How Far Can Houthi Missiles Reach Into Saudi Arabia?

The Saudi-led coalition has intercepted two ballistic missiles fired by Yemen’s Ansurullah movement, widely known as the Houthis, toward the western Saudi cities of Taif and Yanbu, with the kingdom’s Civil Defence briefly issuing alerts for Mecca and Jeddah early on October 24. Coalition spokesman Major General Turki al-Maliki stated that both missiles were destroyed before reaching their targets, as were a ballistic missile fired toward Riyadh and a drone over the Eastern Province, with no casualties or damage reported and the alerts lifted after about ten minutes. The coalition did not identify the missile types, the launch sites or the interceptors that engaged them. The salvo highlights how the movement’s arsenal now reaches almost the entire kingdom, from the Red Sea coast to the Gulf, three months after the war reignited in July.

The launches followed a claim by Ansurullah military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree on October 22 that the movement had struck the Defence Ministry in Riyadh, King Fahd International Airport in Dammam and an Aramco facility in Yanbu, of which Saudi authorities have confirmed only the attack on Dammam. Yanbu, the Red Sea terminus of the East-West pipeline that carries Saudi crude away from the Strait of Hormuz, lies close to 1,000 kilometres from the Houthi stronghold of Saada, while Taif lies roughly 600 kilometres away. A ballistic missile that hit King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on October 10 killed 13 people, and Britain has since committed RAF Typhoon fighters to defend Saudi cities against drones and missiles.

The movement’s reach rests on a family of Iranian-derived missiles, which a Wilson Center survey of the arsenal lists as the Burkan-2, a derivative of Iran’s Qiam-1 with a range of up to 1,000 kilometres and a 250 kilogram warhead, the Burkan-3 or Zulfiqar at up to 1,200 kilometres, the Hatem at up to 1,450 kilometres and the Toofan, unveiled in September 2023, at up to 1,950 kilometres with an 800 kilogram payload. The solid fuelled Palestine-2, which the movement presents as hypersonic, is credited with a range of 1,800 kilometres, according to The National, which reported on October 15 that a Conflict Armament Research study had traced airframe parts and a solid propellant motor for an Iranian Kheibar Shekan missile to a Chinese precision metal producer. Taif is thus within reach of even the oldest Burkan variants, while Yanbu sits at the edge of the Burkan-2’s range and well inside that of the newer types.

Saudi Arabia meets these threats with MIM-104 Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense batteries, and an analysis by the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, cited by The National, found that the kingdom’s defences had intercepted between 85 and 90 percent of incoming missiles. Dr Nawaf Obaid of King’s College attributed the deadly strike on Riyadh’s airport to a gap between the lower and middle defensive layers rather than to any technological breakthrough by the movement. Riyadh is meanwhile reportedly expanding its own missile production at al-Duwadimi to strike back. On November 4, 2017, Saudi authorities said air defences had brought down a missile near King Khalid International Airport which the Houthi-run Saba news agency identified as a Burkan H2, although a New York Times analysis of the debris later suggested that the warhead had separated and continued toward its target.