And finally from Lovell tonight, he says Belize needs a helicopter for security and safety reasons. Yesterday when the US Embassy handed over 38 new vehicles, he made a kind of hard pitch for one.

He appealed, perhaps in vain, to the United States war on drugs like marijuana. That war is just about over for the US, but in 2013, it was on when they used their helicopters to provide the BDF with Air Support for a massive marijuana plantation eradication effort. Here's how Lovell put it:..

Ret. Col. George Lovell - C.E.O., Ministry of National Security
"What we achieved in just two days of operations using the helicopters, we were not able to match with the entire area of operations without those assets. This is certainly a must have asset for Belize if we are to continue to get concrete results. So I would like to once more publicly mention that this government is committed to any serious cost sharing arrangement that our partners are prepared to undertake in the acquisition of helicopters for Belize and hope that the seeds I am now sewing will fall on futile ground."

Lovell pitched it to representatives of any and all countries attending the event, including the Mexicans.

So where was he going with that? Today Lovell underscored Belize's dire need of readily available helicopter for security and safety purposes:

Ret. Col. George Lovell - C.E.O., Ministry of National Security
"Jules we do need helicopter on a permanent basis here in Belize. Not just to deal with eradication of marijuana, but also to deal with all those other areas where we need casualty evacuation from these remote areas, we need troop lifting to get our people into these border areas fast and be able to respond and react to the threats that we have along our border areas. We certainly need for search and rescue operations. Two of the examples that I gave yesterday; one was the search and rescue operations that we were engaged in for the American ranger who went missing - still missing and they did provide helicopter support. But the helicopter support in my mind was provided a few days late. Had we had the assets available to us we would have been able to get out there in a timely fashion."

Jules Vasquez
"This is a case you've made to the Americans?"

Ret. Col. George Lovell - C.E.O., Ministry of National Security
"Yes and also we had in fact (these were two things that I mentioned yesterday publicly) with joint Task Force Bravo helicopters that came in for the anti-drug operations - what we achieved in two day we were able to achieve in the whole year with our security forces not having that type of asset and so it shows the value from an operational and from a US interest point of view."

Jules Vasquez
"However at this point is it even worth still asking the Americans to help us with drug eradication when the President of the United States has said that the marijuana to him is no more poisonous or no worse than an alcoholic drink."

Ret. Col. George Lovell - C.E.O., Ministry of National Security
"Well as I said, I've used those as examples to sort of arose the interest, not necessarily Belize as a country would want to be focused in on primarily."

Presently the only helicopters available in Belize are private and owned by Astrum Helicopters which rents its services for upwards of one thousand dollars per hours. There have not been publicly available helicopters since BATSUB moved out in 2011.

Channel 7