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The United States Navy and Air Force have conducted at least 25 military intelligence flights near the shores of Cuba since February 4.
According to an analysis by CNN, based on public data from the air tracking platforms Flightradar24 and ADS-B Exchange, the majority of missions were concentrated near Havana and Santiago de Cuba, with some aircraft approaching within 64 kilometers of the coast, within the operational range for collecting signals intelligence.
What aircraft is the U.S. using in those operations?
The aircraft used include the maritime patrol aircraft P-8A Poseidon, the RC-135V Rivet Joint —specialized in signals intelligence— and the high-altitude reconnaissance drone MQ-4C Triton, which has a unit cost of around 240 million dollars and can operate for over 24 continuous hours at altitudes exceeding 50,000 feet.
The drone with the call sign BLKCAT5 completed its fourth documented flight around Cuba on Thursday, taking off from the Mayport Naval Base in Jacksonville, Florida, and traversing the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatán Channel, and areas of the eastern and southern parts of the island at an altitude of 46,950 feet and a speed of 580 knots.
Before February, such publicly visible operations were, according to CNN, "extremely rare" in the area near Cuba.
The Pentagon declined to comment on the findings of the analysis
The increase in flights coincides with a sustained escalation of pressure from Washington on the Cuban regime. Trump signed Executive Order 14404 on May 1, which expands sanctions against Cuba in the sectors of energy, defense, mining, and finance.
The Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Thursday sanctions against the Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), the military conglomerate that controls between 40% and 70% of the formal Cuban economy.
Additionally, June 5 was set as the deadline for foreign companies to cease operations with that entity under the threat of secondary sanctions.
In total, the Trump administration has imposed more than 240 sanctions against Cuba since January 2026.
What is happening with Cuba and what happened with Venezuela and Iran
The CNN article warns that a similar pattern —an increase in government rhetoric coinciding with a rise in visible surveillance flights— occurred prior to U.S. military operations in Venezuela and Iran.
In Venezuela, the flights began a week after the first U.S. attack against a vessel linked to drug trafficking and continued until the days leading up to Maduro's capture in his residential complex in Caracas.
In Iran, a wide-ranging intelligence aircraft operation monitored the southern Iranian coast prior to joint strikes with Israel. The same aircraft now detected near Cuba—P-8A Poseidon, RC-135V Rivet Joint, and MQ-4C Triton—were active in that conflict.
These aircraft have the ability to conceal their presence by turning off their location beacons, which raises the question of whether Washington is deliberately signaling to the regime.
"Regardless of whether that signal is intentional or not from the Army or the U.S. Government, the message is likely unsettling, to say the least, for Cuban officials," the analysis concludes.
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