Cuba’s acquisition of more than 300 attack drones from Iran and Russia since 2023 underscores the regime’s deepening alignment with Washington’s adversaries. Cuban planners have reportedly discussed strikes against Guantanamo Bay, U.S. naval vessels, and even Key West, Florida. While these systems provide Havana with a limited harassment and asymmetric strike capability, they do nothing to narrow the overwhelming gap between Cuban and American military power.
Yet, Cuba poses a direct threat to American homeland security through migration waves, narcotics transshipment, espionage, and now drone threats. Over 600,000 Cubans have attempted or reached U.S. shores since 2021, surpassing the Mariel boatlift and the 1994 rafting crisis combined, straining resources and creating security vulnerabilities. Pentagon contingency planning intensified this month with the USS Nimitz carrier group deployed to the Caribbean, underscoring the urgency.
Cuba fields 50,000 active troops, 40,000 reserves, and approximately 1.1 million personnel in its Territorial Troops Militia. Its air force operates roughly 20 aircraft. The army possesses around 300 aging T-55 and T-62 tanks, Soviet-era artillery, and surface-to-air missile launchers upgraded by Belarus in 2025. Global Firepower ranks Cuba 65th globally, a position that conceals obsolescence and systemic decay.
CAPTURING RAUL CASTRO WOULD BE MORE DIFFICULT THAN CAPTURING NICOLAS MADURO
Indeed, the United States could establish air and naval supremacy within hours. Precision strikes against surface-to-air missile batteries, command-and-control infrastructure, and key leadership targets — combined with cyber operations, electronic warfare exploiting Cuba’s fragile power grid, and a naval quarantine — would quickly isolate and cripple the regime.
Most military assessments conclude that conventional Cuban resistance would collapse rapidly under sustained American pressure.
Cuba’s “War of All the People” doctrine depends on militia forces, guerrilla ambushes, and urban warfare designed to raise the costs of American intervention. Yet this strategy can create only temporary friction — it cannot overcome overwhelming U.S. technological superiority or compensate for Cuba’s accelerating economic collapse.
The island’s GDP has contracted for consecutive years, inflation exceeds 25%, the fiscal deficit has surpassed 10% of GDP, and poverty is widespread. Chronic blackouts and severe food shortages have already triggered public unrest, exposing the regime’s increasingly fragile hold on power.
In 2025, Russia signed a military cooperation deal with Havana and is believed to maintain an intelligence task force on the island. China provides economic support and is also suspected of intelligence ties. Both can offer limited equipment and diplomatic backing at the United Nations, as they have for Iran and Venezuela. However, neither can project meaningful military power into the Caribbean, leaving Cuba to fight largely alone.
Recent history points to the template for ending the regime in days. The 2003 “Shock and Awe” campaign in Iraq paralyzed a larger adversary’s command structure through precision strikes on leadership and critical nodes. Even closer to home, Panama’s “Operation Just Cause” in 1989 toppled Manuel Noriega in under five days.
A tailored “Caribbean Rapid Dominance” strategy for Cuba would deliver immediate air and naval supremacy, cyber and electronic shutdown of regime communications, targeted leadership and command-and-control strikes, a naval quarantine, and information operations highlighting the regime’s failures to encourage defection.
THE DEATH OF KINGS: AS A CUBAN FROM MIAMI, I WELCOME RAUL CASTRO’S INDICTMENT
This doctrine could dismantle centralized control in 48–72 hours, preempting effective militia mobilization, and could run concurrently with any Iran operation given the theater’s proximity. The regime possesses no military shield against a determined Washington action.
With Cuba’s economy already faltering, sustained pressure can neutralize the threat, encourage a more stable neighbor, cut security burdens, and strengthen regional stability. More than ever, President Donald Trump’s leadership is needed.
Jose Lev Alvarez is an American Israeli scholar specializing in Middle Eastern security policy. A multilingual veteran of the Israeli special forces and the U.S. Army, he holds three master’s degrees and is completing a doctorate in intelligence and global security in the Washington area.