It takes exceptional training, planning and execution and top-tier military infrastructure to insert special forces into the heart of a country larger than Pakistan, land inside a heavily fortified military garrison, and snatch the country’s most heavily guarded individual, without suffering casualties.

Speaking to Fox News just hours before his public address at the White House, Trump bragged that only the US had the capability to carry out an operation of this nature. Actually, Israel is the only other such country.

In July 1976, Israeli special forces led by Lt Col Jonathan Netanyahu (the current PM’s brother) flew over 8000 km of hostile airspace from Israel to Entebbe airport in Uganda, battled with the Ugandan military and Palestinian terrorists who had hijacked an Air France airliner with 106 Israeli passengers, rescued them, destroyed a quarter of the Ugandan air force on the ground, before flying back to Israel with 102 hostages. Lt Col Netanyahu was the only military casualty of the Operation, now retroactively named for him.US attempts to mimic the Israelis ended in smoke, ruins and bodies. In April 1980, Operation Eagle Claw launched by President Jimmy Carter to rescue 52 US hostages held in the US embassy in Teheran, ended in an international embarrassment.

A US rescue helicopter crashed into a tanker, killing eight US servicemen and the mission had to be aborted. Operation Gothic Serpent, an October 1993 operation to kidnap Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aideed ended disastrously with three Black Hawk helicopters shot down and 18 US servicemen killed, hundreds injured and beleaguered US forces rescued by Pakistani and Malaysian UN soldiers.

Operation Neptune Spear, the May 2, 2011 operation to capture Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden being sheltered by the Pakistan military in Abbotabad, fared a little better.

The commandos killed bin Laden but crashed a super secret ‘Ghost Hawk’ stealth helicopter which the Pakistanis are believed to have handed over to the Chinese to reverse-engineer.

The operation to kidnap Maduro and his wife exorcises the ghosts of all such past operations. An intelligence-based operation, featuring a fusion of US capabilities— a hammer to shatter and distract, a scalpel to cut and extract and bragging rights for President Trump.

Last October, I detailed what the war in Venezuela could look like, from covert actions, special forces operations to a full-scale invasion. Scenario number 2, the use of special forces appeared to be the most probable in my estimation.

Trump seems to have opted for this as the path of least resistance to effect regime change in Caracas. The details of Operation Absolute Resolve haven’t been revealed, but using past precedent and snatches of information revealed thus far, here is a reconstruction of what might have happened:

1. The target: Until 2019, President Maduro and his wife stayed in the Miraflores Palace, the official Venezuelan presidential residence in Caracas. The Venezuelan capital has around 5 million inhabitants and is located along a river in the northern part of Venezuela, within the Caracas Valley. The valley is separated from the Carribean sea coast by a steep 2,200-metre high mountain range. After the Venezuelan presidential crisis of April 2019, Maduro is believed to have shifted to the Fuerte Tiuna (Fort Tiuna) garrison deep inside Caracas. Tiuna houses the Ministry of Defense, the Military Academy and troop barracks. Reports say he was guarded by Cuban personnel, sleeping inside a heavily fortified personal bunker dubbed as ‘La Roca’ (the Rock). Miraflores remained the official presidential palace for presidential duties— the last of which was a reception for a visiting Chinese delegation.
2. The plan : Admiral William McRaven, who oversaw Operation Neptune Spear in 2011, studied eight special forces operations to develop a theory of special forces operations. These operations included Operation Oak, the 1943 rescue of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini by German paratroopers, and Operation Jonathan. McRaven found that ‘simplicity in planning, security and repetition in preparation, and surprise, speed, and purpose in execution’ were vital for the success of the mission. Planning for Operation Absolute Resolve would have begun as soon as US warships began encircling Venezuela last September. Even as the US built up a case of narco-trafficking against Maduro and key members of his government, US special operators had begun rehearsing their plans and the CIA and NSA would have begun piling up teraflops of visual and electronic data to build up a pattern of behaviour. US Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Daniel Cain told a press briefing that the operation was a result of ‘months of work by our intelligence teammates to find Maduro and understand how he moved, where he lived, where he travelled, what he ate, what he wore, what were his pets.’ The CIA would have handed over detailed layouts of the garrison including the bunker to the US SOCOM to aid mission planning. In the Fox News interview, Trump mentioned the US SF team was armed with gas cutters in case they had to cut through the steel doors. US personnel would have rehearsed their extraction plan on locations similar to Fort Tiuna in the US, even creating its layouts to rehearse swift insertions and extractions. These would have been practised to the very last detail with every contingency, including steel doors and possible helicopter crashes and fatalities, worked out. The need to maintain operational secrecy around the mission would have been a challenge. The US government is believed to have got a mainstream newspaper to halt publication of a scoop detailing the operation. Any leakage of information would have alerted Maduro into changing his residence, thereby delaying the operation.
3. The helicopters : Helicopters from the US military's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) would have been the automatic choice to fly the commandos in for the mission. Dubbed the ‘Night Stalkers’ for their night flying proficiency, the 160th are among the US military’s most highly specialised special units. Formed in the aftermath of the disastrous 1980 Iran operation, they provide all the helicopter support for the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) missions and formed in the aftermath of the 1980 Iran disaster. The helicopters could have been either the CH-46 Chinook, which can carry around 33 fully equipped commandos, or the HH-60 Pave Hawk, which can carry a dozen commandos. These were escorted by other heavily armed SOAR helicopter gunships like the MH-60 Direct Air Penetrator (DAP). The DAP is an MH-60L Black Hawk fitted as a gunship with M134 miniguns, Stinger air-to-air missiles, a 30 mm chain gun and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles. It has a Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) pod which has a laser designator for the Hell-fires. This gunship doesn’t carry any passengers as all cabin space is taken by ammunition. The bulge under the DAP's chin is a FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) pod which includes a laser designator for the Hell-fires. The US First Special Operational Detachment— Delta, better known as ‘Delta Force’, is believed to have been selected to carry out this mission. Along with Seal Team Six, which carried out Operation Neptune Spear, the unit is one of a handful of Tier One units in the US military and is tasked with hostage rescue, counter-terrorism and special reconnaissance. 
4. D-Day: The actual operation would have been launched when Maduro least expected it – after he had hosted a Chinese delegation and when the US appeared distracted by the crisis in Iran. Shortly after midnight, the US military began striking targets inside Caracas— ammunition dumps, air defence sites, Fort Tiuna and the airport. For the thousands of Venezuelan troops on the ground, it would have seemed like the much-anticipated US invasion was underway. Importantly, some of these attacks were for hacking a safe air corridor from the USS Iwo Jima to Fort Tiuna. Air defence radars, early warning radar sites and surface-to-air missile launchers which could shoot down helicopters were destroyed in Suppression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD) before the SOAR helicopters lifted off the decks of the USS Iwo Jima. The Iwo Jima was chosen as a launch pad for the 160th SOAR helicopters because they are far from public view and possible alerts of unusual helicopter activity on land bases. The US deployed over 150 aircraft, including fighter jets, bombers, drones, surveillance aircraft, intelligence aircraft and helicopters in the mission. (Venezuela’s air force has 220 aircraft).
5. Time on Target: The SOAR helicopters are believed to have landed on the roof of buildings inside Tiuna’s military garrison at around 1.01 am (10.31 IST). Rooftops were most likely chosen because they offer protection to the helicopters from small arms fire on the ground. Time on the ground, also known as ‘time on target’ or exposure in the landing and extraction zone, is planned to be as short as possible. It is based on what are known as METT-T factors – Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops available, and Time. Once the helicopters landed on the roof, the commandos would have jumped out and begun racing against time— making breaches, breaking down doors, gunning down enemy soldiers whilst searching for Maduro and his wife. In such extraction missions, helicopters don’t spend more than sixty minutes on the ground— during Operation Neptune Spear, SEAL team six’s ground time was approximately 40 minutes. Every minute they spend on the ground increases their chances of being intercepted and destroyed by the enemy. The Absolute Resolve helicopters are believed to have come under fire but are believed to have ‘replied to that fire with overwhelming force and self-defence’.
6. Exfiltration: The entire operation would have lasted under 180 minutes based on reports that the helicopters were clear and over water by 3.29 pm EST. It is probable that the helicopters flew a different route from the one they flew in from, using the mountains around Caracas to escape detection. President Maduro and his wife are believed to have been flown to Cuba and from there on to New York. By Sandeep Unnithan, Indian Today