalition had to offer.

And it utterly failed in the face of US technological superiority which was able to completely disable the Chinese radar systems and arrive at Maduro's residence, effectively undetected. Not a single US plane was taken out even as the SAM batteries were obliterated.

China is (or was?) preparing to intensify the military pressure on the island nation of Taiwan. But the events in Caracas have added a whole new dimension to their calculations. The Chinese now know that their homeland would be highly vulnerable to US stealth incursion. A month ago they thought they had the technology to defeat stealth. They now know differently.

As one commentator noted, the combination of US stealth, B52 bombers, the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs and the Chinese Three-Mile dam, means China has the biggest glass jaw in history.

The Venezuelan raid has bought Taiwan a few more years of security from Chinese invasion while the Chinese go back to the drawing board on their military technology.

A good point that doesn't seem to have been canvassed by the "experts".

Interesting point mhaze.

mhaze,

You've made a series of assumptions that haven't been established, and once you remove them, the strategic conclusion doesn't hold.

You're assuming Venezuela's Chinese and Russian systems were fully operational, integrated, trained, and representative of peer-state defences. That's unproven. Export hardware in a degraded client regime is not a proxy for Chinese homeland defence.

You're also treating air defence as a single technology problem. It isn't. US penetration relies on electronic warfare, ISR, cyber, mission planning, and suppression of emitters. A failure under those conditions tells you little about how the same systems perform in a dense, layered, domestically controlled network.

From there, the Taiwan extrapolation simply doesn't follow. Different geography, doctrine, allies, warning time. Beijing has assumed US penetration capability for decades and plans around cost-imposition, not perfect denial.

And the "glass jaw" framing is rhetorical. Everyone knows critical infrastructure is vulnerable in total war. That's not a new revelation, and it doesn't collapse deterrence.

Yes, Venezuelan air defences failed. No, that doesn't demonstrate Chinese anti-stealth is a myth or that China's strategic posture has been exposed.

At most, it shows that poorly integrated client-state defences don't hold up against a US combined-arms operation. But that's been true for decades.

The weapons didn't work? delusional
Trump killed 100 people with his stunt.

Bond Collapse Forces U.S. REVERSAL As Investors CANCEL Treasuries For China RMB Debt
http://youtu.be/xkS1ndW-B-s

Hi AC,

"The weapons didn't work? delusional
Trump killed 100 people with his stunt."

How many have died in Putin's Ukrainian stunt? Over 1000 a day for nearly four years?

The questions to ask are "How well trained were the operators?" and "How well maintained was the equipment?".

Those questions could be revisited in Iran over the coming weeks. Tens of thousands of unarmed civilians murdered by the regime so far. Will Trump keep his word and step in?