U.S. radar in Tobago taken down

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 U.S.-sup­plied radar has been dis­man­tled and will be leav­ing To­ba­go soon.

A U.S. mil­i­tary air­craft is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive om the is­land to trans­port the US$3 mil­lion per day equip­ment.

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, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said the U.S. troops will be leav­ing To­ba­go "in a cou­ple days", and it ap­pears the radar will be leav­ing with them.

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

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

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

He is cur­rent­ly in the U.S. on tri­al for drug traf­fick­ing.