Riyadh Missile Interception Today: 3 Houthi Cruise Missiles

Saudi air defences have destroyed three cruise missiles launched by Yemen’s Ansarullah movement, widely known as the Houthis, towards the Riyadh region on November 11, the Saudi-led coalition has said, in the third attack on the capital in four days after interceptions over the city on November 8 and November 10. Major General Turki al-Maliki, the coalition’s spokesman, announced the interceptions on Wednesday afternoon, and in a separate statement later the same day said two drones launched by the Houthis had been intercepted and destroyed over the Makkah region and the south of the kingdom. The coalition reported no casualties or damage and did not disclose which air defence systems made the intercepts. A salvo made up entirely of cruise missiles marks a significant departure from the mixed ballistic and cruise missile salvos of November 8 and November 10, and highlights the movement’s use of low-flying weapons that give radars far less warning than a ballistic missile fired from Yemen.

On November 8 the coalition reported destroying two ballistic missiles over Riyadh and two cruise missiles over the capital and the south, with falling debris damaging an Aramco tower in the King Abdullah Financial District, which the Saudi Energy Ministry said had suffered “minor damage from falling shrapnel.” Two days later a ballistic missile and a cruise missile were intercepted over the city and a second ballistic missile over the south, with Civil Defence issuing shelter alerts for Riyadh before lifting them. The deadliest strike of the campaign remains the October 10 attack on King Khalid International Airport, which killed 13 people and injured more than 300 according to Saudi authorities and closed it for about two weeks, while Etihad Airways has kept its Abu Dhabi flights to Riyadh and Dammam cancelled until November 19.

Ansarullah’s cruise missiles belong to the Quds family first unveiled in 2019, and a United Nations panel of experts on Yemen has reported that the Quds-1 closely resembles Iran’s 351 land attack cruise missile, components of which the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Forrest Sherman seized from a dhow in the Arabian Sea in November 2019. Riyadh lies roughly 915 kilometres from Saada, the movement’s northern stronghold, well within reach of missiles of this class. Subsonic cruise missiles are considerably slower than ballistic missiles and can be engaged by MIM-104 Patriot batteries once detected, but their low altitude shortens the window in which ground-based radars can see them. U.S. Army Patriot units have operated from Prince Sultan Air Base in Al Kharj, in Riyadh Province, since 2019, and about 2,700 U.S. troops were stationed in the kingdom when the war with Iran began.

The two drones downed on November 11 were not the first launched towards the Makkah region, with the coalition having reported intercepting a Houthi drone heading for Makkah on October 30, as the kingdom draws on outside support to defend its cities. Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty confirmed on November 10 that Egyptian air defence troops have been deployed in Saudi Arabia for months. The coalition has carried out repeated air strikes against Ansarullah positions in Yemen during the escalation, including on missile production sites, and none of its statements on November 11 specified how many launchers or missiles the movement is believed to retain.