On March 24, 2026, 108 United States military personnel departed Tobago via an Atlas Air charter flight from ANR Robinson International Airport. Some waved goodbye in full uniform. They had been stationed on the island since November 2025 - roughly four months. During that time, a Northrop Grumman AN/TPS-80 G/ATOR radar system was installed at the eastern end of the Crown Point runway, operated for approximately four months, and then dismantled between March 15 and 17. A US Marine Corps C-130J transport aircraft - callsign GROG71 - arrived around March 18 to fly the crated radar out of the country.
The G/ATOR is not a weather radar. It is not a maritime radar. It is a US Marine Corps ground-to-air system with 360-degree coverage and a range of up to 170 miles, built to detect stealth aircraft, cruise missiles, hypersonic threats, and unmanned aerial vehicles. Former Defence Force Commander Norman Dindial valued the equipment at US$50 million. The Prime Minister estimated its operating cost at US$3 million per day - paid by the United States, not Trinidad and Tobago. Northrop Grumman won a $958 million production contract for 30 of these systems in 2019, with 60 planned through 2029.
What was it doing in Tobago? That depends on when you asked, and whom.
The Story That Changed Four Times
On November 25, 2025, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar met with General Dan Caine, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Trinidad. The meeting lasted two hours. The following day, when reports surfaced about US troops in Tobago, the Prime Minister denied the radar's existence. She said Marines were only assisting with a roadway and runway.
On November 27, she backtracked. A radar system was being installed after all - for surveillance purposes. By November 29, the PM reframed her initial denial as an "intentional omission" made for national security reasons. She said THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine had not been informed because he is "not a member of the National Security Council."
By December 1, the explanation had shifted again. The Prime Minister said she had personally requested the radar from the US Embassy months earlier as a temporary solution for poor surveillance capabilities. The radar was for monitoring narco-trafficking "in our water and outside our waters."
Defence Minister Wayne Sturge offered a third layer. He described the radar as "far superior" to any existing system and said it was needed because the Coast Guard fleet "is not what it should be." This was an implicit admission that Trinidad and Tobago's own maritime surveillance capabilities were inadequate enough to require a US Marine Corps air-defence radar to fill the gap - a system designed for battlefield air superiority, not tracking drug boats.
Then came the statement that reframed everything.
The Venezuela Confirmation
On December 4, 2025, US Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Natasha Chevalier Losada stated on AFN Guantanamo Bay - the US military's official broadcast service at the naval base - that "American military forces have installed an AN/TPS-80 G/ATOR system in Trinidad and Tobago." She added that the system "primarily functions as aerial surveillance but officials say it can be used in US conflict with Venezuela." She noted that Tobago is "approximately 70 miles from Venezuela's Paria peninsula."
This was not a leak. It was a prepared statement by a US military communications officer on an official broadcast channel. The Guardian reported the statement on December 9.
The radar deployment fits within the most dramatic pro-US alignment in modern Trinidad and Tobago history. In March 2026, PM Persad-Bissessar signed the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition at Trump National Doral in Miami and received Trump's signing pen. Venezuela declared Persad-Bissessar persona non grata. The radar, the Doral Charter, Operation Southern Spear, and the granting of transit rights to US military aircraft amount to a foreign policy pivot that no previous Trinidad and Tobago government has attempted at this scale.
The context was unmistakable. The US had been conducting military operations across the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, carrying out at least 22 strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats, killing at least 87 people by mid-December 2025. The FAA issued a notice for operators flying between Puerto Rico and the Southern Caribbean to exercise "extreme caution" due to "increased state aircraft." On December 15, Trinidad and Tobago's foreign ministry announced it had "granted approvals" to US military jets to transit the country's airports, describing the movements as "logistical in nature."
On January 3, 2026, former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was detained by US military forces in Caracas and transported to New York. The radar deployment, which began before and ended after the Maduro operation, now carried a different weight.
The Drug Bust Claim
On December 11, 2025, the Prime Minister credited the radar with helping police seize $171 million worth of marijuana in an unmanned boat in the Caroni Swamp. PNM's Ancil Dennis called the claim "obviously a big lie and the majority of citizens saw through that lie." Former National Security Minister Gary Griffith questioned whether, without the radar, police could no longer find drugs in the Caroni Swamp.
The scepticism had technical grounding. The G/ATOR is built for aerial surveillance - tracking objects in flight. Its utility for detecting a small unmanned boat in a swamp was, at best, indirect.
The Missing Boat
On March 2, 2026, a 29-foot pirogue named "Kampai" - white and teal, newly built in Waterloo, Trinidad - departed Buccoo, Tobago, at approximately 1:30 PM, heading for Union Island in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Two men were aboard: Alvin Morgan and Damien Reece, both from Santa Flora. They were expected to arrive between 5 and 6 PM.
The pirogue experienced repeated mechanical failures along Tobago's coast - stalling at Plymouth, failing at Castara, and again at Parlatuvier, where a local fisherman assisted each time. After the final repair, the two men headed into open sea to make the turn toward Grenada. That was the last confirmed sighting.
The T&T Coast Guard was notified. Captain Vallence Rambharat of the Hunters Search and Rescue Team led the civilian search effort. Regional coast guards in Grenada and St Vincent were contacted. The T&T Air Guard conducted aerial searches. An Urgent Marine Information Broadcast was issued via North Post Radio. A Hazardous Seas Alert was active that week, warning of waves exceeding 2.5 to 3 metres. As of March 12, the Coast Guard reported "no confirmed sightings of the vessel or crew."
THA representative Keigon Denoon told media that the US radar was "not the ideal system" to track a missing vessel. He could not confirm whether the radar was even used in the search. A US$3-million-per-day radar that can detect stealth aircraft 170 miles away was stationed on the same island where a fishing boat disappeared - and nobody could confirm whether it helped look.
The Contradiction, the Threat, and the Departure
On February 19, 2026, Defence Minister Sturge said the radar would remain for the "foreseeable future." He could not give a definitive timeline for its removal. One month later, the radar was dismantled and flown out. When Guardian Media asked whether Sturge knew the radar would be removed when he made the February statement, all queries went unanswered.
Chief Secretary Augustine's position evolved. In January, he stated publicly that if decision-making was his alone, he would have rejected the installation. On January 8, he went further: he would "mash up that radar myself" if he had information it was used to assist the US in attacking Venezuela. By March, with the troops departing, he reverted to saying the arrangement was "always temporary" and "consistent with what the THA was told before." He confirmed the road the US was supposedly building had not been completed. The THA would finish it themselves.
Dennis, the PNM's most vocal critic of the deployment, called the departure "good riddance." He said the government "placed the lives of citizens at risk" and expressed hope that no Caribbean jurisdiction would "ever again be occupied by any foreign military power in this way."
The troops stayed at the Grafton Beach Resort in Black Rock. Guardian Media confirmed that security at the resort restricted access during the deployment, stating it was booked "for a specific group." The Tobago Hotel and Tourism Association president, Reginald MacLean, said he was "a little bit astonished" the radar was removed.
Former Commander Dindial suggested the radar was being redeployed to the Middle East for the escalating US-Iran conflict, noting the US had already committed approximately US$4 billion in military assets to that theatre.
What Tobago Was Left With
Four explanations for a single deployment. A road unfinished. A radar confirmed usable against Venezuela by the US military's own communications staff. A drug bust claim that experts questioned. A missing fishing vessel with no confirmation the radar assisted. A Defence Minister who said the radar would stay indefinitely, then watched it leave. A Chief Secretary who threatened to destroy the radar himself, then said the arrangement had always been temporary.
The Marines are gone. The radar is crated. The questions remain on the island.
Sources
- Trinidad Express: "US TROOPS LEAVE" (March 24, 2026)
- Trinidad Express: "US soldiers to leave Tobago soon" (March 15, 2026)
- Trinidad Express: "Missing fishermen from Buccoo" (March 6, 2026)
- Trinidad Guardian: "US packs up radar" (March 17, 2026)
- Trinidad Guardian: "US military officer says radar in Tobago can be used in conflict with Venezuela" (December 9, 2025)
- Trinidad Guardian: "THA confirms pending departure of US troops" (March 15, 2026)
- Trinidad Guardian: "No sightings in search for missing pirogue Kampai" (March 12, 2026)
- Trinidad Guardian: PM defends radar removal (March 19, 2026)
- Caribbean Life: "US troops leave Tobago after dismantling high-grade radar" (March 27, 2026)
- Caribbean Life: "US removes military radar from Tobago as opposition slams government" (March 16, 2026)
- Jamaica Observer: "US radar removed from Tobago" (March 16, 2026)
- Army Recognition: "Strategic U.S. Radar Deployment in Tobago Near Venezuela" (November 29, 2025)
- Militarnyi: "USA Deployed a Radar System in Tobago" (December 4, 2025)
- USA Today: "US Marines radar system Tobago Venezuela" (December 2, 2025)
- The Hill: "Trinidad and Tobago airports US military" (December 15, 2025)
- Newsday: "Tobago radar could be used in US Venezuela conflict" (December 9, 2025)
- Northrop Grumman: AN/TPS-80 G/ATOR product page
- AFN Guantanamo Bay (Radio GTMO): Broadcast by MC2 Natasha Chevalier Losada (December 4, 2025)