Posted on 01/07/2026 6:34:37 AM PST by Red Badger
The success of a lightning-fast raid on Caracas raises new doubts about Chinese military capabilities, a military analyst said.
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U.S. forces stormed into Venezuela before dawn on Jan. 3 and captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a lightning operation that punched in and out of Caracas before its air defenses could mount an effective response.
The operation resulted in no U.S. fatalities and no loss of U.S. military equipment, U.S. officials said.
The U.S. mission—code-named Operation Absolute Resolve—has quickly become more than a political shockwave. Analysts have said it was also a real-world test of U.S. military power against a country that has spent years buying Chinese- and Russian-made air-defense systems and showcasing them as proof that it could deter Washington.
The raid raised uncomfortable questions for Beijing about the limits of the Chinese-supplied systems that Venezuela has leaned on—especially “anti-stealth” radar that China advertised as capable of spotting and stopping U.S. stealth aircraft, a military analyst said.
The analyst told The Epoch Times that the most damaging takeaway for China isn’t the failure of a single piece of equipment—it’s what the operation suggested about deeper weaknesses: corruption in China’s defense industry and lack of reliability of the technology and command structure meant to tie those systems together.
“A system built to look modern on paper and intimidating in propaganda falls apart under the demands of real combat,” said Yu Tsung-chi, a retired major general from Taiwan and former president of the Political Warfare College at Taiwan’s National Defense University.
He said Beijing’s performance claims often lean more on messaging than combat validation.
China condemned the capture of Maduro and accused Washington of acting as a “world judge,” in a blunt response that underscored how closely Beijing saw the fallout tied to its influence and credibility in Latin America. Operation Measured in Hours President Donald Trump ordered the operation at 10:46 p.m. ET on Jan. 2, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said. Aircraft launched from about 20 land and sea bases across the Western Hemisphere, and the helicopter force approached Venezuela at roughly 100 feet above the water to maintain the element of surprise.
Within five hours, by 3:29 a.m. ET, U.S. forces had Maduro and Flores aboard the USS Iwo Jima, an amphibious assault ship. They were then flown to the United States.
This illustration depicts Caracas and the states in which the Venezuelan regime said U.S. military strikes occurred before the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife on Jan. 3, 2025. Anika Arora Seth, Phil Holm via AP
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U.S. officials said the operation involved more than 150 aircraft along with integrated electronic attack and nonkinetic effects from U.S. Cyber Command, Space Command, and other assets to suppress Venezuelan defenses and clear a path for the helicopters.
Briefings described a layered effects approach: bombers, fighters, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, electronic warfare jets, and drones overhead; space and cyber support to disrupt Venezuelan systems; and strikes intended to dismantle and disable air defenses as helicopters closed on Caracas.
According to officials, aircraft used in the operation included B-1B bombers, F-22 Raptors, F-35 Lightning II fighters, EA-18G Growler electronic attack jets, E-2 Hawkeye early warning aircraft, and numerous drones alongside transport and helicopter assets.
China’s Systems
For years, Venezuela has spent heavily on Chinese and Russian equipment while claiming that it was building one of the region’s most modern defense systems.
In recent months, reports have highlighted Venezuela’s installation of Chinese-made JY-27A radar units, marketed as able to detect “low-observable” aircraft—exactly the kind of system meant to complicate U.S. operations involving stealth platforms.
That promise did not hold on Jan. 3.
Yu said neither Chinese nor Russian air-defense systems “made the slightest bit of difference” once the United States brought real-time intelligence, electronic warfare, and precision weapons to bear.
The real contest, he said, wasn’t just radar range or missile specs, but a fast chain of detection, communications, decision-making, and joint execution—exactly where weaker militaries tend to break.
Beyond radar, Venezuela has also displayed and fielded Chinese-made ground systems that Beijing has marketed abroad—from VN-16 amphibious assault vehicles and VN-18 infantry fighting vehicles to Chinese rocket artillery systems.
Venezuelan parades in recent years have showcased those platforms as symbols of a growing partnership and a tougher military posture.
But Yu said glossy displays don’t matter much if the wider network—sensors, communications, command, training, and logistics—can’t hold up under pressure.
Parades Versus Combat Reality
Yu said the U.S. raid on Caracas exposed the limits of China’s propaganda-first military culture—one that rewards polished demonstrations more than hard, repeated combat validation.
He said the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has not fought a major war since 1979, and it studies foreign conflicts in part because it lacks large-scale, recent battlefield feedback of its own.
“You can look perfectly aligned and advanced on a parade ground,” Yu said, “but without real combat to back it up, it’s all just stage effects.”
The U.S. operation in Venezuela, he said, hit Beijing especially hard because the communist regime has spent years promoting its weapons and integrated combat systems as “world-leading,” using high-profile showcases—such as the much-hyped military parade in September 2025—to project confidence at home and deterrence abroad.
In that vein, Yu said, “anti-stealth” detection is a headline capability meant to signal that China can threaten U.S. airpower. But what happened in Caracas cut straight through that messaging.
Yu also pointed to reports that a Chinese delegation visited Venezuela just hours before Maduro’s capture, further spotlighting how closely Beijing and Caracas have aligned.
Corruption, Command Liabilities
Yu said corruption and “black-box” decision-making have weakened Chinese military readiness, partly because bad news gets filtered upward and procurement incentives reward appearances. He pointed to recent corruption probes in China’s military-industrial complex and scandals that have raised questions about quality control and readiness.
In a closed system, he said, procurement decisions often happen behind doors, with limited independent oversight and strong incentives to hide failure.
Beijing’s “military-civil fusion” model can intensify those risks, Yu said. Profit-driven contractors pay bribes to obtain contracts, substitute inferior components, and still meet paperwork requirements as long as money moves and reporting looks clean.
Even if individual platforms are capable, he said, the system around them—maintenance, training realism, logistics honesty—can be hollowed out.
He contrasted that with what he described as Washington’s preference for letting battlefield results speak louder than slogans.
Yu also said integration and command speed often decide outcomes faster than platform specs.
The U.S. advantage, he said, is not just technology—it’s integration and delegation. Once a mission is approved, U.S. operations are designed to push authority downward, giving frontline commanders room to adjust in seconds.
China’s command system, he said, is the opposite: rigidly centralized and politically constrained.
“No matter how advanced the equipment,” Yu said, “it still has to wait for orders from the highest authority.”
Centralization is a built-in lag, he said, which is costly in a fight in which delays are punished instantly.
Yu said he believes that Washington’s decision to capture Maduro was meant to send a message well beyond Caracas: to Beijing, to pro-China and anti-U.S. governments, such as Cuba and Iran, and to other Latin American capitals weighing closer ties with China.
He framed the move as a hard-edged application of the Monroe Doctrine under Trump’s second-term national security approach—prioritizing U.S. security in the Western Hemisphere and working to block Beijing-aligned influence from taking root further in Central and South America.
“Venezuela may only be the first domino,” Yu said. “Pro-Beijing regimes across Latin America will face growing pressure to choose sides.”
Cheng Mulan and Luo Ya contributed to this report.
Good post. Definitely a val-ver for China and no doubt their after-action will result in changes.
Good post. Definitely a val-ver for China and no doubt their after-action will result in changes.
True. I remember.
However, culturally, this is a false comparison. The Japanese take pride in their work - they are a high trust society. They naturally progressed from what the were able to produce to what the next could produce. China is the opposite- graft and corruption at every level. In China the motto is: “if you can cheat, then do it”. China will never progress in the same way as Japan did, in my opinion.
My dad was a Senior Chief Petty Officer. Went to a reunion of his squadron reunion several years ago. One retired Chief told me about a junior officer telling him that my dad chewed him out. This Chief told the junior officer that he needed shut up and follow my dad’s advice.
“As someone who spent much of his adult life flying F16s, that comment doesn’t make sense.”
Well, it makes sense to me, since ALL of the so-called “Experts” on National news and in Europe said it was a GAME CHANGER (their words).
It wasn’t. Just a very expensive to operate system to shoot down $4,000 drones, at least in Ukraine.
So, sorry, I’m skeptical at the claims made here, considering that our BEST AND BRIGHTEST were totally WRONG about the F-16s in Ukraine.
Your assessment is correct.
There are I believe as many as 97 dams on the Yangtze river and tributaries.
An engineering assessment indicated the right side of the Three Gorges locks are more vulnerable than the huge concrete mass of the dam
Wow!!
Magnificently fantastic post.
You left one possible equation factor untouched........ corruption
Corruption is difficult to access except that it is an important and damaging factor
I have to agree about corruption, and I didn’t include it because of the nature of my amateur analysis.
In thinking about why I didn’t include it, I think it is akin to the way that the rules for handling guns are presented in training...they specify in the positive mode of ALWAYS DO THIS instead of DON’T DO THIS (such as ALWAYS KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO FIRE instead of NEVER PUT YOUR FINGER ON THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO FIRE...that kind of thing.
But you are correct, corruption ONLY degrades the weapons, doctrine, and training.
In weaponry, corruption degrades the quality, cost, and effectiveness of weapons.
In doctrine, corruption produces worthless doctrine. For example, before the Battle of Midway when the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was gaming the battle, their process was corrupt. It was corrupted because they DESIGNED (by deliberately making false assumptions that favored the IJN forces) it so the IJN would win the battle, instead of actually running an uncorrupted exercise in which they might lose (and lose face in the process of gaming it)
In training, it is obvious how corruption would degrade the entire process. When I was in the Navy, there was a process called “gundecking”, and it involved falsifying of records during the training process. To be fair, the documentation and requirements of training were so onerous, time consuming, and unnecessary that people readily subverted the documentation and training process it because it was unrealistic. For example, let’s say you had a training process “Change the Fuel Control on the TF-41 engine”.
The official documents would require you change five fuel control devices, witnessed by someone who was already signed off and trained in the process, and documented with a check box on a piece of paper with the initials of the witnessing person. When you had changed five fuel controls, witnessed and initialed on the documentation by an officially trained person who supervised, you were “trained”, and when your time to be promoted from Aviation Machinist’s Mate 3rd Class to Aviation Machinist’s Mate 2nd Class, if all these things were signed off, you could be promoted.
That sounds fine, until you realize that fuel controls didn’t fail that often. On an entire deployment over six months, you might have one failure, maybe two. So what people would do is watch you do one, and sign off all five of them required...often with the same initials.
Everyone did it. Efforts to change the paperwork to require only one fuel control change were fruitless. So EVERYONE just looked the other way and did it. We were even warned explicitly NOT to engage in “gundecking”. But even the people who had to warn us looked the other way.
In the end, that was just stupid bureaucracy. But people DID do it out of sheer laziness, which can also be a thing. Laziness is indeed a form of corruption.
” considering that our BEST AND BRIGHTEST”
You think the best and brightest are talking heads on TV or Biden gubmint officials?
No wonder you think your statement makes sense; you’re not very smart.
...so I should believe you instead? LOL!!!!
I don’t care what you do.
I wish I could relate some of what I heard and saw working in defense electronics. It would make you wonder how anything we made worked at all.
Hard to believe a war with Taiwan would benefit China even less than what is happening in Russia.
China may be able to invade Taiwan, but what will they gain
Likely the technology will be destroyed and much of the navy, ships and missiles build over several decades will be destroyed
Russia can’t manage logistics connected by land, in WW2 the short distance of the channel proved to be a significant challenge to allied logistics, as well as the invasion itself
Side note mules are absolutely ineffective across 100 miles of ocean😂
100 miles of open ocean is certainly a significant challenge on both fronts.
As for getting any technical data from Venezuela or even Iran will be limited if any at all
For China, Taiwan is 80 miles away, and it is a like us with Cuba which is about 90 miles away. But for them, there is a political and historical side of it that eats at them.
For the same reason China is irritable about the Opium Wars by foreigners and even today in the 21st century (where it is significant that they view the exportation of Fentanyl and its manufacturing precursors into as a favorable, and even enjoyable thing) they also have strong feelings about Taiwan.
As an analogy, it is as absurd as Britons who would view India in a possessive light in the 21st century. Taiwan was inhabited by indigenous non-Chinese tribes and were taken over by China in the 17th century.
The fact that after WWII control of Taiwan was returned to the Republic of China (led by Chiang kai-shek) who was engaged in civil war with the Communists at the end of WWII and after we enabled the takeover of China by the Communists in 1949, Chiang kai-shek’s government retreated to Taiwan, and it has been sticking politically in their craw ever since.
For them, obtaining control of Taiwan would have the benefit of controlling 80% of the semiconductor production in the world (their own 20% and Taiwan’s 60%) which in today’s world, would be economically catastrophic for the West. (We only produce 10% of the world’s semiconductors in the USA)
By the way, this is the reason we will have to defend Taiwan. We will need to become more self-sufficient in semiconductor production, but that takes time. The Trump Administration appears to recognize this weakness, but the time lag makes it a very dangerous situation.
So, if things start going really South for their economy, I fully expect them to try something like that to stave off a civil war. They have a lot of mouths to feed in China, and if people get wise to their perfidy as we have done under Trump to some degree. Trump and his ideological allies fully recognize that the Chicoms have been an enemy for the last 30-40 years, NOT a “trading partner” and have been waging all forms of multi-dimensional war on us, stopping just short of kinetic war.
But that can change if their unrest at home begins to accelerate. We are sailing into deadly waters as we forge into the near future. Communist China has the potential for great problems internally even bigger than what they face now, and a cornered rat will do many destructive things.
The idea that they can simply take Taiwan and start producing chips under their flag is fanciful
Yes we need to up our production of chips, but if China decides to invade not only will they end up with nothing but an ego boost, they will lose the trillions they have spent on their military, and their export economy wrecked
So by all means your ego needs fed, perhaps a look at how Russia is fairing after Putin’s ego driven war is progressing.
As I have said man kind has evolved technologically, but we are still the basic animal we have always been, and the worst of the worst seem to rise to power and then destroy their countries because of vanity, jealousy, envy, and pride
Well. Believe me, I am not advocating for them to invade Taiwan. And keep in mind-they don’t NEED to start producing semiconductors under their own flag.
If 60% of the market for Semiconductors in the world is taken offline due to an invasion, what happens to Western economies? It won’t be good.
The next country in line with 20% of the market happens to be Communist China. Granted, those are not advanced Semiconductors (that would be Taiwan) but by brute force manufacturing of lower end semiconductors, I believe they are the leader in volume of all kinds.
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