Cuban OOB

[Mahatatain]

Does anyone have any good information about the Cuban OOB in the mid-1990s or know of any information sources where I can research this, in particular information about regiment designations and which units are regulars (including conscripts) and which are reservists?

Wikipedia has the following information for 1996 (which is from Jane’s Information Group, so is presumably reliable):

The Cuban Revolutionary Army (Ejercito Revolucionario) was organized into three Territorial Military Commands with three Armies, one army for each command and there were an estimated 38,000 army personnel.

Revolutionary Army Command:

• Airborne brigade consisting of 2 battalions (at Havana and its immediate environs)
• Artillery division (at Havana and its immediate environs)
• SAM Brigade
• An anti-aircraft artillery regiment

Western Army (deployed in the capital and the provinces of Havana and Pinar del Río)

• 1st Armored Training Division
• 70th Mechanised Division
• 78th Armored Division "Sanguily Rescue"
• 2nd (Pinar del Río) Army Corps:
  - 24th Infantry Division
  - 27th Infantry Division
  - 28th Infantry Division

Central Army (Provinces of Matanzas, Villa Clara, Cienfuegos and Sancti Spiritus)

• 81st Infantry Division
• 84th Infantry Division
• 86th Infantry Division
• 89th Infantry Division
• 12th Armored Regiment/1st Armored Division
• 242nd Infantry Regiment/24th Infantry Division
• 4th (Las Villas) Army Corps:
  - 41st Infantry Division
  - 43rd Infantry Division
  - 48th Infantry Division

Eastern Army (Provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo, Granma, Holguín, Las Tunas, Camagüey and Ciego de Avila)

• 3rd Armored Division
• 6th Armored Division
• 9th Armored Division
• 31st Infantry Division
• 32nd Infantry Division
• 38th Infantry Division
• 84th Infantry Division
• 90th Infantry Division
• 95th Infantry Division
• 97th Infantry Division

Guantanamo Frontier Brigade

• 123rd Infantry Division/former 12th Infantry Division
• 281st Infantry Regiment/28th Infantry Division
• 5th (Holguín) Army Corps:
  - 50th Mechanised Division
  - 52nd Infantry Division
  - 54th Infantry Division
  - 56th Infantry Division
  - 58th Infantry Division
• 6th (Camagüey) Army Corps:
  - 60th Mechanised Division
  - 63rd Infantry Division
  - 65th Infantry Division
  - 69th Infantry Division

Now there is an obvious error with this information, the 84th Infantry Division appears twice, and the 28th Infantry Division is mentioned twice, though it may well be split with Regiments in different locations, so does anyone have a better information source than Jane’s via Wikipedia?

Additionally, it seems like the Cuban naming convention for the structure of the Revolutionary Army is to add a digit for each sub unit. For example:

• 2nd Army Corps:
  - 24th Infantry Division
  --- 242nd Infantry Regiment

Does anyone know if this is correct?

If it is then it allows a GM to create regiment names if needed.

Thanks for any help with this.

[James1978]

It's from 1979, but the Handbook on the Cuban Armed Forces might have some of the answers.

Cuban Armed Forces and the Soviet Military Presence (1982).

[kato13]

I have increased the max size for PDFs (to 15meg) and uploaded these so we don't lose them if the links die.

[Mahatatain]

Originally Posted by James1978

It's from 1979, but the Handbook on the Cuban Armed Forces might have some of the answers.

Cuban Armed Forces and the Soviet Military Presence (1982).

Thanks for these. They will be an interesting read.

Kato - thanks for uploading copies.

[Vespers War]

Ignore this comment if the interest is for other reasons, but for a Twilight campaign, it might be worth looking a little earlier. Cuba's military readiness crashed fast and hard after the collapse of the USSR.

According to "Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces: Adapting in the New Environment" (Cuban Studies Vol. 26, 1996), between 1991 (when Cuba withdrew its expeditionary forces from Africa) and 1995 the number of active service members declined from ~180,000 to ~105,000, with 1991-1993 seeing a decline of 7,000 soldiers and 1993-1995 a decline of 68,500. The Army went from 145,000 to 85,000, the Air Force from 22,000 to 15,000, and the Navy from 13,500 to 5,000.

They also cut the term of service for conscripts from three years to two years, and the military's proportion of Cuba's budget declined from 13% in the mid-80s to 1.6% in 1995.

Those are going to make any mid-90s TO&E chaotic, particularly since another paper mentioned the Army continued to decline until 2000, when it had only 55,000 service members (down from 145,000 a decade earlier).


For the divisions, armored and mechanized divisions do not follow the numbering rule of their first digit being the number of their Army/Corps. They seem to have been viewed at the time as HQ-level assets detached for a particular Army's use. All other divisions do follow the numbering rule. Also, all division numbers are two digits, so the 3rd Armored (for example) would be rendered as the 03rd Armored. There are some oddballs that don't get renumbered - all those 3X divisions in the Eastern Army are examples, because 3rd Army Corps was in Matanzas, in the Central Army. When those divisions were moved from Central to East, they weren't renumbered.

[Mahatatain]

Thanks for the info. Very interesting.

[ToughOmbres]

Per Chris Bishop and Ian Drury's World Military Weapons: The World's Armies and their Equipment. Aerospace and Crescent Publishing (1988)

Cuba: Strength 130,000 including c.60,000 conscripts serving 3 years; 170,000 official reserves.
Paramilitary: 15,000 state security, 3,500 frontier guards, 100,000 youth labour army, 50,000 civil defence, 1,200,000 territorial militia.

Army Organization: 4 Corps, 1 Armd. Div, 4 Mech Inf. Div, 7 Inf Div (at 60% strength) 26 AD and SAM Bdes, 8 cadre Inf Div, 2 Bn Sp Forces, 1 AB Bde, 3 Fd Arty Bde, 8 Indep Inf Regt.

Equipment includes 800 tanks: IS-2, T-34, T 54/55, T-62, PT-76, 700 IFV (BRDM BMP, BMD, BTR) 1,250 guns howitzers, 65 SSM (FROG), 1600 AA guns.

More numbers and specific weapons systems if they are useful if you like, no more specific TO & E or Order of Battle specifics though.

[Mahatatain]

Thanks for this info. That book sounds like a very valuable resource for T2k games.

[ToughOmbres]

Very welcome. Let me know if you want the complete info listing.

That was one of several coffee table books that seemed to flourish in publishing during the Cold War and held on to them.

[ToughOmbres]

Jane's 1979 Armour and Artillery has listed for Cuba (in addition to what is listed above) BRDM-1's, BTR40's, BTR-60's, BTR-152 and SU-100 SPG. Janes also has the M1953 57 mm Anti-tank gun in service for Cuba.

Even though it's a 1979 listing I would posit at least some of this could be around for T2k or waved into by a referee.

[Vespers War]

Cuba did some weird things with their BTR-60, including slapping a BMP-1 turret on them, slapping a T-54 turret on them, and making two different AA variants, one with a pair of 23mm guns and one with a pair of 37mm guns. According to Military Balance 2024 there are still a few hundred BTR-50/60/152 in Cuban service today, so they'd be around in the Twilight War era.

The CIA's 1979 assessment of Cuban forces, which was declassified in the 1990s, lists the following combat equipment starting on page 211:

Tanks:
PT-76, T-34(85), T-54/55, T-62

Assault Gun:
SU-100

APC/IFV:
BTR-40, BTR-152, BTR-60A/PA/PB, BMP

Recon Vehicles:
BRDM, BRDM-2, BRDM-2 w/Sagger

Infantry weapons:
Pistols: Makarov (PM), Stechkin (APS)
Rifles: AK-47, AKM, FAL, SVD, M52 (Czech)
SMGs: PPSh, M23 (Czech)
Machine Guns: FALO, RPD, RPK, PK/PKS/PKT/PKB, SGM/SGMT/SGMB, DShKM, KPV/KPVT
RPGs: RPG-7
ATGMs: AT-1 Snapper, AT-3 Sagger
MANPADS: SA-7 Grail

Field artillery:
Mortars: M1941, M1937, M1938, M1943 (both 120mm and 160mm of this model year), M-160
Field guns: 100mm M1955, 122mm Howitzer M1938 (M-30), 122mm M1931/37 (A-19), 122mm D-74, 130mm M-46, 152mm Howitzer M1943 (D-1), 152mm Gun-Howitzer M1937 (ML-20), 152mm Gun-Howitzer D-20
Anti-tank guns: 57mm M1943 (ZiS-2), 76mm M1942 (ZiS-3), 85mm D-44
MLRS: 200mm BMD-20, 240mm BM-24, 122mm BM-13, 140mm BM-14-17, 130mm M51, 122mm BM-21
Tactical rockets/missiles: FROG-5, SSC-2A Salish*
Towed AA guns: M-53 12.7mm, ZPU-2 14.5mm, ZPU-4 14.5mm, ZU-23 23mm, M1939 37mm, S-60 57mm, M1939 and M1944 85mm, KS-19 100mm
Self-propelled AA guns: BTR-152A with twin 14.5mm, ZSU-23-4, M53/59 with twin 30mm, ZSU-57-2


*these were actually SSC-2B Samlet, the conventional warhead version of the nuclear Salish

[Mahatatain]

Thanks everyone for all of this information. It will be very useful indeed.