Cuba: Section 3 - Force Structures

摘要

President Miguel Diaz-Canel is the serving commander in chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. Gen. Alvaro Lopez Miera serves as Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and is responsible for the day-to-day administration of the military, including direction of the Joint General Staff. Each of the three service branches has its own separate command staff, but the Joint General Staff controls and coordinates the activities of all of the constituent services. While the numbers below indicate aircraft thought to be in inventory, the active operational strength of the military's aviation fleet has been acutely undermined by years of fuel shortages and a lack of spare parts and components. The defection of a Cuban pilot operating a MiG-21 to the United States in the arduous 1990s revealed that the physical condition of even some of the country's most active air assets had reached a critical state, but the relatively fecund years of the 2000s and 2010s allowed the country to make modest investments toward the restoration of its remaining military assets and to pursue selective modernization initiatives.