'The Night Stalkers' Elite US unit deployed as Trump ramps up pressure on Maduro

They call themselves the “Night Stalkers” and their unofficial motto, “Death Waits in the Dark”, hints at the regiment's lethal nocturnal line of work.

- Tom Phillips

"You can flee, but they will find you," warns a rare book about the US army’s secretive 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

Since the elite helicopter unit’s creation in 1981, its daredevil pilots have taken part in some of the most dangerous missions in recent US military history: battling Islamic State during Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq and Syria, and Somali warlords during Operation Gothic Serpent, and spiriting US navy Seals into Pakistan to kill the al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden, as part of Operation Neptune Spear.

"I honestly think these people are the best rotor-wing pilots in the world ... They are the Formula One drivers of aviation," said Steven Hartov, the author of a book about the regiment’s top secret missions, which nearly always happen under the cover of darkness.

In recent weeks the Night Stalkers have found themselves in a different part of the world, their egg-shaped Little Bird attack helicopters and Black Hawks spotted not in Idlib, Kandahar or Baghdad but 90 miles off the coast of Venezuela.

The regiment’s Caribbean training assignment - part of a major military deployment that has also seen B-52 bombers and F-35 fighter jets take to the region’s skies - comes as Donald Trump ratchets up the pressure on Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, in what many believe is an attempt to force him from power.