BREAKING NEWS

STEPHON NICHOLAS

Se­nior Re­porter

The mil­i­tary-grade ground/air task-ori­ent­ed radar at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Crown Point is no longer there.

Ac­cord­ing to sources, the US-sup­plied radar has been dis­man­tled and will be leav­ing To­ba­go soon.

A US mil­i­tary air­craft is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive on the is­land to trans­port the equip­ment, which re­port­ed­ly costs US$3 mil­lion per day to op­er­ate.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed a van­tage point this morn­ing where the tow­er­ing radar could have pre­vi­ous­ly been seen ro­tat­ing 360 de­grees, but the equip­ment was ab­sent.

On Wednes­day, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said the US troops would be leav­ing To­ba­go "in a cou­ple days." He, how­ev­er, did not give a con­firmed date for their de­par­ture.

The radar ar­rived in To­ba­go in No­vem­ber last year, ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, to help lo­cal law en­force­ment agen­cies tack­le drug traf­fick­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly out of Venezuela.

For­mer Venezuela pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro has been deemed the head of a drug car­tel by the US.

On Jan­u­ary 3, 2026, US forces un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly re­moved Maduro in a mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion in Cara­cas.

He is cur­rent­ly in the US on tri­al for drug traf­fick­ing.