A U.S Naval ship is cur­rent­ly in this coun­try to con­duct joint train­ing ex­er­cis­es with the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fense Force. U.S. Chargé d’Af­faires Shante Moore said, “The port vis­it of the USNS Burling­ton ex­em­pli­fies the strong bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween this coun­try and the Unit­ed States.” The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from the US Em­bassy:

The U.S. Naval Ship (USNS) Burling­ton, a Spear­head-class ex­pe­di­tionary fast trans­port (EPF) ship, ar­rived in port at Port of Spain on Sep­tem­ber 13 to con­duct joint train­ing ex­er­cis­es with the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fense Force.

The Spear­head-class ves­sels pro­vide an ef­fi­cient, light­weight, ver­sa­tile ca­pa­bil­i­ty to sup­port sol­diers and sailors in U.S. South­ern Com­mand’s (SOUTH­COM) area of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The USNS Burling­ton can be con­fig­ured to trans­port up to a bat­tal­ion-sized el­e­ment (up to 1,000 per­son­nel) or up to 600 tons of car­go at high speeds. The ves­sel just re­turned from com­plet­ing a hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance and dis­as­ter re­lief mis­sion fol­low­ing the Au­gust 14 earth­quake in Haiti.

The USNS Burling­ton will be in Port of Spain for three days. U.S. Chargé d’Af­faires Shante Moore said, “The port vis­it of the USNS Burling­ton ex­em­pli­fies the strong bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States and the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and the Unit­ed States’ com­mit­ment to strength­en se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion ef­forts with an im­por­tant Caribbean part­ner.”