Wayne Kublalsingh | Decoding Tobago radar

Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister, her ministers and her defenders are involved in a fantastic and unconvincing attempt to deceive the public.

Why have the Americans deployed their flotilla, including the US Joint Task Force, into the Caribbean? All for drug-trafficking. Nothing to do with a US regime change operation against Venezuela.

Yet, here is the line-up of US military assets North of Venezuela:

• The USS Gerald R. Ford is the world’s largest aircraft carrier. It was designed for decisive war operations. This ‘mothership’ carries an air wing of over 75 aircraft for combat operations: F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, EA-18G Growlers, E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes, and MH-60R/S Seahawk helicopters.

• The USS Iwo Jima is an amphibious assault battleship. It can carry 5,000 marines and sailors and boasts a landing and take-off deck for helicopters. In other words, it can transport soldiers onto the beaches, mountains, airports and strategic sites, once cleared by rocket and bomb assaults, into Venezuela.

There are six destroyers, two cruisers and an AC-130 gunship. These carry thousands of missiles for attacking targets inside Venezuela, and for engaging incoming missiles.

• The MV Ocean Trader carries special forces, that is advanced units designed, for example, to demolish key infrastructure or take and hold positions on the ground. There is at least one nuclear submarine, for underwater surveillance and other ops, B-52 and B-1 bombers for devastating saturation bombing.

And drones, unmanned aircraft which can be used for surveillance (Predator drone). Armed with a payload of almost two tons, they can seek, follow and destroy Venezuelan officials, military personnel and energy or military infrastructure. Puerto Rico has become the campaign’s hub, mustering there an estimated 5,000 sailors and soldiers from Amphibious Ready Groups, amphibious craft and warships.

THE CONTRADICTIONS

The prime minister, her key ministers and defenders swear that this flotilla is for drug interdiction from Venezuela. Although the White House and President Trump say differently. Maduro’s “days are numbered”. Although Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of War, and Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, say differently.

These ‘Trickydadians’ never acknowledge that this campaign is for a potential invasion of Venezuela, decapitation strikes against President Maduro, his Government and the imposition of Nobel Prize Peace winner Maria Machado and the historical elites to hand back their nation’s oil and gold resources to Trump and his fellow ‘gringos’.

Likewise, the PM, her ministers and defenders assert that the installation of the AN/TPS-80 G/ATOR radar system in Tobago is all for narco-trafficking; nothing to do with war or the US regime change campaign.

Here is the PM: “They will help us to install our surveillance in the intelligence of the radar for the narco-traffickers in our water and outside our waters.’’

Here is the position of our Minister of Defence, Wayne Sturge: “Speaking at the media conference, Minister of Defence Wayne Sturge said the radar system was solely for domestic security purposes and would assist in identifying drug traffickers, gun smugglers and human traffickers” (Newsday, page 9, December 9th).

And here is the position of Surujrattan Rambachan in Newsday, 4 pages later: “That the radar is necessary to combat narco-trafficking and human trafficking is indisputable.”

The AN/TPS-80 G/ATOR radar system provides a live, continuous electronic map of the sky. A long-range and multidirectional 24-hour map of the sky above the theatre of war, that is, above all the war assets facing each other in the Caribbean Sea and deep inside Venezuela. It provides this sky map simultaneously to command-and-control operations centres in the Pentagon (Virginia), Puerto Rico and the actual field of war operations.

What is it searching for? Incoming missiles. Artillery, that is, huge guns firing hundreds of rounds per minute. Incoming bombers and jet fighters. And most critically, drones and hypersonic missiles. In mountainous terrain, mortars, lobbed from the far sides of slopes, may also prove critical.

This radar system also locates the source of missiles fired. From jets or batteries or troops, for example, within Venezuela or from Venezuelan warships. So that the US could engage retaliatory fire from the sky or sea.

The system also provides data and tracking for air traffic controllers. The initial potential attacks are likely to come from the sky. Missiles from flights of jets and saturation bombing from the B-52s and B-1s. All of these need to be synchronised and controlled.

This radar system is designed for sky surveillance, not ground or sea surveillance. For theatres of war. It has to be located on the ground, terra firma, not at sea. Ships bob, weave, vibrate, distorting images. Significantly, it is part of US war operations. And therefore, a legitimate target of war.

The Americans are jibbing. Not sure what Maduro’s got. Russian? Chinese? Iranian? Cuban? If a hypersonic (faster-than-sound) missile or a fleet of drones were to significantly damage the $US13.3 billion Gerald Ford aircraft carrier with its precious fleet of fighter jets, all hell would break loose. That is why the radar is so important.

In such an instance, would the prime minister be able to say no to the US commandeering the ANR Robinson Airport as an alternative landing and refuelling site? Or to artillery batteries in the vicinity of the radar, to protect it? Or US infantry?

Had the prime minister declared our neutrality or rejection of this US war campaign, we would have been part of nobody’s battlelines. The radar has placed us bullseye-square behind the US battlelines.

- Dr Wayne Kublalsingh is an environmentalist, activist, university professor, and writer. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com