![]() The Revolutionary Army ( Ejercito Rebelde - ER) had modest beginnings. All three formations – the army, the air force and the navy – achieved great strength in both equipment and personnel by the late 1980s but their fall was rapid. Once support from the Soviet Union ended, the decline of the FAR was inevitable. With the risk of an American invasion neutralized by friendship with the Soviet Union, the FAR was expanded to the point of extreme excess – being incapable of defending against a US invasion unaided yet vastly superior to any of its neighbours. None of this should be unexpected as the FAR was always an unsustainably large force which, while seeing extensive combat in Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia, was largely an instrument of Soviet foreign policy. From a force potentially capable of fighting determinedly against an American invasion, the FAR has now become a force of limited conventional military capability, more useful for internal security operations than for prosecuting any military conflict. ![]() Some 25 years after the demise of its ally, benefactor and largest market for its principal export (sugar), the FAR is but a shadow of its former self with equipment either unserviceable or in storage and personnel strength slashed to some 65,000. The army possessed large quantities of artillery and over a thousand T-55 and T-62 main battle-tanks (MBTs), while the navy fielded three submarines, three frigates, 13 missile boats and 48 patrol craft. ![]() Numbering over 200,000 active personnel, the FAR possessed several hundred advanced combat aircraft (MiG-21s, MiG-23-MF/-ML/-BN) and MiG-29s, along with a modern and well-equipped air defence network. Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cuban armed forces ( Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias - FAR) were easily the most powerful in Latin America.
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