FP | On March 25, Houthi forces in Yemen fired seven missiles at Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia confirmed the launches and asserted that it successfully
intercepted all seven.
This wasn’t true. It’s not just that falling debris in Riyadh killed
at least one person and sent two more to the hospital. There’s no
evidence that Saudi Arabia intercepted any missiles at all. And that
raises uncomfortable questions not just about the Saudis, but about the
United States, which seems to have sold them — and its own public — a
lemon of a missile defense system.
Social media images do appear to show that Saudi Patriot batteries
firing interceptors. But what these videos show are not successes. One
interceptor explodes catastrophically just after launch, while another
makes a U-turn in midair and then comes screaming back at Riyadh, where
it explodes on the ground.
It is possible, of course, that one of the other interceptors did the
job, but I’m doubtful. That is because my colleagues at the Middlebury
Institute of International Studies and I closely examined two different
missile attacks on Saudi Arabia from November and December 2017.
In both cases, we found that it is very unlikely the missiles were
shot down, despite officials’ statements to the contrary. Our approach
was simple: We mapped where the debris, including the missile airframe
and warhead, fell and where the interceptors were located. In both
cases, a clear pattern emerged. The missile itself falls in Riyadh,
while the warhead separates and flies over the defense and lands near
its target. One warhead fell
within a few hundred meters of Terminal 5 at Riyadh’s King Khalid
International Airport. The second warhead, fired a few weeks later,
nearly demolished a Honda dealership. In both cases, it was clear to us
that, despite official Saudi claims, neither missile was shot down. I am
not even sure that Saudi Arabia even tried to intercept the first missile in November.
The point is there is no evidence that Saudi Arabia has intercepted
any Houthi missiles during the Yemen conflict. And that raises a
disquieting thought: Is there any reason to think the Patriot system
even works?
