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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

National Security has only 2 helicopters to use

by

Mark Bassant
2244 days ago
20190516

The law en­force­ment agen­cies in this coun­try are vir­tu­al­ly crip­pled when it comes to fight­ing crime from the air, as bare­ly any of the he­li­copters un­der the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty are func­tion­al. In fact, Guardian me­dia has been told law en­force­ment can de­pend on on­ly two he­li­copters for their in­tel­li­gence ex­er­cis­es in the air.

The fact that a he­li­copter from the Na­tion­al He­li­copter Ser­vices Lim­it­ed had to be used in the man­hunt for eight es­capees from the Gold­en Grove Re­mand Yard in Arou­ca on Wednes­day—which lat­er crashed—ini­tial­ly raised sev­er­al ques­tions about the State’s in­abil­i­ty to have he­li­copters for cru­cial op­er­a­tions.

These Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty he­li­copters are used for res­cue mis­sions, sur­veil­lance, drug in­ter­dic­tion and bor­der con­trol in some in­stances. The fleet un­der the min­istry’s re­mit is ten, ac­cord­ing to in­tel­li­gence sources.

Top-ranked law en­force­ment sources speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty said the sit­u­a­tion fac­ing the pro­tec­tive ser­vices was grim, with “aer­i­al sup­port lack­ing in many in­stances.”

“There are four he­li­copters that are in the pos­ses­sion of the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA). Two of them do not work and the oth­er two work but are al­ways in need of re­pair,” ex­plained a high-lev­el SSA source.

The source said that they had two that were func­tion­al but be­cause they were quite old there “is al­ways an is­sue of main­te­nance and re­pair.” In fact, one of the SSA he­li­copters was able to as­sist in the search for the es­caped men late Wednes­day evening and on Thurs­day in the Cen­teno area “be­cause re­pairs were com­plet­ed on Wednes­day,” the source said.

“He­li­copters are very ex­pen­sive to main­tain and there is al­so a bal­anc­ing act in­volved,” the SSA source ex­plained.

He in­di­cat­ed that the mod­els the SSA have in their pos­ses­sion are the 355 mod­el and the BO 105 mod­els.

“What we have had to do is use parts from one of the he­li­copters that are not work­ing in one of the he­li­copters that are op­er­a­tional,” he said.

Sources who had been fa­mil­iar with op­er­a­tions at the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­ter (NOC), now re­brand­ed to Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Fu­sion Cen­tre, al­so said that the Viper One and Two he­li­copters that had been in­stru­men­tal in as­sist­ing the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SAUTT) be­fore this unit was dis­man­tled in 2010, have been ground­ed for more than four years with me­chan­i­cal is­sues.

Al­so, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in an ad­dress at the 2018 Di­vali Na­gar cel­e­bra­tions, told the crowd that the Gov­ern­ment could not af­ford the $200 mil­lion main­te­nance bill for four Au­gustaWest­land he­li­copters that were pur­chased un­der the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gov­ern­ment for use in the T&T Air Guard. The over­all con­tract for those he­li­copters, com­pris­ing the air­craft and sup­port pack­age, was val­ued at US$348 mil­lion.

But that was not the on­ly time the PM had in­di­cat­ed this in­ten­tion.

In 2017, he al­so said, “We took a de­ci­sion at the lev­el of the Cab­i­net that we are not in a po­si­tion to pay $200 mil­lion to main­tain our four Au­gus­ta he­li­copters for one year. We just can’t af­ford that and if we can’t af­ford it the he­li­copters will stay on the ground.”

Row­ley said then that even with crime ram­pant, “We are not with­out he­li­copters. The Na­tion­al He­li­copter Ser­vice is there and we must ask why is the Na­tion­al He­li­copter Ser­vice not play­ing a role? But we can­not con­tin­ue pay­ing 200 mil­lion for a for­eign com­pa­ny to main­tain the he­li­copters for 12 months. Clear­ly, at a time when we don’t have the mon­ey, we have to look at oth­er al­ter­na­tives.”

This means that of an ini­tial fleet of 10 he­li­copters avail­able for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty work, there are now on­ly two on which they can rea­son­ably re­ly.


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