Opposition demands clarity on US radar’s future

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

The Op­po­si­tion is call­ing for greater clar­i­ty on the fu­ture of the US-in­stalled radar sys­tem in To­ba­go, af­ter De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said Gov­ern­ment is work­ing with the Unit­ed States to find a re­place­ment be­cause the sys­tem is cost­ly.

Sturge made the com­ments dur­ing a tele­vi­sion in­ter­view on Wednes­day, stress­ing that the radar re­mains a valu­able se­cu­ri­ty tool but can­not, on its own, de­tect drugs in the Ca­roni Swamp or else­where, re­fer­ring to the $171 mil­lion drug seizure there on De­cem­ber 11 that had been at­trib­uted to the sys­tem. In­stead, Sturge said it works along­side drones, satel­lites and oth­er tech­nol­o­gy to mon­i­tor ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try’s air­space and wa­ters.

How­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed the sys­tem may not re­main in place in­def­i­nite­ly.

“It is cost­ly, so what we are in the process of work­ing out is a re­place­ment—some­thing that is equal­ly as ef­fec­tive,” Sturge said.

The com­ments have re­newed ques­tions about who is pay­ing for the radar, af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in Feb­ru­ary it was be­ing op­er­at­ed at a cost of about US$3 mil­lion per day.

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les yes­ter­day said the pub­lic de­serves clar­i­ty on who is foot­ing the bill. He al­so dis­missed Sturge’s in­ter­view as a “des­per­ate PR stunt” de­signed to shield min­is­te­r­i­al in­com­pe­tence be­hind a “cloak of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”

“We are not ask­ing the min­is­ter to dis­close op­er­a­tional things that un­der­mine na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. We are ask­ing ba­sic in­for­ma­tion. And as we con­tin­ue to ask for clar­i­ty, as we con­tin­ue to ask for trans­paren­cy, they con­tin­ue, es­pe­cial­ly the Min­is­ters of De­fence and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, they con­tin­ue to in­voke na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­sid­er­a­tions in or­der to skirt (around) and or avoid be­ing ac­count­able to the pub­lic.”

Cit­ing a re­cent rul­ing by Ap­peal Court Jus­tice Vasheist Kokaram in­volv­ing the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency, in which he said “a well-in­formed cit­i­zen­ry is a cher­ished cor­ner­stone of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy ... While na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is vi­tal, se­cre­cy is the ex­cep­tion and not the rule,” Gon­za­les ar­gued that trans­paren­cy should re­main the norm in a democ­ra­cy, even when na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns are raised.

“The man­ner in which Min­is­ter Sturge and the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty are con­duct­ing them­selves, is that it is as though se­cre­cy has now be­come the rule as op­posed to ex­cep­tion. And it is their way of hid­ing and shield­ing their in­com­pe­tence.”

How­ev­er, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day backed Gov­ern­ment’s push for ad­vanced sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy, while warn­ing that of­fi­cials should avoid dis­clos­ing sen­si­tive op­er­a­tional dis­cov­er­ies. He ar­gued that a “mid­dle ground” is need­ed to pre­vent crim­i­nal net­works from adapt­ing to new state ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

“Min­is­ter Sturge, I think he even went too far to ac­tu­al­ly state that the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty (ap­pa­ra­tus) have dis­cov­ered that crim­i­nal el­e­ments have been util­is­ing drones and light air­craft to de­posit il­le­gal items in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go. That shouldn’t have even been stat­ed, be­cause we are aware of a sys­tem that they are us­ing,” he said.

“So, I re­al­ly will plead with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, they need to be very care­ful. It is im­por­tant for the Gov­ern­ment to state what is be­ing spent from the tax­pay­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go, but they do not have to give the de­tails of the val­ue of the item. And that is where you have to be very care­ful,” he added.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the Prime Min­is­ter for com­ment on the radar’s fu­ture and who is fund­ing the sys­tem, but she re­ferred all ques­tions to Sturge, who did not re­spond.

The US Em­bassy al­so did not an­swer di­rect ques­tions yes­ter­day about whether Wash­ing­ton is pay­ing for the radar, whether there are plans to with­draw it or dis­con­tin­ue fund­ing, and whether the US is as­sist­ing the Gov­ern­ment in iden­ti­fy­ing an al­ter­na­tive sys­tem.

How­ev­er, an em­bassy spokesper­son said, “The Unit­ed States and Trinidad and To­ba­go main­tain a strong se­cu­ri­ty part­ner­ship, root­ed in mu­tu­al re­spect and shared in­ter­ests in re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty and coun­ter­ing transna­tion­al threats.

“The radar sys­tem in­stalled in To­ba­go in No­vem­ber 2025 is part of on­go­ing bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion to en­hance mar­itime do­main aware­ness and sup­port ef­forts to com­bat il­lic­it traf­fick­ing, in­clud­ing nar­cotics and firearms, in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the South­ern Caribbean.”

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Garvin Heer­ah says the ef­fec­tive­ness of the radar sys­tem in To­ba­go should be as­sessed with­in the broad­er con­text of T&T’s bor­der sur­veil­lance ar­chi­tec­ture.

In a state­ment on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and bor­der pro­tec­tion, Heer­ah not­ed that the coun­try oc­cu­pies a strate­gic lo­ca­tion at the south­ern edge of the Caribbean, close to the South Amer­i­can main­land and along ma­jor traf­fick­ing routes used by transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works mov­ing nar­cotics, weapons and il­lic­it funds.

He said mod­ern bor­der se­cu­ri­ty de­pends on in­te­grat­ing mul­ti­ple tech­nolo­gies rather than re­ly­ing on a sin­gle sys­tem.

He ex­plained that when radar de­tec­tion is com­bined with un­manned aer­i­al sys­tems, satel­lite in­tel­li­gence and mar­itime pa­trol as­sets, au­thor­i­ties can sig­nif­i­cant­ly strength­en mar­itime do­main aware­ness and ear­ly threat de­tec­tion.

“There­fore, the re­al val­ue of the radar sys­tem in To­ba­go lies not sim­ply in the in­stal­la­tion it­self, but in the in­te­gra­tion of tech­nolo­gies and the co­or­di­na­tion of re­sponse agen­cies.”