Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen have proven to have an air defense arsenal that presents real threats, as evidenced by a still-growing number of shootdowns of U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones. Still, many details about the scale and scope of Houthis’ air defense capabilities continue to be obscure and ambiguous. The U.S. military’s use of an increasing variety of air-launched stand-off munitions against targets in Yemen, as well as the employment of B-2 stealth bombers, also point to the danger posed to aircraft being even higher than is widely appreciated. So what actually are the Houthis’ air defense capabilities? That’s a clear question with at best a murky answer, but here is what we know.
The Houthi Surface-To-Air Missile Arsenal And MQ-9 Losses
Questions about the full extent of Houthi air defense capabilities have been growing for months now as the Yemeni militants have been able to down an alarming number of U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones.
A U.S. defense official told TWZ yesterday that Yemeni militants have or are suspected to have brought down six MQ-9s since March 15. Fox News reported today that U.S. officials have acknowledged the loss of another Reaper, the seventh one since the beginning of last month. Back in March, an unnamed U.S. defense official told Stars and Stripes that the Houthis had downed 12 Reapers since October 2023.
The Houthis themselves have claimed the destruction of at least 22 Reapers since October 2023, including the one just yesterday, but this cannot be readily verified independently. That tally does not include a number of drones belonging to the United States and other countries that the Yemeni militants shot down prior to October 2023.
The U.S. military has pushed back against Houthi claims about MQ-9 shoot-downs in the past, while also acknowledging an unspecified number of losses. It is also possible that some number of Reapers have gone down in and around Yemen in recent months due to accidents, which are not unheard of for the type, but this could not account for the bulk of the losses. Who specifically the lost MQ-9s belong to is also unclear, with the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Marine Corps being current operators of the drones. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also flies Reapers.
The MQ-9 losses come amid a renewed and expanded aerial offensive against Houthi targets in Yemen that President Donald Trump’s administration launched in March. The U.S. military has been actively engaged against the Iranian-backed militants since October 2023. That month, the Yemeni militants launched a campaign against maritime traffic in and around the Red Sea, as well as attacks on Israel, ostensibly in response to that country’s intervention into the Gaza Strip. The Israeli operations had, in turn, followed large-scale terrorist attacks launched from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023.
It is also worth noting here that the Houthis routinely boast that the vast bulk of their overall missile arsenal, along with their drones, is domestically developed and produced. Iran’s involvement is indisputable, but Yemeni militants are capable, at least to a degree, of developing, producing, and/or assembling missiles and other weapon systems within the country.
“We’ve been surprised at times with some of the things that we see them do, and it makes us scratch our head a little bit,” a senior U.S. defense official told TWZ and other outlets earlier this year about the Houthis, adding that the group is “not super technologically advanced, but we do think they’re pretty innovative.”
“There’s a good bit right now we don’t know about the Houthis.”
Surface-To-Air Missiles From Iran
Among the most modern and capable surface-to-air missiles the Houthis are currently understood to have in service are the Barq-1 and Barq-2, which were publicly unveiled in September 2023.
The Yemeni militants claim the Barq-1 and Barq-2 have maximum ranges of around 31 miles (50 kilometers) and close to 43.5 miles (70 kilometers), and can engage targets at altitudes up to some 49,212 feet (15 kilometers) and 65,616 feet (20 kilometers), respectively. There does not appear to be any independent confirmation of these figures.
Experts and observers have generally assessed that the Barq-1 and Barq-2 are at least based on Iran’s Taer family of medium-range radar-guided surface-to-air missiles. The Taer series missiles are themselves at least heavily influenced by Soviet-era and subsequent Russian-made interceptors for the 2K12 Kub (SA-6 Gainful) and the 9K37 Buk (SA-11 Gadfly) air defense systems, if not direct copies or clones of them.
How the Houthis employ Barq-1 and Barq-2 is not entirely clear, but Taer missiles in Iranian service are fired from various wheeled launchers, some of which have their own integrated fire control radars. Some of Iran’s air defense systems capable of firing Taer variants also reportedly have electro-optical and/or infrared cameras to aid in target acquisition, identification, and tracking. Off-board radars can also be used to spot and track targets, and help cue Taer missiles to them.
In 2018, U.S. and Saudi Arabian authorities also said that components for Iranian Sayyad-2C surface-to-air missiles had been intercepted on their way to Yemen. However, to date, there is no clear evidence of these missiles being in Houthi service.
“While we have seen a Sayyad-2 interdicted by the Saudis on its way to Yemen and the Sayyad-2 is known to be in service with other pro-Iranian non-state actors (Lebanese Hezbollah), we have not seen any evidence for it being actively deployed by the Houthis. This stands in contrast to missiles of the Taer series,” Fabin Hinz, a research fellow for defence and military analysis at International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank in the United Kingdom, told TWZ. “It is unclear whether the Sayyad-2 is operated by the Houthis and simply has not shown up, or whether the Iranians changed their plans.”
Saudi officials did previously release what they said were images of a possible truck-based launcher for the Sayyad-2C, but these look instead to have shown one for firing Badr-1s. The Badr-1 is variously described as a heavy artillery rocket or a close-range ballistic missile (CRBM). CRBMs are defined as a subset of short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) with ranges under 186 miles (300 kilometers).
The baseline Sayyad-2 is derived, at least in part, from semi-active radar-homing American RIM-66 Standard Missiles supplied to Iran during the time of the Shah. The Long War Journal, part of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank in Washington, D.C., has previously estimated the missile to have a range of between around 50 and 93 miles (80 and 150 kilometers) and be able to reach targets at altitudes of between 20,000 and 30,000 feet. How the 2C variant differs from the initial version is unclear.
In Iranian service, Sayyad-2s are employed using a similar array of wheeled launchers, as well as radars and other sensors, as the Taer family. Some Iranian air defense systems, like the Sevom Khordad (3rd Khordad), can reportedly fire both types. Sevom Khordad was notably the system Iran said it used to shoot down a U.S. Navy RQ-4A Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator (BAMS-D) flying over the Gulf of Oman in 2019.
In addition, the Houthis have previously claimed to have developed a surface-to-air derivative of the Badr-1P, a precision-guided version of the aforementioned Badr-1. Other details about the weapon, referred to variously as the Maraj or Miraj, are scant.
“The Miraj bears a strong resemblance to several of the Houthis’ shorter-range, precision-guided surface-to-surface missiles,” but “it remains unclear whether the system is operational, and if so, how effective it is.” IISS’ Hinz also told TWZ.
Artillery rockets and ballistic missiles are not typically designed with the kinds of maneuvering required for an effective anti-air weapon in mind. Whether or not Maraj/Miraj might leverage a guidance system and other components from Iranian-supplied surface-to-air missiles is also unknown.
The Maraj/Miraj “may represent an effort to extend Iran’s proliferation model, enabling local missile production supplemented by externally sourced guidance components, from the surface-to-surface to the surface-to-air domain,” Hinz added.
A United Nations panel of experts previously assessed the baseline unguided Badr-1 to be a domestically produced weapon built “from steel tubing very likely sourced from the oil industry.”
Iranian Loitering SAMs
Of the Houthis’ known air defense capabilities, and one of the few that U.S. officials have confirmed to be in active combat use, a curious Iranian-supplied design, it has received the most public scrutiny. Most commonly referred to simply as the “358” and now sometimes as the SA-67, and powered by a small turbojet, this surface-to-air missile is generally described as a “loitering” design, though its exact capabilities remain unclear. Typical surface-to-air missiles use solid-fuel rocket motors for propulsion.
The 358, which the Yemeni militants also call the Saqr-1, first emerged publicly after the U.S. Navy seized components for the weapons after boarding a small vessel bound for Yemen in the Arabian Sea in 2019. Now confirmed to be in service with the Houthis, 358s have also been recovered from Iranian-backed proxies in Iraq and Lebanon.
The roughly nine-foot-long 358 has three sets of fins for maneuvering and stabilization in flight, one at the nose end, one at the tail end, and one along the middle of the missile’s cylindrical body.
The design shares various components, including a satellite navigation-assisted inertial navigation system guidance package, vertical gyroscope, and air data unit, with multiple kamikaze drone types that are in Iranian and Houthi inventories.
“The weapon flies in a figure-eight pattern and looks for targets,” The New York Times reported in 2020, citing unnamed U.S. military officials. “A dozen infrared lenses arranged in a ring around the missile are believed to be able to defeat heat-seeking countermeasures that coalition helicopters typically use.”
As TWZ subsequently wrote about this unusual anti-air weapon:
“However, it is not immediately clear how such a conclusion was made [by The New York Times‘ sources] or how such a setup would overcome countermeasures. If the two rows of sensors are redundant, but work on different wavelengths, this could help reduce the impact of one countermeasure type over another. It’s also possible that one row is made up of infrared sensors as part of the guidance systems and the other are laser proximity fuze sensors, like those on many traditional SAMs and air-to-air missiles. One other possibility is that the ‘collar’ array, or at least one row of those sensors, works to detect a potential target initially and then cues the primary sensor in the nose onto that target to discriminate it and execute an attack if warranted.”
“It is, of course, very possible that multiple versions of the 358 could exist now, including ones that leverage some form of passive homing and/or that can receive updates from offboard sensors. At least one known example, seen above, has a particularly prominent antenna on the back, which could provide for some level of basic semi-autonomous control.”
“Altogether, the viability of this concept remains an open question. The low speed of the missile already means it is not useful for engaging fast-moving combat jets in many scenarios and is better suited for attempting to intercept slower targets like helicopters and drones.”
…
“Still, the underlying concept behind the 358 missile is very intriguing. If the weapon works as described, they could be launched into forward areas where drones or helicopters are known or expected to travel through, and hunt and kill them without any need for additional advanced offboard sensors. This could be particularly useful for engaging incoming drones, which can be very hard to spot and engage with traditional air defense systems.”
“Beyond all this, groups of 358s flying figure-eight orbits would just present additional hazards an opponent would have to contend with or attempt to plan around, which could be problematic seeing that they can fly out to remote locations. If the 358 is low cost, then it could be even easier to deploy large numbers of them at once to increase the probability of success and otherwise try to disrupt enemy air operations.”
In 2023, the Houthis did unveil a Saqr-2 missile, which lacks the tail fins found on the Saqr-1/358. How else the Saqr-2 differs from its predecessor is not known, but observers have noted that it looks as if it might be slightly shorter overall. A smaller design could allow for more compact launchers and otherwise make the missile easier to handle.
Iran has also now developed a larger and more capable “359” based on the general form and function of the 358 design, which is claimed to have a maximum range of (150 kilometers), be able to reach a top speed of (1,000 kilometers per hour), and be able to get up to an altitude of 30,000 feet. The 359, which is not yet known to be in Houthi service, can reportedly be recovered via parachute and reused if it does not prosecute an intercept. The parachute recovery feature on the 359 could possibly allow for its use in a secondary surveillance and reconnaissance role, as well.
Repurposed Air-To-Air Missiles
In addition to Iranian-supplied designs, the Houthis have also repurposed a number of Soviet-era and Russian-made air-to-air missiles for use as ground-based anti-air weapons. This includes R-73Es, R-27Ts, and R-77s, which the Houthis refer to in their new surface-to-air configurations as Thaqib-1, Thaqib-2, and Thaqib-3, respectively. Russia originally delivered these missiles to Yemen in the early-to-mid 2000s to go along with MiG-29SMT fighters, a fleet that has become increasingly inoperable, if not outright destroyed, in the past decade or so.
The R-27Ts and R-73Es are both infrared-guided missiles, and target acquisition and cuing are generally understood to be done via improvised infrared sensor systems on the ground. Radars could also be employed to at least help spot targets initially. Infrared sensors are known to be part of the unrelated Gravehawk surface-to-air missile system in use in Ukraine, which also uses repurposed R-73s as its interceptor. Ukrainian forces have a number of other systems in service that also fire R-73s in the surface-to-air mode, including modified 9K33 Osa (SA-8 Gecko) air defense vehicles, which have an array of onboard radars, as well as a Humvee-based design and anti-air configured drone boats.
When used in the surface-to-air mode, the R-73 has the immediate benefit of being a weapon with a high-off-boresight (HOBS) engagement capability. This means that it has an articulating seeker with a much wider field of regard than non-HOBS designs, which would aid in locking onto more dynamic targets while loaded onto a fixed launcher on the ground, as well as engaging them after launch.
The seekers on the R-27T and R-73E are also passive. As such, the crew of any aircraft without electro-optical missile approach warning sensors would have to rely on visually spotting the incoming threat before it is too late, something that we’ll come back to toward the end of this story.
The versions of the R-77 that the Houthis appear to have turned into Thaqib-3 surface-to-air missiles look to be typical radar-guided types, which could require a different kind of initial cuing than their R-27 and R-73-based counterparts. Thaqib-1s and 2s have been seen in use by the Houthis loaded on truck-mounted launchers, but there does not appear to be any clear evidence of the Thaqib-3 having entered real service.
At least one example of an older Soviet-designed R-60 heat-seeking air-to-air missile loaded on a launch rail mounted on a Houthi pickup truck has emerged in the past, as seen below. Whether this combination, which is not known to have received a Thaqib designation, is or was intended to be employed in the surface-to-air or the surface-to-surface role, or if it has been used operationally at all, is unclear.
‘Inherited’ Soviet-Designed SAMs
When the Houthis unseated the internationally recognized government of Yemen in 2014, the group also seized a variety of purpose-built Soviet-era surface-to-air missile systems, including fixed-site S-75 (SA-2 Guideline) and tracked 2K12 Kub (SA-6 Gainful), both of which are radar-guided designs, and man-portable Strela (SA-7) heat-seeking types. As a base level, the 2K12/SA-6 represents a particularly serious mobile threat with the ability to engage crewed jet aircraft flying at higher altitudes.
Various air defense radars, including Soviet-designed P-18 air surveillance, P-19 air surveillance and target acquisition, and PRV-13 height-finding types, also passed into the hands of the Yemeni militants.
The current status of these ‘inherited’ surface-to-air missile systems is unclear. The Houthis are known to have converted some number of S-75/SA-2 missiles into Qaher-2 and Muhit (also written variously as Mohit or Moheet) ballistic missiles for use against targets on land and at sea, respectively.
In 2019, the Houthis also unveiled a surface-to-air missile that they dubbed Fater-1, which was at least a copy or clone of the Soviet 3M9 for the 2K12 Kub/SA-6 system. The following year, the Yemeni militants released a picture of Fater-1s loaded onto a Kub launcher vehicle. Whether or not the Houthis’ inventory of Faher-1s has included refurbished 3M9s from existing Yemeni stocks, examples supplied by Iran, and/or ones acquired from other sources is also unclear.
Whether the Houthis now have additional platforms for firing 3M9/Fater-1 missiles is unclear. The missiles have been seen paraded on trucks in the past, but those do not appear to be actual launchers. Similarities between the 3M9/Fater-1 design and the Barq-1/2 and Taer surface-to-air missiles might allow the sharing of launchers between these missiles, as well.
Assessing The Overall Houthi Air Defense Threat
While Houthi air defenses clearly present real threats to MQ-9s, the full scale and scope of the group’s ability to engage more capable targets in the skies over and around Yemen remains difficult to assess in many regards.
For one, the group’s ability to effectively employ surface-to-air missiles is heavily tied to the availability of relevant associated sensors, and details about the Houthis’ inventory in this regard remain limited. In particular, the capabilities of available radars, and the coverage they can provide, have direct impacts on the engagement envelopes for surface-to-air missiles that rely on them for target acquisition and cuing. U.S. forces have been actively targeting Houthi radars, including types also used for coastal surveillance and anti-ship operations, since October 2023, and continue to do so.
There has been discussion in the past about whether the Houthis might be leveraging alternative means for spotting and tracking hostile aircraft, including passive radiofrequency sensors that could be capable of acting as what have been described as “virtualized radars.”
In 2018, Saudi Arabian authorities said they had “seized electronic tracking systems manufactured by the Iranian company Behine Pardazan Rizmojsanat (BP-RMS)—specifically, a transponder interrogator (aka virtual radar receiver, or VRR) that passively gathers air traffic control signals given off by military and commercial craft,” according to analysis at the time from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
“Drawing from satellite-based automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast systems and other passive tracking options, Iranian-supplied VRRs could help the Houthis monitor, decode, and display accurate geolocation, altitude, roll/track angle, heading, speed, nationality, and call sign of all coalition aircraft within a radius of over 250 km [155 miles]. This information could then be used to derive targeting solutions for air-defense batteries, allowing Houthi SAMs to operate without the telltale emissions produced by surveillance radars,” that same analysis added. “With this capability, the Houthis may be able to launch dangerous ‘pop-up’ attacks in which operators use passive systems to track a target and then launch a missile in the right direction; the missile’s infrared or radar guidance system does not activate until it nears the target. In addition to improving the Houthi tactic of converting heat-seeking air-to-air missiles into SAMs, Iranian-provided VRR could help the rebels conduct SAMbushes with semi-active radar-guided SA-6 missiles.”
Other kinds of purpose-built electronic support measures (ESM) systems designed to detect, categorize, geolocate, and/or track targets via their radar and other emissions also exist. Examples of these could potentially make their way into Houthi hands, including by way of Iran.
This all underscores the aforementioned value of using passive infrared sensors and seekers for initial targeting and terminal guidance. It also aligns with Houthis’ practice of releasing infrared camera footage following claimed surface-to-air engagements of U.S. and foreign drones, as well as crewed aircraft, something militants have been doing for years now.
“The Houthis and the Iranians went electro-optical, because it is a completely passive system,” The Washington Institute’s Michael Knights also told CBS News for a story published last September. “It’s hard to hunt those things down because they don’t really have any signature before launch.”
In an unclassified report published in July 2024, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) also explicitly confirmed that the Yemeni militants “have used the Saqr[-1/358]” with their passive infrared seekers “to attack U.S. UAVs [uncrewed aerial vehicles].”
“Iran’s 358 SAM, known in Yemen as the Saqr SAM, has had an outsized impact on the Houthi aerial threat, particularly against US unmanned systems over the last year and a half” and “is likely to continue to play a major role in the Houthi’s ability to generate costs for the U.S.,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, also told TWZ.
Iran has also previously released video footage, seen in the social media post below, showing what appears to be Houthis 358s intercepting Predator XP drones. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the only known operator of the XP variant of the Predator, which is readily distinguishable from other versions of the drone by its winglets.
It is worth noting here that drones like the Predator XP and Reaper were originally designed for medium-altitude operations (MQ-9’s typically flying at between 25,000 and 30,000 feet based on publicly available information) in permissive airspace, and they are not generally fitted with threat warning sensors by default. Self-protection pod options for the MQ-9 do now exist, something we will come back to later, but there are no indications as yet that these are in use on Reaper flying over and around Yemen, if the U.S. military has acquired them yet at all.
There has also been some evidence in the past of the Houthis striking Saudi and Emirati crewed combat jets with passive infrared seeker-equipped R-73s and/or R-27s employed in the surface-to-air mode.
Use of mobile systems, especially ones with some degree of shoot-and-scoot capability, would further increase the threats posed by Houthi air defense capabilities, regardless of the mix of sensors they use for target acquisition and cuing. It would also increase the demand for more persistent surveillance assets like the MQ-9 to help find and fix their locations so that they can be targeted and/or avoided.
At a hearing in March, U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, head of DIA, also told members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence explicitly said the Houthis have attempted to use their mobile 2K12 Kub/SA-6 Gainful surface-to-air missile systems against U.S. aircraft. Kruse did not provide any details on the specific interceptors those systems have been employing or otherwise further elaborate.
The 2K12 Kub/SA-6, as well as its successor, the 9K37 Buk/SA-11, are particularly good examples of self-contained air defense threats that are magnified by their ability to pop up suddenly, turn on their radars relatively briefly, shoot, and then run. By extension, they are also very hard to find and target, as well as predict where they might be in order to have countermeasures in place or otherwise plan around them. The mobile air defense systems Iran has developed for its Taer and Sayyad surface-to-air missile families present similar challenges.
At the time of writing, U.S. officials do not appear to have explicitly confirmed the Houthis’ employment of any other air defense systems, successful or not, against American forces. The Houthis so far haven’t downed any crewed U.S. military aircraft.
The Yemeni militants did recently declare their intention to try to damage or destroy an American B-2 stealth bomber, but their ability to do so is questionable. That being said, even B-2s do not operate alone and make use of offboard electronic warfare and suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses (SEAD/DEAD) support during missions when possible.
It is also important to remember that stealth does not mean invisible or invulnerable. This is something that Serbian forces famously demonstrated with the shootdown of a U.S. Air Force F-117 Nighthawk stealth combat jet over that country in 1999. It has since been confirmed that Serbian forces succeeded in damaging a second F-117 in the course of the same campaign.
Just damaging even a non-stealthy crewed U.S. military aircraft would be a major propaganda victory for the Yemeni militants.
All of this raises further questions about whether the U.S. military’s employment of B-2s and a growing array of stand-off munition types against Houthi targets in Yemen is being driven in larger part by air defense concerns than have been publicly acknowledged.
The B-2 currently represents the U.S. military’s most capable known platform for penetrating through dense air defenses to prosecute heavy strikes deep inside hostile territory. As TWZ has highlighted previously, the forward-deployment of six B-2s to the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia in March, as well as the use of those stealth bombers in strikes on Yemen in October 2024, is also heavily tied to broader strategic messaging aimed at Iran.
Since March, there has also been a notable increase, at least publicly, in non-stealthy U.S. tactical jets employing more types of stand-off munitions against the Houthis. The current campaign has seen the first known use of GBU-53/B StormBreaker glide bomb, also known as the Small Diameter Bomb II (SDB II), in combat, launched from U.S. Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.
In March, images also began emerging showing Navy Super Hornets armed with AGM-84H Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response (SLAM-ER) cruise missiles during Yemen strike sorties. The Navy had previously disclosed the use of AGM-154 Joint Stand-Off Weapon (JSOW) glide bombs and AGM-88E Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missiles (AARGM), as well as Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) that do not offer standoff range, against the Houthis.
Already, “the Houthis have shown the world that even the most cash strapped actors in one of the poorer parts of the world can punch well above their weight when they have a state patron [Iran] willing to float advanced state level military capabilities into the hands of a non-state actor” and demonstrated “the ability of the adversary to adapt and learn on the battlefield,” FDD’s Taleblu also told TWZ.
The Future Of The MQ-9
Circling back to the MQ-9, the losses to the Houthis since October 2023 underscore larger questions about the Reaper’s continued relevance, especially in future high-end fights with far denser air defense threats. The U.S. Air Force and U.S. Marine Corps currently operate around 230 Reapers between them, with the vast majority of the drones belonging to the former service.
In 2020, the U.S. Air Force abruptly announced its desire to stop buying MQ-9s, citing concerns about growing vulnerabilities. The service has also said in the past that it could retire the drones for good by 2035, but has continued to take deliveries of new examples in the meantime.
The U.S. Marine Corps only started its journey to becoming a full-fledged MQ-9 operator in 2019, and currently plans to operate the type for the foreseeable future. The Marines have already been steadily working to add new capabilities to their Reapers, including a podded electronic warfare system to help shield the drones from enemy radars. The U.S. Air Force has at least tested the same system in the past for use on its MQ-9.
The MQ-9’s manufacturer, General Atomics, has also developed a podded self-protection system that includes direction infrared countermeasures designed to detect and defeat incoming heat-seeking missiles. The company said in 2023 that it was getting close to a sale of the Self Protection Pods, which also have the ability to launch decoy flares, chaff, and other expendable countermeasures, to an unspecified U.S. customer.
As TWZ has highlighted in the past, the loss of any drone is inherently less impactful than the downing of a crewed aircraft, given that there is no danger of friendly personnel being injured or killed. Combat search and rescue missions to recover downed pilots and other aircrew, especially if they go deep inside hostile territory, also require significant manpower and material resources, which are themselves then put at risk.
Still, losing tens of MQ-9s does carry a significant monetary cost. The average unit price of Reapers now in U.S. service has been pegged at around $30 million, which doesn’t factor in the cost of any weapons and other systems they might be carrying that are not part of the baseline configuration. If at least 18 MQ-9s have been lost to the Houthis so far, that’s $540 million – and likely much more– worth of Reapers downed.
The steady loss of Reapers will have at least some degree of operational impact, as well. TWZ has noted in the past that any sustained aerial campaign against the Houthis requires persistent surveillance to keep tabs on the group’s movements, including to help provide time-sensitive actionable intelligence about potential missile and drone attacks.
If nothing else, the Houthis have demonstrated that they have enough air defense capability to put U.S. military aircraft at legitimate risk, which looks to be prompting increased use of standoff munitions and other kinds of risk-related decision making.
Howard Altman contributed to this story.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com