Strategic U.S. Radar Deployment in Tobago Near Venezuela Shifts Regional Surveillance.

Nov 2025 : Honourable Prime Minister Of Trinidad and Tobago’s have confirmed that United States Marines are in Tobago installing a new radar system at ANR Robinson International Airport, after previously denying that any U.S. troops remained in the country, as reported by the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian.

The government has presented the project as an upgrade of airport infrastructure and national surveillance capabilities against narcotics traffickers operating in the waters around the twin-island state. At the same time, open-source imagery and flight-tracking strongly suggest that the radar involved is the U.S. Marine Corps’ AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR), a multi-mission air and missile surveillance system. In a context of stepped-up U.S. counter-drug operations and a visible military build-up across the Caribbean, including new access agreements with the Dominican Republic, this deployment is already being read in the region as having implications that go well beyond the fight against narcotics.

The AN/TPS-80 G/ATOR is a mobile, active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar designed to combine several missions that previously required multiple separate systems: air surveillance and air defence, counter-battery fire detection, and expeditionary air-traffic control. Operating in the S-band, it provides 360-degree, four-dimensional coverage, able to build fire-control quality tracks on targets ranging from manned aircraft and cruise missiles to small unmanned aerial systems, rockets, artillery shells and mortars.

Public technical data indicate a detection range exceeding 160 kilometres for aerial targets, placing a large portion of the southern Caribbean airspace, including approaches to the Venezuelan coastline, within its surveillance envelope when sited in Tobago. The system is built around three main elements, radar, power and communications groups,  that can be airlifted by a single C-130 or heavy-lift helicopters and set up in well under an hour, giving U.S. forces the ability to reposition or remove the asset rapidly if required.

Development of G/ATOR began in the mid-2000s, with the U.S. Marine Corps seeking a single radar family to replace five legacy systems used for air defence, air-traffic control and artillery locating missions. After initial trials and incremental “block” upgrades to add counter-battery and later air-traffic control modes, the programme secured full-rate production approval in 2019, and by 2025 more than half of the planned fleet of around 60 systems had been delivered, including a small number allocated to the U.S. Air Force.

The radar has since been fielded in the United States and overseas, where Marine units have trained to use it as an expeditionary sensor for integrated air and missile defence and air base protection, replacing older long-range radars such as the AN/TPS-59 in some roles. In Tobago, the system is officially described as part of a project to improve runway, road and security infrastructure at ANR Robinson International Airport and to increase the “surveillance and intelligence” available to national authorities to detect narco-traffickers in surrounding waters.

Tactically, positioning a G/ATOR at Tobago’s western tip offers a dense, real-time air picture over a region that has long been challenging to monitor. Tobago lies close to key maritime routes used by go-fast boats and aircraft flying low over the sea to evade traditional radars, as well as near the Venezuelan coast across the Gulf of Paria and the wider Caribbean basin. The radar’s ability to detect low-flying, small radar cross-section targets and to provide rapidly updated tracks can greatly improve early warning of small aircraft and drones suspected of transporting narcotics, especially when fused with data from existing coastal radars and maritime patrol aircraft. Because G/ATOR can simultaneously support air surveillance, target acquisition and, in other modes, air-traffic control, it also offers Trinidad and Tobago authorities a more integrated picture of both civilian and non-cooperative air movements around ANR Robinson.

In practice, however, the tactical advantages will depend on how the data are shared: whether the radar feed is primarily exploited by U.S. forces, jointly operated with the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force, or integrated into the country’s existing coastal radar network, which local experts say already covers much of the maritime domain with Israeli-built sensors. Strategically, the deployment has consequences that reach far beyond the technical specifications of the radar. At one level, it fits into a broader U.S. campaign to tighten control over air and sea routes used by transnational criminal organisations, a campaign that now includes lethal strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats and expanded access for U.S. aircraft and personnel at airfields in the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean states.

By placing a sophisticated, multi-mission radar in Tobago, Washington gains a high-quality sensor node close to Venezuela’s northern coast, able to contribute to a regional, networked air surveillance picture that can support both counter-narcotics missions and any contingency planning related to the political and security situation in Venezuela. While neither Port of Spain nor Washington has publicly linked the installation to Venezuela, analysts in the region view it as reinforcing the U.S. ability to monitor Venezuelan air traffic, missile tests or unusual military movements, and to cue other assets such as AWACS aircraft or naval platforms in near-real time.

For Trinidad and Tobago, the move highlights a delicate balance between seeking U.S. support against powerful criminal networks and managing domestic concerns over sovereignty and foreign basing. The former director of the country’s National Coastal Radar Surveillance Centre has publicly questioned whether allowing the United States to install and potentially control such a radar risks ceding part of the nation’s situational awareness to a foreign power, especially given that existing national systems reportedly already provide extensive coverage of regional maritime traffic.

The government, for its part, emphasises that the project is tied to national security, that the Marines are assisting with infrastructure and security upgrades, and that enhanced radar intelligence will help combat narcotics, arms and human trafficking discussed at recent high-level meetings with senior U.S. defence officials. In this framing, Tobago becomes a key node in a shared security architecture, even as neighbouring Venezuela and some domestic voices interpret the same radar as a forward U.S. sensor positioned just off Venezuelan shores. Placed at the intersection of counter-narcotics cooperation, regional great-power signalling and domestic political debate, the U.S. radar now operating in Tobago is more than a technical upgrade to airport infrastructure.

This deployment embeds Trinidad and Tobago more deeply into a U.S.-led surveillance and interdiction network over the southern Caribbean, enhances Washington’s ability to watch both criminal and state actors, and raises new questions about how small states manage sovereignty when advanced foreign systems are installed on their soil. Whether the deployment is ultimately perceived as a shield against organised crime, a pressure tool vis-à-vis Venezuela, or an uncomfortable symbol of dependency will depend on how transparently Port of Spain manages the arrangement, how clearly the limits of U.S. use are defined, and how the benefits of the new capability are felt by citizens far beyond the perimeter fence of ANR Robinson International Airport.

Team Maverick