China’s Caribbean Listening Post? Satellite Imagery Shows Cuba Spy Base Completed

The Center for Strategic and International Studies published a report using geospatial intelligence to show that construction of a circularly disposed antenna array in Cuba has been completed.

CSIS states the circularly disposed antenna array in Cuba, just 240 miles miles from Miami, Florida, could be used to monitor or intercept radio transmissions across a wide range of frequencies in the region.

The DC-based think tank added that the site may be linked to China and could be used to track sensitive U.S. military and communications activity across the Caribbean, the Gulf of America, and the southeastern U.S.

Here’s a section of the report:

At an expansive SIGINT site in Bejucal, near Havana, recent satellite imagery shows construction work completed on a new large circularly disposed antenna array (CDAA).

Over the last two years, an antenna field at the northeast end of the facility has been converted from a linear antenna grid to a CDAA. Imagery published by CSIS in April 2025 captured ongoing groundwork to lay cables between the antennas and the central control facility. Construction now appears to be complete and the facility has very likely begun operations.

The array of 32 antennas (19 outer and 13 inner) is larger and likely more capable than any Cuban CDAA previously observed by CSIS. CDAAs are primarily used for high-frequency direction finding, which involves intercepting and geolocating incoming radio transmissions over a wide range of frequencies.

From Bejucal’s location in Cuba’s northwest, the CDAA could improve the ability of Cuban authorities—or potentially their foreign partners—to monitor sensitive U.S. activities in the Caribbean and across the southeastern seaboard. U.S. naval and air operations in the region have escalated amid the Trump administration’s prioritization of the Western Hemisphere, increasing the potential value of monitoring U.S. movements in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.

CSIS cited a congressional testimony in 2005 that pointed out China’s activities in the Bejucal area:

The main Chinese electronic spy bases in Cuba are located to the northeast of Santiago de Cuba in the far east of the country and in the Bejucal area in the province of Havana, according to intelligence sources. The base of antennas in Santiago de Cuba is mainly dedicated to the capture of U.S. military satellite communications, meanwhile in Bejucal the Chinese have created a complex interception system of telephone communications. To disguise these activities, the official Chinese station, Radio China International is transmitting its programs from Havana to the United States and Latin America.

China’s activity in the Western Hemisphere was recently uncovered by a Select Committee’s investigation that found Beijing developed “an extensive network of dual-use space ground stations and telescopes across Latin America and uses this network to collect intelligence and boost the PLA’s warfighting capacity,” adding, “The investigation found at least eleven China-linked space facilities established across Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, and Brazil.”

The Trump administration’s campaign to purge China’s influence from the Western Hemisphere has intensified this year as part of a broader U.S. effort to reorder the political map of the Americas. After the collapse of the socialist Maduro regime in Venezuela, the Trump administration is increasingly focused on Cuba, where decades of communist rule have hollowed out the island’s economy and turned it into an island playground for U.S. adversaries.