New Cuban radar site near US military base could help China spy, think tank says – Euractiv

Cuba is building a new radar site that could be capable of spying on the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, a Washington think tank has discovered from satellite images, the latest upgrade to the country's surveillance capabilities long seen as linked to China.

The base, under construction since 2021 but not publicly announced until now, is located east of the city of Santiago de Cuba, near the El Salao neighborhood, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said in a report published Monday (July 1) and later referenced by the Wall Street Journal.

Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio has denied that Cuba hosts Chinese military interests on the island.

“The Wall Street Journal persists in launching a campaign of intimidation linked to Cuba. Without citing a verifiable source or providing evidence, it seeks to scare the public with stories about Chinese military bases that do not exist and that no one has seen, including the U.S. Embassy in Cuba,” de Cossio said on social media.

Cuba's proximity to the United States and its southern military bases makes it an ideal location for China, Washington's main strategic rival, to gather signals intelligence. CSIS called the new site a “powerful tool” that, once operational, will be able to monitor U.S. military air and maritime activities.

The installation, known as an array of antennas arranged in a circular pattern with a diameter of about 130 to 200 meters, could be able to track signals up to 3,000 to 8,000 nautical miles (3,452 to 9,206 miles) away, CSIS said.

“Access to such an outpost would provide China with a highly strategic vantage point near the Guantanamo Bay naval base,” he said, referring to the key U.S. military base located 45 miles east of Santiago, Cuba's second-largest city.

Such networks were widely used during the Cold War, but Russia and the United States have since decommissioned most of their sites in favor of more advanced technologies, CSIS said. However, the think tank said China is actively building new such networks, including on reef outposts in the South China Sea.

Last year, Biden administration officials said Beijing had been spying from Cuba for years and had made efforts to improve its intelligence-gathering capabilities there starting in 2019, allegations that Beijing and Havana have denied.

State Department spokesman Vedant Patel declined to comment on the report, but said at a briefing Tuesday that the United States was “closely monitoring” China's presence in Cuba.

“We know that the PRC (People's Republic of China) is going to continue to try to build up its presence in Cuba and the United States is going to continue to work to disrupt it,” Patel said, without elaborating.

The White House National Security Council and the U.S. Defense Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington said the United States had repeatedly “exaggerated” the idea of ​​Chinese surveillance and espionage from Cuba.

“Such claims are nothing but slander,” embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu said.

CSIS also said that satellite imagery from March 2024 shows that Cuba's largest active intelligence site at Bejucal, located in the hills near Havana and linked to alleged Chinese intelligence activities for years, has undergone “major updates” over the past decade, calling it “a clear indication of an evolving mission set.”

“Collecting data on activities such as military exercises, missile tests, rocket launches, and submarine maneuvers would allow China to develop a more sophisticated picture of U.S. military practices,” CSIS said.

He said some radar systems installed in Cuba in recent years are within monitoring range of rocket launches from Cape Canaveral and NASA's Kennedy Space Center, a likely interest of China as it seeks to catch up with U.S. space launch technology.

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