Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Drone vs. Drone

The latest from the war in Yemen is a cruise missile strike on Abha International Airport in Saudi Arabia's 'Asir Province. Vivian Yee reports in "Houthis Strike Airport in Saudi Arabia, Injuring Travelers" that 
In May, Houthi drones hit two pumping facilities along a Saudi oil pipeline and forced the Saudis to shut the pipeline temporarily, soon after a mysterious sabotage attack damaged four oil tankers outside the Emirati port of Fujairah, two of them Saudi. On Sunday, Houthi drones targeted Saudi drone facilities at another airport near Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen, a Houthi TV channel said. 
The projectile in the most recent attack landed at the arrivals terminal of Abha International Airport, about three hours’ drive north of the kingdom’s border with Yemen, a Saudi spokesman, Col. Turki Al-Maliki, said in a statement, adding that military authorities were still investigating the incident.
It's drone vs. drone. A glimpse of the future in the here and now. Yee doesn't include in her list of recent belligerent events the Houthi blitz into Saudi Arabia's Najran Province (see last week's "Yemen’s Houthis Cross into Saudi Arabia, Seize 20 Positions").

Clearly hostilities are accelerating in the Yemen war. If you're relying on the U.S. mainstream media it's hard to form a coherent picture of the conflict because it is not reported as a conflict per se but as a proving ground for weapons supplied by the West as well as the leadership ability of the young crown prince Mohamed bin Salman. Millions near famine because of the war is mentioned as boilerplate.

In any event, the Saudis appear to be in more trouble than the mainstream media lets on.

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