Phalanx canons that fire 6,000 rounds per minute. THAAD and Patriot missile batteries. Littoral and Arleigh Burke-class warships. A turret-mounted laser that recycles rapidly. Evacuating non-mission essential contractors and dependents of armed forces personnel. These defensive measures and more are occurring at GITMO amid creeping fears that fuel-starved Cuba might retaliate against the United States by launching an armada of inexpensive attack drones at the naval station.
Cuba is in the dark. Its primary fuel supplier was Venezuela. After the US overthrew Nicholas Maduro, imposed a naval blockade, and seized Venezuela’s vast oil fields, Cuba was caught in a stranglehold, unable to replenish its shrinking reserves. Cascading blackouts have left millions without power, and even food is in short supply. Abandoned cars now clog Havanah’s once bustling streets, and once neighborly citizens have set upon each other like packs of hungry wolves. Families enjoying backyard barbeques are non-existent; now, they’ve turned cutthroat, combatively fighting for morsels of food or dribbles of gasoline. Cuba’s government keeps tight control over what little gas and diesel remain and isn’t sharing them with the public.
The crisis has worsened drastically since Real Raw News in March published an article about Cubans sneaking onto GITMO to steal diesel to power home generators. Right or wrong, the perpetrators were released, RRN learned afterward. Since then, throngs of Cubans have amassed on Cuba’s side of the fenceline, chanting “Death to Donald Trump” and daring US Marines on America’s side of the fence to shoot them. This dramatic escalation is far more severe than is publicly known.
On May 9, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, and DNI honcho Tulsi Gabbard met in the skiff–a highly secure, accredited room or building used by the U.S. government, military, and defense contractors to securely store, discuss, and process top-secret and sensitive compartmented information—to discuss a “clear and present danger” to US forces at GITMO. According to Gabbard, Cuba had somehow, in spite of the naval blockade, acquired more than 3,000 Ukrainian and Iranian attack drones, specifically Ukraine’s homegrown RS-1 Bars and Iran’s Shahed suicide drones. Per a GITMO source, the alphabet agencies had obtained satellite imagery of drones being moved from Ports of Havannah and Trinidad to strategic launch positions only a few miles from GITMO. If launched, the drones could shower GITMO with little or no warning time.
According to our sources, Hegseth recommended a preemptive strike; stand-off JDAM bombs and cruise missiles could obliterate launch sites and drone-filled warehouses before Cuba’s leader, the communist Miguel Díaz-Canel, ordered an attack. But President Trump and the NSA dismissed the idea as unnecessarily provocative and instead opted to bolster GITMO’s defenses. On May 13, the USS Preble, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer equipped with a 60 kW laser capable of destroying drones, was retasked to GITMO. The previous day, US Army Air Defense specialists installed Patriot and THAAD interceptor batteries. And on May 10, thirteen flights departed Leeward Point Airfield, each carrying non-essential persons to safer shores in Florida.
“Tensions are high, but if it comes, we’re ready,” our source said. “If they attack us, it’ll be the last mistake Cuba ever makes.”