Exclusive: U.S. military aircraft entered Venezuelan territory on Friday night

On Friday night, just hours after President Donald Trump announced from the Oval Office that the United States is ready to initiate ground strikes against narco-terrorist groups in the region, a U.S. military aircraft entered Venezuelan territory, U.S. security sources confirmed to VOZ.

Subsequently, at least three other American aircraft also reportedly entered Venezuelan airspace, the sources said, although the exact timing of these incursions is unclear.

According to these sources, despite dictator Nicolás Maduro and the head of the Venezuelan military, Vladimir Padrino López, the Venezuelan armed forces deliberately avoided any kind of confrontation with the U.S. aircraft.

On Friday, after 10 p.m. E.T., Flightradar24 showed trajectories associated with several U.S. fighters whose transponders stopped emitting signals, leading to flight estimates suggesting a possible incursion into Venezuelan airspace. However, hours later, the platform clarified that this data corresponded to estimated traces and that there was not enough technical confirmation to affirm that based on this information, that the aircraft had actually entered Venezuelan territory.

"If the aircraft signal is lost, we will estimate the position of a flight with no recorded track (such as RHINO61) for a maximum of 10 minutes. This estimate will follow the last known trajectory and speed. You can distinguish the estimated trajectories by the black line behind the aircraft," the platform explained on X, attaching a screenshot.

Flightradar24 also confirmed that the flights of U.S. Army “GRZZLY” and “RHINO” fighters were “our most tracked flights” on Friday, amid confusion on social media over the limitations of such civilian tracking.

Hours later, U.S. security sources confirmed to VOZ that the incursions into Venezuelan territory were indeed real.

So far, there are no details as to how long the aircraft had been in Venezuelan airspace or the objective of the incursions. Nevertheless, the United States has steadily intensified diplomatic, legal and military pressure against the Nicolás Maduro regime, through the imposition of new sanctions on his entourage, the deployment of the largest military operation in the Caribbean in decades and the seizure of an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast.