China-linked spy site in Cuba is now fully operational

A sprawling Cuban intelligence facility just 145 kilometers (90 miles) from the Florida coast has completed construction of a powerful new antenna array capable of intercepting and tracking American military communications across the southeastern United States and the Caribbean, the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported on June 18, 2026.

Satellite imagery analyzed by CSIS researchers Matthew Funaiole, Brian Hart, Joseph Bermudez Jr., and Aidan Powers-Riggs shows that a signals intelligence site at Bejucal, located near Havana in Cuba’s northwest, has finished building a circularly disposed antenna array, a specialized listening system designed to intercept radio transmissions and pinpoint their geographic origin with high precision. The array consists of 32 antennas arranged in two concentric rings, with 19 on the outer ring and 13 on the inner, making it larger and, according to CSIS, likely more capable than any comparable Cuban installation previously documented by the organization. Construction on the antenna field, which converted an existing linear antenna grid into the circular configuration over roughly two years, now appears complete, and the CSIS team assesses the facility has very likely begun operations.

A circularly disposed antenna array, or CDAA, works by measuring the direction from which a radio signal arrives at multiple antennas simultaneously, allowing operators to triangulate the source of a transmission with considerable accuracy across a wide range of frequencies. The technology is not new, the United States operated its own large CDAA networks during the Cold War under programs like Pusher and Wullenweber, but the capability remains operationally relevant for monitoring military communications, ship and aircraft movements, and electronic emissions from naval and air operations. Positioned at Bejucal, the newly completed array sits within range of U.S. naval activity in the Caribbean, air operations out of bases across the southeastern United States, and maritime traffic through the Gulf of Mexico, all of which have intensified in recent months as the Trump administration has elevated the Western Hemisphere as a strategic priority.

The Bejucal facility has carried a long association with Chinese intelligence operations in public reporting, congressional testimony, and statements from U.S. officials, though CSIS notes carefully that no clear publicly available evidence proves Beijing’s direct involvement at that specific site. The CSIS report does note that U.S. officials have recently acknowledged that China operates three intelligence sites in Cuba, and the researchers assess Bejucal is likely one of them, a conclusion drawn from the pattern of public statements rather than from declassified documentation. The distinction matters journalistically: what the satellite imagery confirms is the physical completion of a sophisticated new listening capability, not the identity of whoever is running it day to day.

The picture at a second suspected CDAA site, located at El Salao on Cuba’s eastern coast, is considerably less alarming in the near term, though no less significant for what it might eventually represent. CSIS first identified El Salao in 2024, and updated imagery from May 2026 shows that construction there has slowed nearly to a halt, with no antennas yet erected around the central control building that was installed during the site’s initial groundwork phase, which began in 2021. Grass has reclaimed graded areas within the antenna rings, a reliable visual indicator that a site has sat idle long enough for vegetation to recover, and no changes to surrounding buildings suggest the facility is anywhere close to operational.

One detail in the May 2026 imagery introduces a note of ambiguity about El Salao’s future, however. An access road that previously led to an off-center area of the site has been repaved and repositioned toward the center of the antenna array, a change that CSIS flags as unusual because paving a road through the center of an active antenna array would interfere with its operation. The researchers conclude from this that the site has not been fully abandoned, but that its ultimate purpose, whether completion as originally planned or conversion to some other use, remains unclear.

The strategic importance of El Salao lies in its geography. Positioned on Cuba’s eastern end, a completed CDAA there would extend signals intelligence coverage southward over the Southeast Caribbean, complementing Bejucal’s northwestern orientation. Operated together, the two facilities would give Cuban authorities, or their foreign partners, the ability to triangulate radio emissions from a much broader arc spanning Central America and the Western Atlantic, creating overlapping coverage zones that are considerably more difficult to evade than a single site.

The CSIS findings land against a backdrop of escalating U.S. pressure on Havana. A May 2026 executive order issued by the White House imposed new sanctions on the Cuban government, citing Cuba’s hosting of what the administration called “foreign adversary facilities” targeting sensitive American national security information as evidence of “malign influence,” language drawn directly from the executive order text.

The CSIS researchers note that the status of the Bejucal and El Salao sites could become a central element of any future negotiations between Washington and Havana, giving the satellite imagery a diplomatic dimension that extends well beyond the technical details of antenna construction.

Cuba’s value as an intelligence platform for adversarial powers has been a recurring theme in American national security discussions since the Cold War, when the Soviet Union maintained signals intelligence facilities on the island that monitored American military communications and space launch operations. The specific facilities that CSIS has now tracked through multiple years of commercial satellite imagery represent the most detailed open-source documentation yet of how that tradition of foreign intelligence exploitation of Cuban territory has evolved into the current era, with updated technology and, very possibly, updated sponsors. Whether the antenna at Bejucal is already listening to American ships moving through the Florida Straits or American aircraft lifting off from bases in Florida is a question the satellite images cannot answer. That the hardware to do exactly that is now in place is no longer in doubt.