Genuine question for the more knowledgeable folks here.
The USA notably has had no attacks during wars inside their continental territory. Considering all the new missile technology, specially the battle-tested ones in Yemen and Russia, could Venezuela manage to retaliate with deep strikes on US states like Florida or Texas? If they technically could, would that also be politically sensible?
The distance between southern Florida and Northern Venezuela is roughly the same distance as between Yemen and Israel who manages to shoot missiles into Israel so yes, even if discounting super missiles like the Oreshnik. Politically Russia has no qualms sending missiles to Venezuela since loosening such arms export restrictions is a retaliatory measure Russia enacted once the US supplied ATACMS missiles to Ukraine.
Venezuela doesn’t have any serious missile production capabilities, and the logistics of shipping them from elsewhere would be untenable. I believe one reason the US is doing all this now is to prevent such threats from developing in the future.
Venezuela’s only hope is to credibly present itself as another potential military quagmire. The US can’t risk getting bogged down there, so they will only attack if they think they can finish the job quickly.
They don’t have and missiles… that we know about. For all we know the technological assistance China and Russia have given to Iran and Yemen has been shared with Venezuela as well. Computer testing is at the point where you don’t need to show off if you don’t want to.
well they must be thinking that then… there’s an awful lot of military machinery geared up and ready to go right near by
If Russia supplies them with the missiles Oreshnik, then yes it could be possible:
Map from this source.
As for the sensible nature of this, I don’t think it is anymore because Venezuela will have the right to strike within the US territory if the US invades them.
There are other medium range ballistic missiles that Russia or even Iran could supply Venezuela with (and perhaps already have) that are not as advanced and as militarily sensitive as the Oreshnik (which Russia is understandably not keen on sharing with anyone except perhaps Belarus, since it is such a new technology that nobody else in the world has).
Fortunately, according to Alexei Zhuravlyov who is first vice-chairman of the State Duma’s Defense Committee, there are no obstacles to supplying Oreshnik to a friendly country like Venezuela or Cuba.
The interesting part is that this idea was also floated some months ago by another military expert -> https://lemmygrad.ml/post/8694867
The possibility for this transfer is not 0 and it could become reality if the US and Europe want to transfer missiles to Ukraine or any of the other ex soviet republics like Azerbaijan.
My personal opinion on that statement is that it’s just a bit of provocative bluster, of the sort that Medvedev often likes to put out.
And military experts are often wrong about things like this because they just consider technical feasibility and don’t look at the full geopolitical picture.
