PM defends radar removal in Tobago

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the re­moval of the Unit­ed States-in­stalled radar in To­ba­go should not come as a sur­prise, main­tain­ing that the high-tech, mil­i­tary-grade equip­ment was al­ways in­tend­ed to be tem­po­rary.

Break­ing her si­lence fol­low­ing Mon­day’s re­moval, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Guardian Me­dia the move had been arranged well in ad­vance.

“The de­par­ture of the radar was pre-planned months in ad­vance. As I said last year, it was a tem­po­rary in­stal­la­tion at my re­quest,” she said in a What­sApp mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

The Prime Min­is­ter has main­tained that she had re­quest­ed the sys­tem from the US Em­bassy as a tem­po­rary so­lu­tion, not­ing that the coun­try’s ex­ist­ing radar sur­veil­lance had been func­tion­ing spo­rad­i­cal­ly and had been com­pro­mised. She added that the radar was on­ly in­tend­ed to re­main in place un­til the gov­ern­ment could ac­quire and in­stall a per­ma­nent, up­grad­ed re­place­ment of its own.

How­ev­er, just one month ago, the De­fence Min­is­ter said in a post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing that the radar would re­main for the “fore­see­able fu­ture,” cit­ing the sig­nif­i­cant val­ue it pro­vides to the coun­try’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

On Feb­ru­ary 19, Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said, “We would have the use of the radar for the fore­see­able fu­ture. I can’t give a de­fin­i­tive time­line.

“And the rea­son why we need it, we al­ready have a radar cen­tre, but all radar sys­tems are some­what lim­it­ed. The radar sys­tems pro­vid­ed by the US, they work with drone tech­nol­o­gy, satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions and so on, so that it of­fers a lot more than what we have.”

He added, “And that is need­ed at this point in time to achieve cer­tain ob­jec­tives, be­cause, as you would ap­pre­ci­ate, the fleet, the Coast Guard’s fleet, is not what it should be, so that we need the as­sis­tance in terms of de­tec­tion, which would help us with the lim­it­ed fleet we have. It would help us to re­spond in a time­ly man­ner and in­ter­cept.”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter Sturge to de­ter­mine whether, at the time of his state­ment a month ago, he was aware the radar would be re­moved, or whether Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as­sets are now ca­pa­ble of as­sum­ing its role. How­ev­er, all queries went unan­swered up to press time.

At a pre­lude to the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit (al­so re­ferred to as the Amer­i­c­as Counter Car­tel Con­fer­ence) held at the Trump Na­tion­al Do­ral in Mi­a­mi ear­li­er this month, Sturge made a di­rect ap­peal to US Sec­re­tary of War Pe­te Hegseth for in­creased mil­i­tary sup­port.

Sturge ar­gued that for T&T to ef­fec­tive­ly serve as the “se­cu­ri­ty an­chor” in the South­ern Caribbean and dis­rupt car­tel trans­ship­ment cor­ri­dors, the coun­try re­quires sig­nif­i­cant­ly more ad­vanced as­sets.

He did not dis­close what those as­sets were, cit­ing that they were sen­si­tive na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty de­tails.

Mean­while, Guardian Me­dia asked the Prime Min­is­ter what will re­place the To­ba­go radar; how­ev­er, she said, “I don’t think it’s sen­si­ble to pub­licly dis­close our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sur­veil­lance ca­pa­bil­i­ties.”

On Feb­ru­ary 27, speak­ing out­side the Red House, the Prime Min­is­ter re­vealed that the radar cost US $3 mil­lion-per-day.

She said the Unit­ed States, not the T&T Gov­ern­ment, was foot­ing the bill.

“You know they are pay­ing US$3 mil­lion a day for that radar? Not us. They are pay­ing that,” she said.

She ex­plained that be­cause the US was in­vest­ing such a high amount in­to the op­er­a­tion, which re­port­ed­ly in­clud­ed salaries, ac­com­mo­da­tion and main­te­nance, they kept their own mil­i­tary per­son­nel on-site to en­sure the equip­ment’s se­cu­ri­ty and pre­vent sab­o­tage.

Guardian Me­dia asked the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day if the coun­try had to pay for the use of the radar or if the US was pay­ing T&T to use its space, but she on­ly re­spond­ed, “No.”

============Time­line========================

No­vem­ber 26, 2025: When first ques­tioned by the me­dia out­side the Red House about US air­craft and per­son­nel in To­ba­go, the Prime Min­is­ter ini­tial­ly omit­ted men­tion of a radar, stat­ing in­stead that US Marines were as­sist­ing with a road­way and run­way at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

No­vem­ber 27, 2025: Speak­ing at a lap­top dis­tri­b­u­tion func­tion at Pe­nal Sec­ondary School, the PM ad­mit­ted a radar sys­tem was be­ing in­stalled. She clar­i­fied that af­ter “fur­ther in­quiries,” she con­firmed Marines were work­ing on a “run­way and a radar” to im­prove sur­veil­lance against nar­co-traf­fick­ers.

No­vem­ber 29, 2025: She de­fend­ed her pre­vi­ous day’s si­lence, call­ing it an “in­ten­tion­al omis­sion” for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons. She ar­gued that broad­cast­ing the in­stal­la­tion would have alert­ed crim­i­nal net­works. She al­so fa­mous­ly stat­ed that THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine was not in­formed be­cause he is “not a mem­ber of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC).”

De­cem­ber 1, 2025: Per­sad-Bisses­sar clar­i­fied that she was the one who re­quest­ed the radar from the US Em­bassy months pri­or as a tem­po­rary so­lu­tion for “poor sur­veil­lance ca­pa­bil­i­ties.”

She ex­plic­it­ly de­nied that T&T was be­ing used as a base for at­tacks on Venezuela.

De­cem­ber 3, 2025: In a press re­lease, she chal­lenged the PNM Op­po­si­tion to ex­plain how long they knew the pre­vi­ous radar sys­tem had been “com­pro­mised,” as­sert­ing that the new sys­tem pro­vid­ed a “su­pe­ri­or lay­er of pro­tec­tion.”

De­cem­ber 11, 2025: At a CXC awards cer­e­mo­ny, she cred­it­ed the radar with help­ing po­lice seize $171 mil­lion worth of mar­i­jua­na in the Ca­roni Swamp, cit­ing this as proof of its ef­fec­tive­ness.

De­cem­ber 20, 2025: Dur­ing a strong de­fence of the US part­ner­ship, she told crit­ics to “leave the Amer­i­cans alone,” warn­ing that bad-mouthing the US could risk cit­i­zens’ visas.

She fa­mous­ly quipped to the pub­lic: “While you are wor­ry­ing about the radar, I want you to know that every one of you is on my radar!”

Feb­ru­ary 28, 2026: The Prime Min­is­ter re­vealed that the radar cost US$3 mil­lion a day to op­er­ate, though she em­pha­sised that the Unit­ed States, not Trinidad and To­ba­go, was cov­er­ing this cost.

March 9, 2026: She vis­it­ed US South­ern Com­mand (SOUTH­COM) in Flori­da to meet with Gen­er­al Fran­cis L Dono­van, dis­cussing on­go­ing “col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts to com­bat nar­co-ter­ror­ism,” which sig­nalled the con­tin­ued high-lev­el mil­i­tary part­ner­ship.

March 16–17, 2026: Fol­low­ing the sud­den dis­man­tling and re­moval of the radar by US forces, re­ports in­di­cate the Prime Min­is­ter had pre­vi­ous­ly as­sured the pub­lic the arrange­ment was tem­po­rary.