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Backing up its ground-to-air rockets, Red Cuba has more than 2,000 flak guns in position, mostly Skoda-made 30-mm. and 40-mm. Scattered through Havana and around the Russian camps, the antiaircraft weapons include four-barreled ZPU-4 Czech dual-purpose guns—the Castro-beloved "quatro bocas" (four mouths) that helped repel the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invaders—as well as newer, heavier-caliber radar-guided skysweeper guns. Poking over Havana's sea wall are long 85-mm. cannons; poised at the ends of military roads leading to the U.S. base at Guantanamo is new 155-mm. motorized artillery capable of assault at 40 m.p.h. For combat support, there are 1,000 pieces of field artillery, including truck-mounted, multibarreled Russian rocket launchers.
Small Arms
Available to Castro's militiamen and regulars are 65,000 new Belgian FN rifles and 125,000 Czech automatic rifles, 200,000 Communist-bloc burp guns and assorted small arms, 3·5-in. antitank bazookas and more than 5,000 heavy mortars.
Troops
Castro's 300,000 militiamen are loosely trained, but carry impressive automatic-weapons firepower. For them and the 50,000-man regular army, durable Communist General Enrique Lister, 55, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, is busy working up a new table of organization, and has instituted a highly efficient system of training and discipline. Some 80,000 militia had already received two months' field weapons training from Czech, Russian, East German and Red Chinese military advisers prior to the arrival of the latest 4.000 Russian military technicians. From the militia's jóvenes rebeldes (young rebels), a spit-and-polish elite corps of 3,500 has been recruited and put through rugged training that included scrambles up and down Cuba's highest mountain, Pico Turquino (6,560 ft.) with full battle pack. When they appeared in starched green fatigues outside the cactus fence around the U.S. Naval base at Guantánamo, even the U.S. Marines inside were impressed at their highly military bearing and polish.