De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge has de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­ued use of a Unit­ed States–sup­plied radar sys­tem in­stalled at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go, as he al­so brushed aside ques­tions about the pos­si­ble pres­ence of US mil­i­tary per­son­nel and con­cerns over trans­paren­cy and na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Sturge said the radar sup­port would re­main in place in­def­i­nite­ly as au­thor­i­ties in­ten­si­fy ef­forts to com­bat drug traf­fick­ing and gun smug­gling.

“We would have the use of the radar for the fore­see­able fu­ture. I can’t give a de­fin­i­tive time­line. And the rea­son why we need it, um, we al­ready have a radar cen­tre but our radar sys­tems are some­what lim­it­ed.”