Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Satel­lite im­agery yes­ter­day showed US mil­i­tary air­craft main­tain­ing a pres­ence off the coast of Venezuela, as the Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump-or­dered block­ade con­tin­ued.

Among the air­craft tracked by the flight radar web­site was a Northrop Grum­man MQ-4C Tri­ton drone. This marks the first time a drone has been de­tect­ed by the web­site since the US be­gan height­ened mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the area.

By 3 pm, two US Navy F/A-18E Su­per Hor­nets and two Boe­ing EA-18G Growler fight­er jets were ob­served off the coast of Cara­cas. Ac­cord­ing to the web­site, the Growlers main­tained an al­ti­tude of 28,000 feet, while the Su­per Hor­nets flew at 23,000 feet, each pair mov­ing in op­po­site di­rec­tions.

On Mon­day, the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs an­nounced that ap­proval had been grant­ed for US mil­i­tary air­craft to tran­sit through Trinidad and To­ba­go’s air­ports in the com­ing weeks.

The fol­low­ing day, a Lock­heed Mar­tin C-130J Su­per Her­cules land­ed at ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Crown Point, To­ba­go, be­fore de­part­ing around 6.20 pm. Short­ly af­ter, an­oth­er C-130 car­go plane ar­rived at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Trinidad and left an hour lat­er.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to the De­fence Force pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer via email and Chief of De­fence Staff Cm­dr Don Po­lo via What­sApp, but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time yes­ter­day.

The ques­tions sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether De­fence Force of­fi­cials were present to greet the US flight crews, if there would be on­go­ing mil­i­tary pres­ence to fa­cil­i­tate fur­ther ar­rivals, if US per­son­nel, equip­ment, or weapons were of­floaded, and whether lo­cal mil­i­tary forces had en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty in re­sponse to the flights.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our to ask if civil­ian air­port staff were per­mit­ted to in­spect the mil­i­tary air­craft and whether ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty would be de­ployed at air­port ter­mi­nals.

No re­spons­es were re­ceived from ei­ther of­fice up to press time.