WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — United States (US) President Donald Trump is sending 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico as part of his war on drug cartels, sources familiar with the matter told AFP on Friday, as tensions mount with Venezuela over Washington’s military build-up in the Caribbean.

The planes will join US warships already deployed to the southern Caribbean as Trump steps up pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom the United States accuses of leading a drug cartel.

The standoff has grown in recent days as the Pentagon said two Venezuelan military planes flew near a US Navy vessel in international waters Thursday in a “highly provocative” move.

US forces on Tuesday blew up an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean that Trump said belonged to the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organisation he tied to Maduro, killing 11 people.

The high-tech F-35 jets are being deployed to an airfield in Puerto Rico, a US Caribbean island territory of more than three million people, the US sources said on condition of anonymity.

Maduro — a leftist firebrand whose last election in 2024 was seen by Washington as illegitimate — has denounced the US build-up as “the greatest threat our continent has seen in the last 100 years.”

Declaring his country prepared for “armed struggle in defence of the national territory,” he has mobilised Venezuela’s military, which numbers around 340,000, and reservists, which he claims exceed eight million.

“If Venezuela were attacked, it would immediately enter a period of armed struggle,” Maduro told foreign correspondents.