(Trinidad Express) – A UNITED STATES military aircraft landed in Tobago yesterday to reportedly transport the US-installed AN-TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Task Radar (G/ATOR) from the island.
The Express was told by open-source intelligence experts that the aircraft, a US Marine Corps KC-130J, originated from Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico and returned there after its visit to Tobago.
The powerful air defence system seemingly disappeared from the spot it formerly occupied at the ANR Robinson International Airport this week, months after the US military steamed warships into Caribbean waters, and began a campaign of lethal kinetic boat strikes that preceded the ousting of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January.
Trinidad and Tobago’s Government has spent the last four months explaining its presence as a counter drug trafficking effort, installed at the request of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
But as international media reports of US surveillance and communication losses amid the brewing Middle-East conflict, former military commander and head of the country’s marine National Coastal Surveillance Radar Centre, Lt Norman Dindial, said he believed the radar’s movement is evidence that the system was never placed on the island to do as the Government claimed.
“It shows that it was not supposed to be used or was not used for drug interdiction or finding drug boats,” he told the Express yesterday.
