#Marib | Red Sea | Houthis | Pentagon | Kub

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Houthi Success Swatting Reaper Drones Like Flies Exposes Chinks in US Military's High-Tech Armor

— Sputnik International | Saturday September 14, 2024

Yemen’s Houthi militia has now downed over a quarter billion dollars’ worth of General Atomics MQ-9 Reapers. Sputnik asked a leading regional affairs observer what will happen if the humbling trend continues.

The latest Reaper shootdown took place last Saturday while the drone was carrying out intelligence-gathering activities over Marib province in central Yemen, according to the Houthis. The US military initially refused to confirm the loss, holding out until Friday, when an anonymous DoD official told US state media that an Air Force MQ-9 had been “struck but then landed safely and was recovered by US partner forces on September 9” somewhere in the Middle East.

The Pentagon did not elaborate on where exactly the drone touched down, who recovered it or what shape it was in.

The damaged Reaper is at least the eighth $32 million-apiece US reconnaissance and strike UAV downed by the Houthis since last November.

On August 4, the Houthis blew a Reaper out of the sky over Saada, northwestern Yemen. An informed source told Sputnik the militia used a modernized Soviet 2K12 Kub air defense system to do. The Houthis are known to have adopted the Kub to fire Yemeni-made Fater-1 interceptor missiles.

On May 29, the Houthis destroyed an unmarked Reaper, possibly belonging to the CIA, over Marib, releasing footage of warriors wearing sandals standing on top of the downed drone.

On May 24, the Houthis shot down an MQ-9 over Sanaa, Yemen’s capital.

On May 17, another Reaper was destroyed over Marib.

On April 27, the Houthis shot down an MQ-9 in Sadaa province in northwestern Yemen.

On February 19, a Reaper was destroyed over al-Hudaydah city in western Yemen.

On November 8, 2023, a US Air Force Reaper was downed over the Red Sea somewhere off the Yemeni coast.

The Houthis shot down three additional Reapers between 2017 and 2019, along with an array of other pricey NATO-made weaponry during the US’s attempts to help a Gulf coalition oust the militia from power.

Dangerous Precedent For US MIC

“The downing of yet another drone could negatively impact the reputation of the US military-industrial complex on the international stage. Confidence in the effectiveness of US defense technologies and military power could be undermined. This may lead to potential clients in US military and technology exports becoming concerned about the failures of American products in the field,” political scientist and international affairs observer Dr. Mehmet Rakipoglu told Sputnik, commenting on Washington's Houthi headache.

Politically and strategically, the success of the Houthi anti-drone campaign may undermine the justifications for continued US operations and presence in the region, and even “raise questions about the effectiveness of US power projection policies…potentially threatening Washington’s regional and global strategic interests in the long term,” Rakipoglu, an assistant professor at Turkiye's Mardin Artuklu University, explained.

The US is between a rock and a hard place battling the Houthis, unwilling to become further entangled in a large-scale confrontation for fear of sparking a regional war with their Iranian Axis of Resistance allies, but unable to extract themselves without losing face.

The Houthis have shown that they “have the capacity to counter one of the most advanced technologies” in the US’s arsenal, and can outcompete the Pentagon on costs too, Rakipoglu says.

“The relative cheapness and local production-based equipment used by the Houthis can lead to more losses for the US, [whose] military expenditures run into billions of dollars. This emerges as not only a financial issue but also a strategic one,” according to the academic, raising “questions about the effectiveness of American military spending,” and calling “into question how sustainable it is to rely solely on technological superiority.”

The Houthis' success against the US-led armada assembled against them has proven highly embarrassing for Washington and its allies. On Friday, former Royal Navy Commander Tom Sharpe, admitted the failure of efforts by the West to bring the Yemeni militia to heel.

"They're achieving their ends, all of them, and we're achieving none of ours. We're spending millions and millions of dollars on not winning. It's a real problem," Sharpe said, referencing the Houthi promise to continue their Red Sea blockade until peace is achieved in Gaza.