“Cuba has acquired more than 300 military drones and recently began discussing plans to use them to attack the US base at Guantanamo Bay, US military vessels and possibly Key West, Florida,” wrote Axios, citing US intelligence.
According to them, the attack drones were deployed at various strategic locations on the island. In total, there are supposed to be more than three hundred of these drones, and during the last month Cuban officials tried to get more drones and military equipment from Russia, a senior American official told the website. The military cooperation between Havana and Moscow concerns Ukraine – around five thousand Cubans have gone to fight there so far, the server writes.
American intercepts also show that Cuban intelligence was trying to get information from Iran on how to resist US attacks. Both Russia and China also have advanced spy equipment in Cuba designed to collect information from the signals of electronic devices.
“We’ve been concerned for a long time that a foreign adversary would use a location like this so close to our coast. It’s very troubling,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week.
“When we think about the fact that such technologies are so close and that various hostile actors — from terrorist groups to drug cartels to the Iranians and the Russians — have access to them, it’s troubling. It’s a growing threat,” Axios quoted an unnamed U.S. official as saying.
“Cuba can no longer serve as a platform for adversaries who want to promote hostile interests in our region. The Western Hemisphere cannot be the playground of our adversaries,” he added, adding that CIA chief John Ratcliffe also conveyed this message to the Cubans when he met with local officials on the island last week.
A possible pretext for a strike
The server notes that American officials do not believe that Cuba represents an immediate threat or that it is actively planning an attack on American targets. “And no one is afraid of Cuban fighter jets. It is not even certain that they have any capable of flight,” said a senior American official.
Cuban plans for possible drone attacks are supposed to relate to a possible scenario if the dispute with the US were to escalate. However, even that could become a pretext for American military action, the website warns.
At the same time, the Trump administration, not only with the help of the oil embargo, has been significantly intensifying the pressure on Havana recently, while making no secret of the fact that its goal is the fall of the current communist regime.
On Wednesday, the US Department of Justice plans to publish the indictment of Cuban ex-president (and still the gray eminence of the regime) Raúl Castro for alleged responsibility for shooting down two planes of the Miami-based humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue in 1996. The announcement may be accompanied by further tightening of sanctions.
The biggest threat? Collapse
In response to claims about attack drones, the Cuban government did not deny their deployment, but emphasized that it was nothing illegitimate. “Like any other country, Cuba has the right to defend itself against external aggression. It is called self-defense and it is protected by international law and the UN Charter,” she said in a statement.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel later assured that his country was not a threat to the USA. “Cuba poses no threat and has no aggressive plans or intentions towards any country,” he continued. “He has nothing against the US and never had any – something that the government of this country, especially its defense and security agencies, knows very well,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel then said, according to CBS. He added that, on the contrary, threats from the US constitute an “international crime”.
Former US Secretary of Defense and ex-CIA chief Robert Gates then sees the main threat from Cuba in a completely different way than its military capabilities. “I think the main threat is, frankly speaking, its collapse,” he added, referring to a possible large migration wave of Cubans to the US.
