The U.S. mil­i­tary is send­ing an air­craft car­ri­er to the wa­ters off South Amer­i­ca, in the lat­est es­ca­la­tion and buildup of mil­i­tary forces in the re­gion, the Pen­ta­gon an­nounced Fri­day.

De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth or­dered the USS Ger­ald R. Ford and its strike group to de­ploy to U.S. South­ern Com­mand to “bol­ster U.S. ca­pac­i­ty to de­tect, mon­i­tor, and dis­rupt il­lic­it ac­tors and ac­tiv­i­ties that com­pro­mise the safe­ty and pros­per­i­ty of the Unit­ed States,” Pen­ta­gon spokesman Sean Par­nell said in a so­cial me­dia post.

The USS Ford, which has five de­stroy­ers in its strike group, is cur­rent­ly de­ployed to the Mediter­ranean Sea. A per­son fa­mil­iar with the op­er­a­tion told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that one of those de­stroy­ers is in the Ara­bi­an Sea and an­oth­er is in the Red Sea. At the time of the an­nounce­ment, the USS Ford was in port in Croa­t­ia on the Adri­at­ic Sea.