Israel launched airstrikes on multiple targets in Yemen, including the capital of Sana’a, during the early hours of Thursday morning, while the Yemen-based Houthi militant group was conducting its own missile attack on Israel. The Israeli raids come after an uptick in attacks against Israel by the Iran-backed Houthis, including two in the past week.
Israeli media reports claim that 14 Israeli Air Force (IAF) aircraft were already in the air as part of a pre-planned operation, while the Houthi missiles were still inbound. F-15 and F-16 combat jets were involved in the operation, supported by aerial refueling tankers and intelligence-gathering aircraft.
Videos and photos released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) showed IAF F-15s and F-16s purportedly departing their bases for the raids. While the F-15s were armed with Popeye missiles, the F-16s were shown carrying the much newer Rampage missiles.
Media reports out of Israel suggest that the strike aircraft took off around 1:00 a.m, with the first wave hitting the Yemen coastal area around 3:15 a.m., and the second wave striking the Yemeni capital around 4:30 a.m. An infographic released by the IDF suggests that the package passed through Saudi Arabian airspace en route to striking Yemen.
The IDF said it “conducted precise strikes on Houthi military targets in Yemen, including ports and energy infrastructure in Sana’a, which the Houthis have been using in ways that effectively contributed to their military actions.”
The IDF added that it attacked dozens of targets in five main areas: Sana’a, Hodeidah, Ras Isa, other coast areas, and many smaller ports, such as Al-Salif.
The Houthi media channel Al-Masirah reported a series of “aggressive raids” on Sana’a and Hodeidah, with at least nine people said to have been killed in Hodeidah province.
The port facilities were selected since they are used to unload Iranian weapons being brought into Yemen to arm the militants. Here, the IDF claimed it attacked “eight special large ships,” which reportedly could potentially close off access to the ports, even if only temporarily.
In a statement, the IDF accused the Houthis of “conducting attacks against Israel in contravention of international law,” adding that “the Houthi regime constitutes a threat to the region’s peace and security.”
The Israeli airstrikes were immediately preceded by a Houthi ballistic missile attack. Parts of at least one Houthi missile hit a school in the area of Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, although it’s unclear if this was a direct hit, or whether local air defenses partially intercepted the incoming weapon, with the damage resulting from missile debris. Another possibility is damage caused by falling debris from one or more interceptor missiles.
A spokesperson for the Houthis, Yahya Saree, said the group had targeted “two specific and sensitive military targets” in the Jaffa region near Tel Aviv, using “hypersonic ballistic missiles.” The exact type of missile used by the militants has not been independently verified. While claims by the group about the kinds of weapons it uses are frequently exaggerated, it should be noted that most traditional ballistic missiles also have hypersonic performance in their terminal phase of flight.
As for the weapons used by the IAF in the raid, F-15s were shown carrying the Popeye standoff missile, also known by the U.S. designation AGM-142. This is a solid-fueled weapon, just under 16 feet long, and with a launch weight of almost 3,000 pounds.
Armed with a roughly 800-pound high-explosive or penetrator warhead, Popeye has a range of approximately 50 miles. This is by now a fairly old weapon, with work on it having apparently begun in the early 1980s, followed by service introduction with the IAF in 1986.
Popeye uses an inertial navigation system (INS) for midcourse guidance, before switching to a TV or infrared sensor for terminal guidance. It does this via datalink, allowing for man-in-the-loop control of the missile for final targeting. The Popeye is usually controlled by the launching aircraft or another crewed aerial asset from dozens of miles away, via a datalink pod that connects with the missile to establish line-of-sight radio connectivity. This allows for adjustments of the missile’s flight path all the way up to or very close to the point of impact, giving the missile extremely high levels of accuracy.
In imagery released by the IDF, the datalink pod is shown under a central fuselage station on an F-15B/D Baz, as seen below.
Israeli F-16s, meanwhile, were shown carrying Rampage missiles, which are an air-launched adaptation of the ground-launched Extended Range Artillery guided rocket, or EXTRA.
Like Popeye, Rampage offers a significant standoff range, reducing risks to the launching aircraft, although, in the case of Yemen, the country has only very low-level air defense capabilities.
Rampage is part of a growing arsenal of Israeli air-launched ballistic missiles and other similar aerial munitions, the importance of which has come into sharp focus this year, especially in retaliatory strikes on targets in Iran and also airstrikes in Lebanon.
The missile was first publicly revealed in 2018 and has been pitched as an ideal tool for carrying out short-notice strikes on time-sensitive and well-defended high-value targets. Destroying air defenses is at the top of its use case, for instance. The weapon’s supersonic speed presents challenges for any air defenses attempting to intercept it, flying much faster than a cruise missile, for example. That also helps the missile burrow deeper into hardened targets, if needed. The missile is able to hit targets more than 90 miles away, its manufacturer claims.
Along with keeping out of range of air defense systems, the use of standoff missiles — alongside potentially other munitions, as well — reflects the fact that Israel has limited aerial refueling capabilities, which are otherwise needed to support long-range strikes.
Popeye and Rampage are well suited to attacking highly defended targets at a distance without major support packages traditionally required to enable those kinds of strikes, removing the risk inherent in conducting such an operation deep inside hostile airspace. For instance, staging a combat search and rescue (CSAR) contingency operation for any downed aircrew, even if the result of a mishap, would be challenging and resource-intensive. So using standoff munitions for targets located deeper inside a hostile country solves a lot of problems and streamlines an aerial operation like this one.
More generally, it’s notable that Israel is now regularly highlighting to the public some of the munitions used in long-range strikes against Yemen and Iran, as well as shorter-range ones in Lebanon. This kind of explicit messaging was very rare in the past and is engineered to present niche capabilities that have helped it conduct precision strikes against prized targets even deep inside Iran and, at least so far, do so with apparent impunity.
The Israeli airstrikes were the third time that it has targeted Yemen since the start of the current war in the Middle East.
The Houthis began their current campaign in solidarity with Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza, the current round of which began in October 2023.
Israeli officials had recently begun to threaten a more concerted response to the Iranian-backed Houthis, which have been regularly firing long-range missiles and drones at Israel. According to the IDF, the militants have launched more than 200 ballistic missiles and more than 170 drones toward Israel. While most of these have been claimed by Israeli air defenses — assisted by the U.S. military and other allies — 22 have penetrated into Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared today: “After Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are almost the last remaining arm of Iran’s axis of evil. The Houthis are learning, and will learn the hard way, that those who strike Israel will pay a very heavy price for it.”
A further threat to the Houthis came from Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz, who said: “I warn the leaders of the Houthi terrorist organization: Israel’s long arm will reach you too.”
Already, the Houthis have said they will respond to the latest Israeli airstrikes. Speaking today, one Houthi official said that the group would “respond to escalation with escalation.”
Muhammad al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Houthi political bureau, said: “The American-Israeli bombings of civilian facilities in Yemen expose the hypocrisy of the West. Our military operations to support Gaza will continue, and we will respond to escalation with escalation until the crimes of mass extermination in Gaza stop and the possibility of bringing food, medicine, and fuel into the strip is allowed.”
Iran — the major military backer of the Houthis — also condemned the Israeli attacks.
Esmaeil Baqaei, a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said the attacks were “a flagrant violation of the principles and norms of international law and the U.N. charter.”
According to Israeli media reports, Washington was alerted to the IAF airstrikes in advance. The latest Israeli attacks on Yemen follow U.S. airstrikes against Houthi targets in the same country, although these have tended to focus more on Houthi weaponry, including to blunt the militants’ anti-shipping attacks in the Red Sea.
The latest round of airstrikes, coupled with the ramping up of Israeli rhetoric surrounding follow-up raids, suggests that there could be more to come. Time will tell whether we will see a broader campaign, but with Hamas and Hezbollah now significantly degraded as fighting forces, and regime change in Syria, Israel certainly has more capacity for dealing with the Houthis.
UPDATE:
The IAF has posted video of an F-16I and F-15D refueling from its KC-707s, Popeye and Rampage under their wings, as well as a clip of the strike on one of the ships in port. That latter video, and extended version of which is embedded in the article above and reposted below, clearly shows man-in-the-loop guidance of the weapon and could have been a Popeye (symbology looks like Popeye) or other weapons that feature that guidance method, such as the Spice-2000 bomb and the Delilah cruise missile.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com