Speaker 1: Welcome back everybody. Today we're gonna be talking about the
Vispas Negatis, the Black Wasps, which is Cuba's elite special Operations,
and a lot of people haven't never heard of them yet.
They have real combat experience to operate one of the
toughest logistical environments on the planet, and just a few
months ago found themselves in a direct confrontation with US
Special Operations. They're not a large, well funded formation like
some of the units we usually discussed. Cuba has been
under a US embargo for over sixty years. After the
Soviet Union collapsed, the island went through the special period
of extreme shortages. Yet this unit continues to select trained
deploye operators who have fought in Africa and more recently
provide a close protection to a head of state under
direct threat. So today we're going to break them down.
The Black Wasps were officially stood up on December one,
nineteen eighty six, about almost forty years ago, but their
lineage goes back further. In nineteen seventy four, the Cubans
created a Landing and assaw for great under the Ministry
of the Interior. That unit cut its teeth in Angola
in nineteen seventy five during the Battle of Kinfogundo. By
nineteen seventy seven, the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces
society it needed its own dedicated special ob capability. The result,
after years of refinement, became the BMTE the Black Wasps.
What stands out immediately is the scale and the experience.
Cuba deployed hundreds of thousands of troops do on goal
over more than a decade. The Black Wasps and their
preda Predator serve units operated in that environment jungle Savannah
against South African conventional forces that is not simulated training,
that is, a sustained combat deployment. Operators who survived those
years brought back hard won lessons in small unit tactics.
Those veterans became the cadre that built the modern unit.
The unit works in five person subgroups. Both men and
women serve in the teams. Five operators give them a
very small, agile footprint, easier to insert, easier to sustain,
harder for an adversary to detain, similar to the Delta
forces in the US. The structure suits rapid response and recommissions,
which appear to be core tasks. Graduation exercises, include extended
survival problems in the Sienaga, the Sapata swamps around the
southern coast of Ida de Lahovan Dude, the Island of Youth.
The goal is to produce operators with what Cuban sources
have called Volontu dijedro iron will. Instructors have included Vietnamese
Special Forces, North Korea Special Forces, Chinese and even the
Russian Spetsnets. You're looking at a blend of Soviet doctrine
in Southeast Asian jungle warfare and Spetznatz style direct action.
That combination is interesting because it forces a unit to
synthesize the different approaches rather than copy one model. What
about equipment, Well, again, remember their resource constrained. The Black
Wasps don't have the latest Western or even Russian next
generation systems. Their inventory is a mix of modernized Soviet weapons,
Cuban national production, and whatever they can maintain or adapt.
You'll see modified aks fitted with Cuban made Vilma reflex
sites and suppressors. They have used the FSS VENTUREZ suppressed
right sniper rifle SVD dragonovs and Cuban designed systems like
the Mambi fourteen point five millimeter bullpup anti material rifle,
also the Alejandro Bolt action sniper. The key point is adaptation.
Cuban armors and technicians have kept these systems running and
in some cases improved them locally. You cannot import freely,
you become a very good at maintenance cannibalization. That is
a different skill set from the one developed by forces
that can call from new production runs or foreign military
sales on a regular basis. The Black Wasps have had
to master both combat and sustainment under constraint. Their mobility
assets are similarly pragmatic UAZ vehicles, BRDM scout cards and
whatever car whatever can be kept running. Nothing flashy, but
reliable enough for the missions they are given and resource
constrained environment. Reliability and the ability to repair in the
field matters more than peak performance operationally. The unit's most
significant historical experience remains on Gola. Cuban forces as a
whole performed incredibly, performed credibly in several engagements against better
equipped opponents. The Special troops learned to operate in small groups,
use terrain, and make the most of limited fire support.
Those lessons appeared to have been institutionalized more recently in January,
Elements of the Black Wasps were reportedly serving as part
of the close protection detail from Maduro. During the US
operation that resulted in Maduro's capture. Cuban operators engaged US
special forces in close corridors fighting inside the fort at
the Duenna Complex. Cuban authorities later repatriated the remains of
thirty two personnel, many of them from this unit. Regardless
of the broader political context, the fact that these operators
were placed in the innermost ring of protection and stood
their ground against a Delta Force led element tells you
something about the level of trust place in them. What
I find most instructive for our audience is how this
unit illustrates the difference between resources and capability. Every military
wants the newest night vision, the best radios. The Black
Wasp have had to do without many of these advantages,
yet to maintain a selection process that produces operators will
into fight and small teams farm from home, A training
pipeline informed by multiple foreign special operation traditions. Operating in
a resource constrain environment forces prioritization. Cuba cannot afford to
waste effort on marginal units, and the Black Wasps are
clearly a priority formation. That focus, combined with real combat
heritage from Africa and continuous training under difficult conditions, appears
to have produce a unit that punches above its weight,
as the budget would suggest for Western special operations. There
are useful parallels here. We trained hard and we have
excellent equipment, but we should never assume that an adversary
would that our resources are automatically less capable. History is
full of examples of forces are compensated from material shortages
through superior training, cohesion, and tactical abservations adaptation, and the
Black Wasps are just one of those examples, still operating today.
They're not a mythical super unit though, and they're not
ten feet tall. They're professional soldiers who've been asked to
do difficult things what their country could provide. In many ways,
that makes their continued existence more noteworthy than have had
unlimited funding in the newest gear. The Black Wasps are
worth studying. Their story is not widely told in English
language sources, which is why we spend time pulling the
history together for this episode