Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Tight se­cu­ri­ty will be in force around the Port-of-Spain Port, where the USS Grave­ly will dock to­mor­row.

Of­fi­cials have been plan­ning in re­cent days to man­age the ar­rival of the mas­sive US war­ship, which is armed with tor­pe­does, so­phis­ti­cat­ed radar, and pow­er­ful long-range Tom­a­hawk mis­siles used for strik­ing land tar­gets.

As US forces con­tin­ue flood­ing the re­gion, the US De­part­ment of De­fense yes­ter­day an­nounced that it is send­ing the world’s largest air­craft car­ri­er, USS Ger­ald R Ford, and her Car­ri­er Strike Group to “com­bat nar­co-ter­ror­ism in the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca.”

USS Ger­ald R Ford is the lat­est in the US fight against drug car­tels—a fight Trinidad and To­ba­go is sup­port­ing, along with Guyana, Paraguay, Ar­genti­na, and Ecuador.

Venezuela and var­i­ous oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion be­lieve the US’s ac­tion is a cov­er for a regime change at­tempt against Venezuela’s Nico­las Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion. Venezuela is now on high alert for any strike on its ter­ri­to­ry.

The Grave­ly will dock at Berths 6E, 6W, and Berth 7 at the Port un­til next Thurs­day. The 22nd US Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit (MEU) on the ves­sel will con­duct joint train­ing with Trinidad and To­ba­go’s De­fence Force dur­ing that time.

The 22nd MEU is one of sev­en such units in the US Ma­rine Corps. The MEU has par­tic­i­pat­ed in ex­er­cis­es across the world, in­clud­ing the US in­va­sion of Grena­da, the Multi­na­tion­al Force in Lebanon, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and oth­er op­er­a­tions—and now the US mil­i­tary cam­paign against car­tels.

The MEU is a Ma­rine Air-Ground Task Force with a strength of about 2,200 per­son­nel. It pro­vides a for­ward-de­ployed, am­phibi­ous force-in-readi­ness ca­pa­ble of ex­e­cut­ing mis­sions across the full spec­trum of com­bat and mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions oth­er than war.

Of­fi­cials of the Hy­att Ho­tel, which is sit­u­at­ed near where the ves­sel will be berthed, could not con­firm if any spe­cial mea­sures re­gard­ing ac­cess or fa­cil­i­ties would be in place. Some mem­bers of the pub­lic, ex­cit­ed about the ship’s size, said yes­ter­day they in­tend­ed to go “to take pic­tures,” as “that would pro­vide the best an­gle for a full view.”

Since Au­gust, the Grave­ly has been among 10 US war­ships—in­clud­ing a con­vert­ed con­tain­er “ghost ship” con­duct­ing covert op­er­a­tions—in the re­gion.

The Grave­ly is named af­ter the late Vice Ad­mi­ral Samuel L Grave­ly Jr—the first African Amer­i­can in the US Navy to be com­mis­sioned as an of­fi­cer, the first African Amer­i­can to com­mand a war­ship.

The 500-foot-plus ship was chris­tened in 2009. It boasts so­phis­ti­cat­ed radars and sen­sor sys­tems ca­pa­ble of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Navy mar­itime in­tel­li­gence planes in the area, as well as with the US Coast Guard.