CASTRO'S COMMUNIST ARSENAL

CONVERSION of Fidel Castro's Cuba to a Communist island fortress in the Caribbean began with the arrival of Czech-made ZB R-2 .30-cal. rifles from Baltic ports in August of 1960. By mid-1961, the U.S. Defense Department was estimating that Castro had received $100 million worth of Soviet-bloc armaments. Since then, the estimate has jumped to $175 million at the minimum. The sheer bulk of arms is staggering: 400,000 tons. A study of Castro's arsenal, based on the best available intelligence:

Missiles

Castro's newest weapons are short-range guided missiles. On land, he has the Soviet's stubby SA-2 antiaircraft rocket, a solid-fuel ground-to-air missile similar to the U.S.'s Nike-Ajax. A nest of six SA-2s is already installed and operational under camouflage at Bahia Honda, 45 miles from Havana. Radar guided, the antiaircraft weapons can reach targets within a 3ODEG-slant range of from 25 to 27 miles, or as far straight up as 60,000 feet. Another SA-2 site is reported under construction in Matanzas, 60 miles east of Havana, and more rocket batteries are expected eventually to guard all key Cuban military installations and cities. At sea, Castro's newly acquired Russian Type 100 torpedo boats boast the firepower of a small destroyer, with the addition of new ship-to-ship missiles whose 15-mile range makes them deadly against thin skinned transports.

Electronics

Many of the newly arrived 4,000 Red troops are electronics and radar technicians sent to install and man Castro's first missiles. The SA-2 rockets require extensive guidance radar. Other Russians will operate 250-mile-range surveillance radar and electromagnetic tracking posts to monitor Cape Canaveral shots and to aid orbiting Russian cosmonauts who have heretofore had no land-based station in the Western Hemisphere. Already in Cuban waters are five Russian 750-ton fishing trawlers, loaded to the gunwales with electronic gear.

Aircraft

Some 200 Czech-trained Cuban pilots are now equipped with 25 MIG-15s, 45 MIG-17s, and 20 supersonic MIG-19s. Converted transport pilots have taken over the controls of 24 recently-delivered M14 combat helicopters, 20 AN2 biplanes and eight twin-engined Ilyushin transports.

Seapower

Pride of Castro's fleet is the still-commissioned Granma, the 74-ft. yacht from which he launched his revolution in December 1956. But for the rest of the 5,500-man Cuban navy, six Russian destroyers are being acquired to add to a pre-Castro flotilla of a dozen U.S.-built corvettes. From seven to ten 40-knot, missile-armed torpedo boats are known to have already arrived as deck cargo from Russia.

Tanks

Cuban drivers have been trained to handle 75 Korea-vintage 35-ton T-34 tanks, 25 old 51-ton Joseph Stalin 11s and 100 new 40-ton T-54s, the last equipped with night-fighting infra-red sights and mounted with 100-mm. guns.

Artillery

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 jovenes 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 Guantanamo, even the U.S. Marines inside were impressed at their highly military bearing and polish.

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