Having difficulty dealing with small UAVs, Saudi Arabia has found a new tactic to deal with this danger from Houthi.
On March 17, the Saudi Air Force secretly launched an offensive against the Houthi forces in Yemem.
“The attack destroyed at least four Houthi Qasef suicide drones preparing to take off to Riyadh.
We will find ways to prevent attacks directed at us. Such activities do not violate any regulations of the international community at all, “the Saudi Air Force said in a statement.
The Qasef-2K is equipped with a highly fragmented explosive warhead, the HE-FRAG, and can explode to destroy targets by detonating 20 meters away without contact. The newly destroyed Qasefs were developed by Houthi following the Iranian Ababil-2 prototype. Both the Qasef-1 and 2K Houthi clones have a range of 150 km.
Houthi currently has no statement on the image of the attack announced by Saudi Arabia. It is known that in recent times, instead of using missiles and UAVs carrying weapons, Hothi has switched to using suicide UAVs to attack targets of Saudi Arabia.
Since the beginning of March 2021, at least five Qasef-2K attacks have been carried out by Houthi. These attacks have focused mostly on Najran international airport infrastructure. Qasef-2K repeatedly shut down the airport for a short time.
It is not clear how many Qasef-2Ks were in these attacks, but according to Major General Yahya Saree, spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces (Houthi’s key ally), a large number of UAVs simultaneously attacked. Saudi defense is paralyzed
Before carrying out these attacks, the Saudis were also stunned by the Qasef-2K and destroyed an Apache attack helicopter as it was about to take off at the same Najran airport.
In addition, this line of suicide UAVs also hit the Patriot PAC-3’s radar twice in late 2018 and early 2019 when the radar system was deployed by Saudi Arabia near Najran airport.
UAVs similar to Ababil-T are currently used by the Hezbollad group during the 2006 war with Israel in Lebanon. Israeli fighters have shot down at least one Ababil-T in this war.
Not only attacking Houthi forces in the air, but also using unmanned high-speed boats controlled from the shore to attack the ships of the coalition led by Saudi forces.
Such an attack was made in January 2017 when a Qasef-2K crashed into a Saudi frigate. The attack left 1 person dead, and the frigate was forced to return to the scene with serious damage.
Since then, countering Houthi attacks with UAVs and Qasef-2Ks remains a challenge for the Saudi defense force, despite using many ways to intercept it.
When the interception was ineffective, the Saudis switched to the tactic of “finding and destroying” these planes when they had not launched and initially successfully implemented.