The loss of nearly 20 MQ-9 Reapers, increasing use of standoff munitions, and the deployment of B-2 bombers point to the Houthis' air defenses being a real problem, according to a report published by The War Zone — also known by the shorthand TWZ website.
The report found that Iranian-backed Houthi rebels 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.
TWZ report examined what actually are the Houthis’ air defense capabilities? And found that Houthis air defence capabilities have been growing for months now as the they have been able to down an alarming number of U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones.
A U.S. defence official told TWZ that Houthi rebels have or are suspected to have brought down six MQ-9s since March 15. Fox News reported Wednesday 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 Tuesday, but this cannot be readily verified independently.
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.
The MQ-9 losses come amid a renewed and expanded aerial offensive against Houthi military targets in Yemen that President Donald Trump’s administration launched in March.
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 Houthi rebels 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.”
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 defence concerns than have been publicly acknowledged.
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.
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.