Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor—News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) con­tin­ues to en­gage in se­ries of tac­ti­cal readi­ness ex­er­cis­es as part of prepa­ra­tions for any po­ten­tial re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty threats aris­ing from the on­go­ing ten­sions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela.

These plan­ning ac­tiv­i­ties fol­low Fri­day’s full-scale call-out of ac­tive-du­ty per­son­nel when thou­sands of of­fi­cers were in­struct­ed to re­port for du­ty amid re­ports of a pos­si­ble US mil­i­tary strike against Venezuela.

Sources fa­mil­iar with the op­er­a­tions yes­ter­day con­firmed that one of two sched­uled train­ing pe­ri­ods is now un­der­way, in­volv­ing spe­cialised ex­change ex­er­cis­es with a vis­it­ing Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit. The fo­cus, they said, has been on strength­en­ing tac­ti­cal co­or­di­na­tion across the var­i­ous branch­es of the TTDF.

While there is no in­tel­li­gence sug­gest­ing im­mi­nent con­flict or di­rect hos­til­i­ties be­tween the US and Venezuela, the TTDF has re­port­ed­ly in­creased its state of readi­ness to en­sure that it can re­spond ef­fec­tive­ly in any even­tu­al­i­ty. Mil­i­tary plan­ners have been re­view­ing de­fen­sive sce­nar­ios and bor­der re­sponse ca­pa­bil­i­ties, but con­cerns re­main about the pace of mo­bil­i­sa­tion and the avail­abil­i­ty of ac­tion­able in­tel­li­gence to guide strate­gic plan­ning.

Com­man­ders are said to be re­fin­ing three broad cours­es of ac­tion to be im­ple­ment­ed in the event of any re­gion­al es­ca­la­tion, in­clud­ing mea­sures to se­cure na­tion­al bor­ders and pro­tect crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture.

The TTDF was of­fi­cial­ly stood down from a height­ened state of alert at 11.30 pm on Fri­day, af­ter the re­ports of an im­pend­ing strike on Venezuela were de­nied by Wash­ing­ton and Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, though the De­fence Force re­mains on a height­ened lev­el of pre­pared­ness. Quick re­ac­tion units have al­so been de­ployed to undis­closed lo­ca­tions to re­spond if re­quired.

Of­fi­cials ac­knowl­edged that in­creased mi­gra­tion from Venezuela con­tin­ues to pose a chal­lenge for bor­der man­age­ment and hu­man­i­tar­i­an co­or­di­na­tion. With lim­it­ed in­tel­li­gence on Venezue­lan in­ten­tions or mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ties, the De­fence Force is said to be re­fin­ing its de­fen­sive pos­ture while main­tain­ing close com­mu­ni­ca­tion with re­gion­al part­ners.