A senior Houthi official said last week that the critical maritime corridor linking Europe and Asia was “no longer a resort in which the Americans can roam and have fun in.” On Sunday, US Central Command confirmed that the Navy’s nightmare scenario of Houthis armed with unmanned underwater and surface vessels had turned into a reality.
Yemen’s Houthi fighters say they’ve shot down a second US MQ-9 Reaper drone, with the incident reportedly taking place over Al Hodeidah Governorate in the country’s west.
“In Hodeidah, the Yemeni air defenses were able, with the help of God Almighty, to shoot down an American aircraft (MQ-9) with a suitable missile while it was carrying out hostile missions against our country on behalf of the Zionist entity,” Houthi spokesman Yahya Sare’e said in a statement Monday.
“The Yemeni Armed Forces will not hesitate to take more military measures and carry out more qualitative operations against all hostile targets in defense of beloved Yemen and in confirmation of the position of support for the Palestinian people. The operations of the Yemeni Armed Forces in the Red and Arabian Seas will not stop until the aggression stops and the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted,” he added.
The Houthis’ air defense troops are known for their proficiency in shooting down MQ-9s, the laser-guided bomb and Hellfire missile-armed American unmanned aerial vehicles, downing their first one in October 2017 over Sanaa, Yemen’s capital.
The Houthis shot down their second and third Reapers in June and August 2019, respectively, reportedly using their domestically-made Fater-1 missile – a SAM system upgraded from a Soviet 2K12 Kub, which the USSR delivered to the then-divided country in large quantities, to do so.
The militia’s knowhow in shooting down drones has been matched by their ability to build their own, with the fighters regularly firing kamikaze UAVs and loitering munitions against the Gulf Coalition seeking to oust them from 2015 onward, and more recently, deploying them against commercial vessels and US and British warships deployed to the Gulf amid the Palestinian-Israeli crisis.
No comments:
Post a Comment