Cuba’s Defense Posture and Special Forces

There are also just three batteries of SA-6 Gainful mobile missile launchers (maximum range is 15 miles), and limited quantities of SA-8 Gecko, SA-9 Gaskin, and SA-13 Gopher short-range, mobile missiles, and shoulder-fired, SA-7 Grail, SA-14 Gremlin, and SA-18 Grouse heat-seeking missiles.

The Cuban Air Force is in a similarly sorry state, with only 20 total aircraft still airworthy, including nine Mi-8/17 Hip transport helicopters (just four are currently visible on Google Earth satellite imagery, dated 2020), four Mi-24/35 Hind-E helicopter gunships, three L-39C Albatros jet trainers, and four An-24 Coke/An-26 Curl military transport aircraft. Their inventories of MiG-21 Fishbed-J, MiG-23 Flogger, and MiG-29 Fulcrum-A jet fighters have been depleted to the point that none are officially active now, although three MiG-29s and a few MiG-21s may possibly be reactivated in an emergency.

The Cuban Army has 50,000 active-duty soldiers and 40,000 reservists, but their equipment is mostly poor and outdated, including antique T-55, T-62M, and PT-76 tanks, BMP-1 armored personnel carriers, and beat-up UAZ-469 jeeps. Even the Russians have a military joke that “the UAZ breaks down where few other vehicles dare to go.”

Their standard infantry weapons are the well-known Kalashnikov AKM assault rifle, sometimes with a suppressor, Dragunov SVD sniper rifles, and Makarov PM service pistols, all from the 1960s and 1970s.

Likewise, the Cuban Navy is small and not very effective, with only three submarines, two guided-missile frigates, one corvette, six Osa-II patrol boats, and several minesweepers, smaller patrol boats, one intelligence vessel, and two Mi-14 Haze naval helicopters.

Cuba’s premier, military unit is officially known as Mobile Brigade of Special Troops (BMTE), often identified as Military Unit 4895, or Commando Tropas Especiales (CTE, or Special Troops Command), but widely known as the Avispas Negras (“Black Wasps”), a special forces organization created in 1986. They have trained jointly with officers from communist China, North Korea, Vietnam, and with Russian paratroopers and SpetsNaz commandos, and have fought in the past in Angola, Ethiopia, and other African countries, and served as advisors in Nicaragua, Mozambique, and Venezuela.

The Black Wasps are trained in jungle warfare, guerilla warfare, direct action, special reconnaissance, parachuting, psychological operations, intelligence operations,  underwater missions, sniper operations, infiltration, and espionage. They work in teams of five members, who may be either male or female, and wear a camouflaged uniform and olive-green beret in garrison.

As an elite unit, the Black Wasps have a wider variety of weapons and equipment at their disposal, including the standard, Makarov PM pistol, Czech ČZ 75, or Russian Stechkin APS machine pistol, H&K (German) MP5 submachine gun, several AKMS assault rifle variants, AKS-74U carbines in 5.45x39mm, various sniper rifles, and integrally-suppressed weapons, such as the AS Val rifle and VSS Vintorez.

They also possess a variety of specialized vehicles, including the armed, Fiero ATV, the Iguana Humvee-type vehicle with NSV heavy machine gun, UAZ jeeps with machine guns or grenade launchers, and BRDM-2 armored personnel carriers.

Unfortunately, The Black Wasps have also been directly involved in the brutal suppression of protests in both Cuba and Venezuela, especially the July 11, 2021, protests across Cuba, during which thousands demonstrated against economic hardship, blackouts, and government policies. The Black Wasps unit beat unarmed civilians with batons and rifles, indiscriminately arresting participants.

On January 3, 2026, the Black Wasps were protecting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro at his Fort Tiuna compound in Caracas, when the U.S. Army’s Delta Force arrived during Operation Absolute Resolve, killing 12 Cuban Black Wasp officers and 20 members of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior, including two colonels. The Cuban media reported that, “Our compatriots fulfilled their duty with dignity and heroism and fell, after fierce resistance, in direct combat against the attackers, or as a result of bombings on the facilities.”

The bottom line is that Cuba is a weak and ineffective, failed economy and only a marginal, military power, in no position to resist a military, political, or economic takeover by the United States. They received most of their oil products from Venezuela in the past, but no longer. Fidel Castro died on November 25, 2016, and there has been no such charismatic leader since then.

President Trump should demand that Cuba immediately remove all Russian and Chinese advisors and intelligence personnel, who pose a direct, national security threat to the United States of America, in exchange for reopening the flow of oil from Venezuela, and not executing a military takeover of the nation of Cuba.

Cuba’s overall defense posture, weapons, equipment, and military mindset, all  seem hopelessly mired in the late 1970s, except for 12 MiG-29 Fulcrum-A fighters (and two MiG-29 trainers) delivered in 1989, all of which are now reportedly nonoperational. It’s a hugely outdated, military force, ranked 89th globally, by no means prepared for modern, 21st-century warfare, and even their most-elite unit very recently proved no match for the U.S. Army’s Delta Force in Venezuela.