XPost: rec.aviation.military, rec.aviation.piloting, talk.politics.guns
XPost: sac.politics, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Could President Donald Trump's administration be preparing a strike
against Mexico's military cartels? Recent activity suggests he might --
and that could put Mexico's government in an awkward and unprecedented situation.
According to a report in military-centric outlet The War Zone earlier
this week, a U.S. Air Force surveillance jet flew two missions in the
Gulf of California on Monday and Tuesday.
The flights by the RC-135V Rivet Joint -- a reconnaissance plane based
on the venerable Boeing 707 platform -- flew "between Mexico’s Baja
Peninsula and the rest of that country, according to online flight
tracking data," the outlet reported.
While the platform itself is old -- the Boeing 707 was the first
successful jet airliner, after all -- the surveillance capabilities of
the RC-135 are another matter; it's one of the most technologically
advanced intelligence-gathering planes in the Air Force fleet, making
the over-water flight off the coast of one of Mexico's most cartel heavy
areas particularly notable:
OSINTdefender
@sentdefender
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Wow, for the first time I have ever seen, a U.S. Air Force RC-135V
“Rivet Joint” Signals Intelligence Platform from Offutt Air Force Base
in Nebraska, is operating within Mexican Airspace, over the Gulf of
California between Baja California Sur, Sonora, and Sinaloa.
"Despite how relatively narrow the Gulf of California is, there are international waters and airspace above at its center. There are no
indications that [the plane] ever entered Mexican national airspace in
the course of any of these flights," the War Zone reported.
The RC-135 has previously been used on counter-narcotics operations, as
well -- and the flights come after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said,
"[a]ll options will be on the table," including striking at cartels
inside Mexico, during an interview with Fox News last week.
George
@BehizyTweets
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BREAKING: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth just confirmed that the
United States could now conduct special operations against Mexican
cartels now that President Trump has declared them foreign terrorist organizations.
"All options will be on the table."
Any U.S. counter-cartel activity in Mexico would be problematic, and not
just because the American military is striking within a foreign territory.
Despite ample evidence that the ruling party in Mexico has, at the very
least, established a profitable detente with the criminal cartels that
plague the nation, newly elected Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was outraged by what she called "slanderous" allegations the ruling
coalition was in bed with the narcobosses.
“We categorically reject the White House's slander against the Mexican government of having alliances with criminal organizations, as well as
any intention of intervention in our territory,” Sheinbaum said in a
social media statement.
"If such an alliance exists anywhere, it is in the United States
armories that sell high-powered weapons to these criminal groups, as demonstrated by the United States Department of Justice itself in
January of this year."
However, Sheinbaum is the chosen successor of recently departed Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and has taken over the political machinery he built during his term in office.
At the very least, López Obrador's anti-cartel strategy of "hugs, not
bullets" (seriously, that's what he called it), ended as badly as you
might predict from that name and reinforced the notion that Mexico has
little control over the criminal element that's ravaged the country.
Alas, it seems that there were more than just "hugs" from the former
president and his government toward the drug bosses: Last February, The
New York Times reported U.S. authorities reportedly investigated López
Obrador for allegedly taking millions from the cartels and met with
their leaders.
"The inquiry, which has not been previously reported, uncovered
information pointing to potential links between powerful cartel
operatives and Mexican advisers and officials close to the president
while he governed the country," the report noted.
"But the United States never opened a formal investigation into Mr.
López Obrador, and the officials involved ultimately shelved the
inquiry. They concluded that the U.S. government had little appetite to
pursue allegations against the leader of one of America’s top allies,
said the three people familiar with the case, who were not authorized to
speak publicly."
The appetites of the Trump administration, however, are significantly
different than those of the Biden administration -- and if Mexico cannot
or will not stop violent cartels from wreaking havoc at home and across
the border, the Trump White House apparently plans to curb the capacity
of that element to traffic in drugs, human lives, and violence up here.
Whether or not this entails military strikes -- or whether that's a hard bargaining tactic to convince Sheinbaum she's far safer placating
Washington, D.C., than the Sinaloa Cartel -- the reconnaissance flights
make one thing clear yet again: Trump isn't just paying lip service to
making serious change this time around.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/reconnaissance-jet-makes-unprecedented-run-along-mexico-cartel-coast-hegseth-declares-all-options-on-the-table/ar-AA1yB4oK
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