Geisha Kow­lessar

By the mid­dle of next year, T&T is ex­pect­ed to have at least two of the four drones the gov­ern­ment has planned to ac­quire, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith said yes­ter­day.But he said it was still too ear­ly to de­ter­mine the cost, as the ten­der­ing process for the un­manned aer­i­al ve­hi­cles (UAVs), more com­mon­ly known as drones, has just start­ed."I don't want to deal with dol­lars and cents as yet," he said.

"At the end of the day there is a ten­der­ing process per­tain­ing to the ac­qui­si­tion of the drones. The ten­ders have not start­ed as yet, but I as­sure that the pub­lic will be kept well in­formed." Grif­fith de­scribed the drone as an aer­i­al sur­veil­lance mech­a­nism which is very so­phis­ti­cat­ed."It is to be used pri­mar­i­ly for ac­cess for in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing and to as­sist har­bour­mas­ters in sting op­er­a­tions," he said.

"It is al­so used to mon­i­tor in­di­vid­u­als or groups used in the trade-off of il­le­gal weapons and drug...they are go­ing to be very pow­er­ful pieces of equip­ment."Ex­press­ing con­fi­dence that the drones would turn "night in­to day," the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter said the drones were one of the many "new" crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tives he ex­pect­ed to im­ple­ment."We are look­ing at pur­chas­ing four drones in all, but def­i­nite­ly it would be two in the first in­stance," he added.

Grif­fith said the drones would be used through­out the coun­try, with spe­cial em­pha­sis on the coastal ar­eas, as weapons and nar­cotics usu­al­ly en­tered via the many un­manned ports of en­try.There has been much con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the use of drones. US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma de­fend­ed the use of drones against ter­ror­ist tar­gets, say­ing they were "ef­fec­tive, le­gal, life-sav­ing and a nec­es­sary tool in an evolv­ing US coun­tert­er­ror­ism pol­i­cy."Oba­ma al­so con­firmed that drone strikes had killed Amer­i­cans abroad.

How­ev­er, a grow­ing num­ber of leg­is­la­tors in the US Con­gress are seek­ing to lim­it the dead­ly drone strikes, which have tar­get­ed a wider range of threats than ini­tial­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed.Grif­fith made it clear that T&T's drones would not be equipped with rock­et launch­ers and oth­er weapon­ry, say­ing they would be used specif­i­cal­ly for the pur­pose of in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing.On the dif­fer­ence be­tween the drones and the blimp, he said since the drones were much small­er in size they were hard­er to spot.

"The blimp is very overt, so it would have been very dif­fi­cult for the blimp to be suc­cess­ful in covert in­tel­li­gence sur­veil­lance, be­cause it was eas­i­ly viewed," Grif­fith said."The drone is very small and it can ac­tu­al­ly stay in one lo­ca­tion and lock in­to that one lo­ca­tion to gath­er in­tel­li­gence."

What is a drone?

It's a re­mote-con­trolled pi­lot­less air­craft.Drones are typ­i­cal­ly used in mil­i­tary and spe­cial op­er­a­tion ap­pli­ca­tions.How­ev­er, re­cent­ly some coun­tries have im­ple­ment­ed their use for sur­veil­lance as part of a polic­ing and fire­fight­ing com­bat ini­tia­tive, and it is ex­pect­ed they will play a sim­i­lar role in the fight against crime in this coun­try.