The use of drones in this way by rebels makes me rethink the media image of a rebel. They are educated, lawyers, doctors, engineers.
From memory, here's what happened in Yemen:
1. The Arab revolt of 2011 led to the fall of the long time dictator, Saleh.
2. In 2012, a conference in Ryad, organized by the powerful neighbor Saudi Arabia, appointed a new president Hadi. He was supposed to rule 1 year, until a democratic vote elects a new president.
3. In 2015, a large part of the population was fed up with the lack of change, especially with Hadi extending its reign. The Houthis, a religious minority from the North of Yemen, overtook the capital. Hadi resigned.
4. Six month later, Hadi went to Saudi Arabia. He claimed he was still president. SA and United Emirates invaded Yemen. Supporters of Saleh joined with Houthis against the invading troops and Hadi's supporters.
5. Yemen has fallen into occupation and civil war. People suffer from hunger and lack of medicine. Saudi bombings destroyed hospitals, factories, historic sites… According to the Guardian, at least 40% of Saudi bombings had purely civilians targets. Houthis have requested help from Iran, so the war is regional.
The notion of terrorists as uneducated goat farmers is more a manifestation of western biases than it is an accurate representation of the truth.
I think the American public/media likes to paint everyone from the non-West as extremely backwards, when in reality I feel like everywhere in the non-West has "West"-like pockets of extreme affluence and then just huge amounts of inequality and rural poverty.
Its just the same 4,000 year old story of nomads wandering the middle east wishing they had a nation, “as it was foretold”.
Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world and presumably their engineering capital is presumably not huge. The Houthis are backed by Iran. Iran (which has far more engineering capital and was accidentally gifted a US military drone several years ago) has military drones.
It sounds far more plausible to me that Iranian support is how the Houthis obtained these drones.
Star Wars makes a good fictional counterpoint as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Novorossiya#Similarity...
The required range is vastly smaller than 1000km.
Now guess how hard it must be for the Houthis. Either Iran did it directly or had so much involvement it's practically the same.
For a 1000km range, sure, maybe they didn't do it themselves, but nothing stopping them from just ordering slightly larger off-the-shelf drones from China. But lots of small drones is cheap and easy, and harder to stop.
Source: I work in the commercial drone industry.
Edit: here's an off-the-shelf drone with 1000km range, costs $4.5k: https://www.muginuav.com/product/mugin-4450mm-uav-ht-tail-pl...
The Houthi models are jet powered, cruise at 450mph, and can fly for 2 hrs on 500 lbs of jet fuel, which requires a 10 cubic foot volume fuel tank. The interior of the fuselage has around 70 cubic feet of capacity, which is more than enough for the fuel (even enough for a 900 mile each way round trip if desired), the controls, and the payload. They have a solid fuel rocket booster on the back as they are sled launched. Once up to flight speed the jet takes over and the rocket element drops off. They are really cool drones and within the scope of what the serious amateur community in the US and elsewhere is experimenting with. Some guys even are building their own jet engines from scratch.
The guidance systems are a done deal. Can DIY or can buy off the shelf. My kids build drones and program the guidance systems on them themselves (one started at age 8). It's fun and there's even online classes telling you everything you need to know. Ours currently use inertial guidance and GPS and have no problem getting somewhere with great accuracy. We've also got a celestial navigation system under development which works even when there is no GPS.
Houthis mentioned they have local assist at the end of the flight which makes sense to deal with GPS jamming. The region they hit contains significant Shia populations who hate Saudi Arabia and have even revolted against the Kingdom in the past. Once you're at the last mile if for any reason there's a question about the target, local observers can and do provide guidance assist.
People saying Houthis are too dumb or primitive to make drones are warmongering anti-Iranians, IMHO. Houthis have systematically and incrementally been developing this technology for years now to defend their homeland and have shown off their drones. There's no question the Houthi drones have the capabilities we are seeing.
I am not "war-mongering" - the only warmongers here are the people who blow up stuff.
The Houthis capabilities for anything short of deploying regular military forces is essentially ide identical to Iran’s since they.are actively supported by Iran including deployment of the Iranian Republican Guard to aid, train, advise, and support them.
Saying the Houthis are too poor for this kind of drone attack is like saying the Mujahideen in Afghanistan were too poor to have had shoulder-launched SAMs.
Also, arguing whether it was the Houthis or Iran based on capabilities that Iran could have easily supplied to the Houthis is kind of silly given the nature of the conflict.
The "mercenaries" claim is wrong (at least in Yemen) though.
"Iran has supplied drone technology to the Houthis fighting the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, a panel of experts reported in January 2018 to the United Nations Security Council.
United Nations investigators say the Houthis have since obtained a more advanced drone than those cited in that report, with a range of 930 miles, The Associated Press reported."
So it's not clear if the source of the recent, more advanced drones is the same as the previous ones that the UNSC reported.
Or am I missing something else from the article?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/14/major-saudi-ar...
Also if the drones were launched from Yemen then they've probably flown ≥700km, so I'd be surprised if they're commercial octocopters.
And what kick started the war in Yemen? That would be a daddy's boy prince wanting to prove he could win his own war without daddy's help (that went well).
None of which would happen if we didn't really enjoy selling guns to the Saudis, on account of all the money they've taken from us when they sold us oil.
And we'd still be happily selling arms to the Iranian King we installed if they hadn't got sick of it and thrown us out.
So this is on us. All of it.
The Saudis are blockading Yemen, a nation that needs to import most of its food to survive. They are directly and intentionally causing a humanitarian catastrophe there. There is not need to blame Iran for this.
The Yemeni rebels are cornered and as any cornered people they will take any help they can, including Iran. But this is not the cause of this. The cause is the Saudi led war and blockade.