Mick­ela Pan­day

The na­tion­al de­bate over the US-sup­plied radar in­stalled in To­ba­go is not about whether a drug bust oc­curred. The re­al is­sue is whether the Gov­ern­ment has been trans­par­ent with the pub­lic about what this radar sys­tem is, what it was de­signed to do, and how it ac­tu­al­ly fits in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty frame­work.

Those ques­tions re­main unan­swered, and re­cent of­fi­cial re­spons­es have on­ly deep­ened the con­cern.

The radar in­stalled at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port has been iden­ti­fied as the AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Ori­ent­ed Radar, com­mon­ly known as G/ATOR. It is a US mil­i­tary-grade sys­tem man­u­fac­tured by Northrop Grum­man and used by the Unit­ed States Ma­rine Corps.

Ac­cord­ing to man­u­fac­tur­er spec­i­fi­ca­tions and de­fence analy­ses, its pri­ma­ry func­tion is air­borne sur­veil­lance and air de­fence. It is de­signed to de­tect and track air­craft, mis­siles and un­manned aer­i­al ve­hi­cles and to pro­vide air­space mon­i­tor­ing, ear­ly warn­ing and to pro­vide air­space mon­i­tor­ing, ear­ly warn­ing and mil­i­tary air traf­fic con­trol sup­port.

It is not a spe­cialised mar­itime sur­veil­lance radar. It was not de­signed to track boats, small sur­face ves­sels, or low-speed craft nav­i­gat­ing swamps, man­groves, or coastal wa­ter­ways.

That dis­tinc­tion mat­ters, be­cause se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, have re­peat­ed­ly linked this radar to ef­forts to com­bat drug traf­fick­ing and hu­man smug­gling. In T&T, these crimes are over­whelm­ing­ly mar­itime in na­ture, in­volv­ing boats, coastal trans­fers and hid­den swamp routes, not air­borne tar­gets.

This mis­match be­tween tech­ni­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty and pub­lic ex­pla­na­tion be­came clear­er fol­low­ing the De­cem­ber 11, 2025 drug seizure in the Ca­roni Swamp. Po­lice re­cov­ered ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,560 kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na con­cealed in a boat with­in the man­grove swamp, with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $171 mil­lion. On the same night, an ad­di­tion­al 600 kilo­grammes of mar­i­jua­na was dis­cov­ered in Point Fortin, bring­ing the to­tal seizure to rough­ly 2.2 tonnes.

No ar­rests were made in con­nec­tion with ei­ther haul.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice pub­licly cred­it­ed the new­ly in­stalled radar with pro­vid­ing in­tel­li­gence that led to the Ca­roni dis­cov­ery, though no op­er­a­tional de­tails were of­fered to ex­plain how radar da­ta iden­ti­fied drugs hid­den in dense swamp ter­rain. The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice de­scribed the op­er­a­tion as the first ma­jor suc­cess linked to the new radar sys­tem.

The Prime Min­is­ter hailed the seizure as a vic­to­ry for bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and re­it­er­at­ed that she had per­son­al­ly re­quest­ed the radar from the Unit­ed States to strength­en sur­veil­lance against drugs and re­lat­ed crimes, al­though lat­er say­ing, “she was not a radar ex­pert”.

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der praised in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion and thanked the US for pro­vid­ing the tech­nol­o­gy, again with­out de­tail­ing its spe­cif­ic op­er­a­tional role.

When ques­tioned about the ab­sence of ar­rests, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er ex­plained that of­fi­cers did not wait to ap­pre­hend sus­pects be­cause the sound of po­lice boats en­ter­ing the swamp would have alert­ed traf­fick­ers, al­low­ing them to es­cape. He al­so cit­ed op­er­a­tional con­straints, in­clud­ing dif­fi­cult ter­rain, mos­qui­to ex­po­sure, and dengue risk, as rea­sons of­fi­cers chose to se­cure the drugs rather than re­main in the area wait­ing for sus­pects who might nev­er re­turn.

Those ex­pla­na­tions may jus­ti­fy tac­ti­cal de­ci­sions on the ground. They do not ex­plain how an air-de­fence radar de­tect­ed nar­cotics con­cealed in a swamp.

Out­come is not ex­pla­na­tion. A seizure, how­ev­er sig­nif­i­cant, does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly es­tab­lish cau­sa­tion or val­i­date the sur­veil­lance tool claimed to have en­abled it.

The is­sue in­ten­si­fied af­ter a De­cem­ber 2025 New York Times re­port ex­am­ined the radar’s spec­i­fi­ca­tions and con­clud­ed that the AN/TPS-80 G/ATOR is de­signed for air sur­veil­lance, not mar­itime ves­sel track­ing. The re­port not­ed the mis­match be­tween the radar’s in­tend­ed pur­pose and the crimes it was be­ing pub­licly cred­it­ed with stop­ping.

In re­sponse, the Prime Min­is­ter dis­missed the re­port on the grounds that it re­lied on anony­mous sources and orig­i­nat­ed from a for­eign news­pa­per. But the sub­stance of the re­port was nev­er ad­dressed.

The Prime Min­is­ter did not dis­pute the radar’s mod­el. She did not chal­lenge its pub­lished spec­i­fi­ca­tions. She did not ex­plain whether the radar had been re­pur­posed, in­te­grat­ed with mar­itime sur­veil­lance sys­tems, or sup­ple­ment­ed by sep­a­rate in­tel­li­gence as­sets ca­pa­ble of re­li­ably track­ing sur­face ves­sels. In­stead, she again point­ed to the drug seizure as proof that the sys­tem works.

The pub­lic is be­ing asked to ac­cept re­sults with­out un­der­stand­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty.

Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty does not re­quire se­cre­cy about ba­sic facts. It re­quires cred­i­bil­i­ty, clar­i­ty, and pub­lic trust. This is out­come-based gov­er­nance, re­sults are high­light­ed, mech­a­nisms are left un­ex­plained and le­git­i­mate scruti­ny is treat­ed as in­con­ve­nience rather than oblig­a­tion.

Re­nam­ing a pro­gramme is not change. Re­brand­ing a ca­pa­bil­i­ty is not trans­paren­cy. Point­ing to a seizure, with­out ex­plain­ing the facts be­hind it, does not build pub­lic con­fi­dence.

Over the past eight months, a con­sis­tent pat­tern has emerged in how ma­jor de­ci­sions are com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the pub­lic. De­ci­sions are an­nounced and ques­tions are left unan­swered. Ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance de­pends not on­ly on ac­tion, but on clear, fac­tu­al ex­pla­na­tion. With­out that, pub­lic con­fi­dence will con­tin­ue to erode, re­gard­less of in­tent or out­come.

Wish­ing every­one a safe, peace­ful and Mer­ry Christ­mas 2025.

Mick­ela Pan­day is the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front and at­tor­ney.

Email pa­tri­ot­ic.front.tt@gmail.com