From Defense News:
Cuba to Hold Military Exercises in November
Jan. 26, 2012 - 08:26PM | By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE | Comments
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HAVANA — Cuba will stage its biggest military maneuvers of the past three years in November, a show of force that will coincide with presidential elections in the United States, state media said Jan. 26.
The exercises will be the first under the command of Gen. Leopoldo Cintra Frias, appointed as Cuba’s defense minister following the Sept. 3 death of Gen. Julio Casas Regueiro, the official daily newspaper Granma reported.
The maneuvers, dubbed Operation Bastion, have been held various times over the years by the Marxist regime, often in response to events in the United States.
Cuba conducted its first Operation Bastion military exercises in November 1980 after Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States, a time of heightened tension between Washington and Havana, which have had no formal ties diplomatic since 1961.
Military maneuvers were also conducted in 1983, 1986, 2004 and 2009.
Word of this latest round of military maneuvers coincides with an uptick in hardline rhetoric toward Cuba by U.S. Republican Party presidential candidates.
The presidential contenders have been campaigning this week in Florida, home of the staunchly anti-Castro exile community and where a pivotal party primary was due to be held on Jan. 31.
Cuba’s defense strategy would mobilize its population against what it fears will be a future U.S. attack, sending small mobile squads to defend the Communist island against America’s large and sophisticated weaponry.
Its “Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias” — FAR in its Spanish acronym — or Revolutionary Armed Forces comprises three armies covering the western, central and eastern parts of the island and includes about 50,000 troops.
Other parts of Cuba’s military include hundreds of thousands of reservists and about a million men and women who receive training as ground troops.
The island has a population of a little more than 11 million people.
The Cuban military claims to have redesigned and modernized part of the weaponry it received from its main supplier, the Soviet Union, which broke apart in 1991.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, when Cuba lost financial support and other aid from Moscow, the Cuban army reduced the number of its troops.
Despite being economically strapped, some 400,000 Cuban soldiers have participated in various conflicts to support socialist governments in Africa and other foreign hot spots through the late 1980s.
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