2 US military aircraft land at Piarco and Crown Point; Trump puts

Two Unit­ed States mil­i­tary trans­port air­craft ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go yes­ter­day, mark­ing the first record­ed move­ments since the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs an­nounced on Mon­day that it had grant­ed for­mal tran­sit per­mis­sion for US as­sets.

The ac­tiv­i­ty co­in­cid­ed with an an­nounce­ment by Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump that he had or­dered a block­ade of all “sanc­tioned oil tankers” in­to Venezuela, ramp­ing up pres­sure on Nicolás Maduro.

In an­nounc­ing the block­ade on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, Trump said, “Venezuela is com­plete­ly sur­round­ed by the largest Ar­ma­da ever as­sem­bled in the his­to­ry of South Amer­i­ca. It will on­ly get big­ger, and the shock to them will be like noth­ing they have ever seen be­fore — Un­til such time as they re­turn to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca all of the oil, land, and oth­er as­sets that they pre­vi­ous­ly stole from us.”

The For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­istry said on Mon­day that the Gov­ern­ment had au­tho­rised the use of na­tion­al air­ports for US mil­i­tary lo­gis­tics, a move the Gov­ern­ment de­scribed as “rou­tine.”

The first air­craft, a Lock­heed Mar­tin C-130J Su­per Her­cules, touched down at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Crown Point, To­ba­go, short­ly af­ter 5 pm yes­ter­day.

The air­craft re­mained on the tar­mac for over an hour be­fore de­part­ing at 6:20 pm.

Less than an hour lat­er, a sec­ond C-130J, orig­i­nat­ing from Fort Laud­erdale-Hol­ly­wood In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Flori­da, land­ed at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Trinidad at 7.02 pm. This sec­ond air­craft de­part­ed Pi­ar­co at 8.05 pm.

The spe­cif­ic car­go or per­son­nel man­i­fests for these stops were not im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able.

The C-130J Su­per Her­cules serves as the cor­ner­stone of US tac­ti­cal air mo­bil­i­ty, de­signed for high-ca­pac­i­ty trans­port and ver­sa­tile de­ploy­ment. With a pay­load ca­pac­i­ty of up to 42,000 pounds and a car­go vol­ume ex­ceed­ing 4,500 cu­bic feet, the air­craft is ca­pa­ble of trans­port­ing every­thing from light ar­moured ve­hi­cles and util­i­ty he­li­copters to med­ical evac­u­a­tion units and stan­dard car­go pal­lets.

The min­istry has said the flights are part of a broad­er bi­lat­er­al se­cu­ri­ty frame­work aimed at re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty, cit­ing ex­ist­ing joint ini­tia­tives such as the US-in­stalled radar sys­tem on To­ba­go.

In re­sponse, the Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion has is­sued a sharp re­buke, ac­cus­ing T&T of fa­cil­i­tat­ing US mil­i­tary “en­cir­clement.”