Are the Houthis running out of ordnance to carry on?

Right, so it’s the Houthis again, once more their capabilities have escalated it seems, but has it really and could recent events actually mean the complete opposite? Quite how they’ve managed to escalate as they claim this time has become a bit of a talking point, because their newest addition to their arsenal, a solid fuel ballistic missile, which they’ve called the ‘Palestine’ is something they allegedly don’t have the capabilities to make themselves despite claiming the rocket to have been homemade. However it does bear a stark resemblance to Iranian missiles of a similar type, so are Iran now giving the Houthis even bigger and better weapons, or have the Houthis now got the technology and the means to genuinely make these things themselves, or is this just what has been lying at the bottom of their big box of fireworks and they’ve brought it out now due to a lack of other options?
Right, so the Houthis have a new rocket, it’s a bit of a whopper, a ballistic missile with complex guidance systems, such that it is apparently capable of changing direction and avoiding anti missile measures, which, if true, means a marked escalation in Houthi capabilities as their continued crusade against Israel and their supporters continues.
The development or acquisition of this rocket, the claims being made by the Houthis that they built this thing themselves remain unverified, apparently runs on solid fuel, rather than liquid fuel and that has likely come in part due to the attacks on their launching grounds by US and UK forces, the most recent one killing 16 people, and was the first such attack to have happened in three months, which occurred the other day, however clearly if the Houthis were building this thing themselves, then they haven’t done this in that kind of a timespan, clearly it’s been worked on for longer than that and having seen pictures of it on various news sites, such as Associated Press, I couldn’t help thinking that’s one heck of a shed they must have had to be building a homemade rocket of this size and capability, a homemade rocket, a homer, but it’s far too high tech for that, so where and how would the Houthis be building it themselves? We just don’t know, but there are so many don’t knows when it comes to this lot, it’s surely not inconceivable that as much as Iran might be supplying them with arms, that they aren’t either reverse engineering these things potentially to produce their own, or have been given direct instruction on how to do so. But this is thing is so new, it just seems so much more likely they’ve been handed this one.
At any rate, I said it was US and UK forces that might have prompted this thing’s appearance and that is down to the targeting of the Houthis traditional launch sites. Solid fuel rockets can be set up and launched apparently a lot faster and with the range of this thing, assuming it is really an Iranian rocket, called the Conqueror, or at the very least heavily based on that, it would have a range of some 1,400km and reach hypersonic speeds, of up to Mach 15, that’s 15 times the speed of sound, making it even more difficult for anti ballistics measures, for example the Israeli iron dome, to cope and target, along with that direction change capability these things apparently have as well.
However the Houthis came by it though, they got it, at least one of them and they called it the Palestine, they even painted the warhead in the chequered black and white pattern of a Palestinian Keffiyeh, which I’m not altogether sure is necessarily in the best taste, but the intent as a sign of solidarity can be clearly seen.
Anyway, the Houthis fired this thing at the port city of Eilat at the southern tip of Israel in the Gulf of Aqaba on Monday. It managed to pass through Saudi airspace, apparently untouched, but depending on who you ask, it hit Eilat if you listen to the Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree, but according to everyone else, it got shot down short of target, Eilat apparently being just beyond the range capabilities of this rocket, though apparently they can be rigged to surpass such range limitations. I thought it a bit of an odd target to begin with, since this is the port the Houthis shipping blockades have pretty much rendered redundant, but then I thought without the port, there will be no more shipping headed Israel’s way via the Red Sea in theory anyway, or at least a lot less of it, and the Houthis would have no need to expend so much of their time and their arsenal dealing with shipping, when there is still little sign of movement towards a ceasefire and departure from Gaza on the part of Israel.
At any rate, they had one, if it was their only one they used it, and therefore that is that, but of course we can’t be sure of that and even if it was, they will carry on as they have been for months anyway.
What we do know is that it bears a stark resemblance to an Iranian hypersonic missile revealed last year as this excerpt from the Associated Press shows:
‘Iranian media reported the launch of the Palestine and described it as locally manufactured, citing the Houthis. However, design elements on the missile resemble other missiles developed by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. That includes one called the Fattah, or “Conqueror” in Farsi.
Iran unveiled the missile last year and claimed it could reach Mach 15 — or 15 times the speed of sound. It also described the missile’s range as up to 1,400 kilometers (870 miles). That’s a little short of Eilat from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, but missile can be reconfigured to boost their range.
In March, Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency quoted an anonymous source claiming the Houthis had a hypersonic missile.
“While we cannot say for sure what exact version the ‘Palestine’ corresponds to, we can say with high certainty that it is an advanced and precision-guided (Guard)-developed solid propellant missile provided by Iran,” wrote Fabian Hinz, a missile expert and research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.’
So expert opinion is that Iran have supplied it, it’s certainly the likeliest scenario, but it is also interesting that Russia apparently knew about it a couple months ago, likely around the time the Houthis would have taken delivery of it. Why wait so long to use it though?
Perhaps the Houthis are running out of firepower. US and UK strikes have targeted weapons caches and launch areas, destroying ordnance and killing several of those involved. Iranian supplies have also been intercepted en route to Yemen, again by US and UK military, something they’ve been able to do, because the Houthis do not control all of Yemen, they control the areas mainly around the capital Sanaa and the closest Yemeni ports for offload happen therefore to be in the Red Sea itself.
Then there is the targeting of Eilat with this hypersonic missile, which may well have been kitted out to get more range out of it and of course by taking Eilat as I said before, that would affect the amount of shipping that would be Israel bound via the Red Sea saving the Houthis not only time, but ordnance as well and if that is running out, then that may well be what has prompted their use of this rocket now. That it failed, may well be quite a blow to them.
The only way we will know for sure, is if the attacks from Yemen dry up further, the US and UK have been claiming recently that the attacks have become less, though of course we only have their word for that, versus the word of another and when both have taken a side as far as Israel and Gaza are concerned, you don’t know how much is truth these days and how much is just propaganda.
We’ve seen a bit of that already in recent days between these two sides, with the Houthis having claimed to have hit and even sunk the USS Eisenhower, the lead ship and aircraft carrier for the US Navy in the Red Sea right now, and whilst that certainly does not appear to be the case, whether or not the ship sustained damage? Well it’s movements have been a bit weird and have certainly stoked a bit of debate about it. Is this another sign of some creeping Houthi desperation now due to dwindling munitions? It’s anyone’s guess, but you can find out the details of that warship story in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.