Saudi Arabia spends billions on its military. Why can’t it stop deadly attacks by Iran’s Houthi allies?

Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia in recent weeks have inflicted severe losses on the kingdom, with missiles hitting energy infrastructure and civilian airports, killing at least 20 people.

The Iranian proxy group has struck the headquarters of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, and is fighting Saudi-backed government forces for control of Yemen’s coastline on the Red Sea, a vital waterway for global energy supplies. The fighting has put further upward pressure on oil and gas prices as Iran and the U.S. fight over the nearby Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Arabia, despite its size, wealth and a substantial military, has appeared to be on the back foot as it faces the Yemeni rebels. The kingdom’s opaque government releases regular statements about Houthi ballistic missiles and drones being intercepted, including five it said were destroyed Wednesday. 

But many have got through, including an Oct. 10 strike that killed 13 people at Riyadh’s King Khalid Airport, including a U.S. citizen.

“No country can ever have a 100% interception rating, that just doesn’t really exist,” Elizabeth Dent, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told CBS News, but that “was a hell of a one to miss.”

Saudi Arabia spent $83 billion on defense last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute — far more than any other country in the Middle East, including Israel.

So why has the kingdom struggled to stop the Houthi barrage?

Geography

Saudi Arabia is vast and, analysts say, geographically vulnerable. 

Its east, home to the kingdom’s oil fields, is bordered by the Persian Gulf — all that separates Saudi Arabia from longtime foe Iran. Early in the war, Iran launched strikes targeting bases used by the U.S. in Saudi Arabia in retaliation for U.S. attacks.

To the north, across Saudi Arabia’s long border with Iraq, are Iran-backed militia groups that the Saudis — along with the U.S. — struck in July in response to dozens of attempted drone attacks on the kingdom’s infrastructure and on U.S. installations in the region.

To the south, Saudi Arabia shares a more-than-800-mile border with Yemen. A vast portion of the war-wracked nation is controlled by the Houthis. To Saudi Arabia’s west, the Houthis have also been battling for control of the Red Sea’s vital shipping lanes.

“Over the last eight months, they have been facing threats from every direction,” said Dent.

“There is a lot of critical infrastructure: multiple airports, many pipelines, as well as extensive oil production and export infrastructure, military bases, government buildings, royal palaces, and so on,” said Thomas Juneau, associate fellow at the Chatham House think tank’s Middle East and North Africa Program. “It is simply extremely difficult to provide air defenses for all these sites over such a large area.” 

“If the Houthis are able to hit Saudi infrastructure with only a minority of their attempted drone or missile attacks, it counts as a success for them and an embarrassment and a loss for Saudi Arabia,” Juneau told CBS News.

Neither Saudi nor Houthi authorities responded to CBS News’ request for comment on this story.

The interceptor shortage

The ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have caused a global supply shortage of the interceptors used to shoot down ballistic missiles and other weapons, including the U.S.-made Patriot system used by Saudi Arabia and other American allies.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, asked about Ukraine’s longstanding request for Patriot interceptors, said Tuesday that “every other country in the world” also wants them. 

“I also talked to Saudi Arabia today. They’d like interceptors. Israel would like interceptors. We would like interceptors. Every country in the world would like interceptors,” Rubio said, calling it “probably the most in-demand product right now in the defense field.” 

“Demand coming from the international [market] is stronger than ever,” Tim Cahill, president of missiles and fire control at Lockheed Martin, the world’s biggest weapons manufacturer and maker of the Patriot interceptors, told CBS News last week when asked about the short supply.

Saudi Arabia is secretive about its weapons systems and stockpiles, but CBS News reported in March that Gulf countries were seeking emergency resupplies of interceptors, while the Wall Street Journal and Associated Press have reported that the kingdom has sought air defense systems from Japan, South Korea, France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt.

Patriot interceptors are expensive, costing as much as $4 million per unit.

“If there’s fear over utilizing or drawing down your resources,” said Dent, “are you more reticent to pull the trigger?”

Evolving Houthi tactics

Saudi Arabia has purchased 730 Patriot interceptors from Washington since 2020, according to U.S. military data, but even if it does have enough, the pricey missiles aren’t ideal for combating everything in the Houthi arsenal.

Patriots were designed to intercept ballistic missiles, and the Houthis have launched those at Saudi Arabia. But the rebels also have an array of relatively cheap drones, including weapons supplied by Iran, and locally made copies of Iranian attack drones.

These inexpensive weapons have been a key element in the Houthis’ tactics, analysts say. 

They can be launched in swarms, Allison Minor, a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CBS News. 

The Houthis “combine an overwhelming number of relatively cheap systems, namely drones, to distract and disrupt and exhaust, and then amid that, also weave in these more catastrophic missile attacks,” she said.

The Saudis’ multi-layered air defense system is sophisticated, but Houthi drones and cruise missiles can change their trajectory, making them harder to track, said Dent, “so if one aspect of that layered defense system breaks down, it can create a gap in coverage, like what may have occurred for the airport attack.”

“This is a whole new ballgame,” said Dent. “It’s a tactic that requires some adjustments.”

One possible solution could be Ukrainian-developed drone interceptors, which cost in the thousands of dollars to manufacture and are produced in the tens of thousands annually, unlike Patriots, which are produced in the hundreds.

Saudi Arabia and some of its neighbors have already made deals with Ukraine to acquire such systems, but Dent said they won’t be a quick fix as “a lot of what the Ukrainians have been implementing is very hands-on.” 

The systems require skilled operators, in other words, and they require training. 

A military with a narrow focus

Another issue is the Saudi personnel available to receive that training. Analysts do not rate the kingdom’s military among the world’s best, despite its huge defense budget.

Saudi Arabia’s armed forces have a reputation for being “structured and run according to the interests of its royal leadership, with an emphasis on regime security,” said CBS News national security analyst Aaron MacLean.

“You can spend all the money you want on your military and your missile defenses, but you also have to have a culture of readiness and excellence among the troops responsible,” he said. 

“If that’s lacking, again, the problem is inherently a hard one: fighting intelligent people who really are trying to kill you and are willing to be quite creative in their pursuit of that goal,” he said. “Some shots are going to get through.”

When patchwork support “is too patchy”

Faced with Houthi successes and dwindling Patriots, the Saudis have been “aggressively seeking out air defense support from a variety of partners,” said Minor, at CSIS.

The kingdom has invoked a mutual defense pact signed last year with Pakistan and Turkey, under which an attack on one country is considered an attack on all three, much like the NATO alliance’s Article 5. Pakistan has already confirmed a troop deployment to the kingdom, and Turkey is also working toward sending forces.

France recently agreed to send “military means” to help protect the crucial Yanbu oil terminal on the Red Sea, and announced a separate agreement to help protect other Saudi oil facilities, without offering details. 

The U.K. government said Tuesday that it would “fly defensive counter air missions” to protect Saudi cities and critical infrastructure from Houthi attacks, but that the aircraft would not take part in strikes against the group in Yemen. 

Egypt announced Sunday that it was prepared to provide military assistance to Saudi Arabia. 

Greece has operated a Patriot battery in Yanbu since 2021 and Italy, which has troops in Saudi Arabia and provided the Saudis with radar and anti-missile batteries before the war broke out in February, said in October that it could be willing to bolster the European Union mission protecting Red Sea shipping if other EU nations also step up.

There have also been reports of Saudi Arabia attempting to recruit foreign fighters, and using less reliable Chinese interceptors.

But this many-pronged approach to national defense could be problematic.

“Do you eventually get to a point where that patchwork is too patchy?” asked Minor. “The interoperability of different troops and aircraft and radar and interception systems — does that become too much to manage at some point?”

The key question, she said, is the extent of the Houthis’ own weapons stockpiles.

“The Houthis have maintained a very steady pace of attacks over the past few weeks,” she said. “It’s not clear to me if the Houthis are able to sustain that for the long term — if they’re gearing up for another years-long confrontation, or if this is an intense shorter-term salvo to try to get back to the negotiating table on better terms.”

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