Saudi Arabia vs Houthis: Which Side Has the Stronger Military?

Saudi Arabia is the biggest military spender in the Middle East, and the Houthis cannot come close. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s April 2026 fact sheet estimates Saudi military spending at $83.2 billion in 2025, the eighth-largest total in the world and about 6.5 percent of GDP. The 2026 budget gives the military sector SAR 240 billion, about $64 billion, Argaam reported when the budget was approved on December 2, 2025. First-half figures reported by the Saudi daily Okaz on July 30, 2026, put military spending at SAR 124.6 billion, up 12 percent on a year earlier.

The Houthis publish no defence budget. They fund their war from the territory they rule, which a 2021 US government estimate put at about a third of Yemen and 70 to 80 percent of its people, and they arm themselves largely with weapons and parts smuggled from Iran. We look at what Riyadh’s money buys in How Much Does Saudi Arabia Spend on Its Military, and Why?

Saudi Arabia fields one of the best-equipped forces in the Middle East. The core of the Royal Saudi Air Force is the F-15SA, bought under a $29.4 billion agreement the White House announced on December 29, 2011: 84 new jets and the upgrade of 70 older F-15S fighters to the same standard. The air force also flies 72 Eurofighter Typhoons ordered from Britain in 2007, along with Tornado strike jets and older F-15C/D fighters.

Air defence is the second pillar. Saudi Arabia operates the Patriot system and commissioned its first Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in Jeddah in July 2025, the first of seven fire units in a sale the United States cleared on October 6, 2017 with 44 launchers and 360 interceptors. On January 30, 2026, the State Department approved a possible sale of 730 PAC-3 MSE interceptors worth an estimated $9 billion to refill Saudi stocks. Our guide How Much Does a Patriot Missile Cost? explains what each round costs.

That force is now at war. The Houthis themselves say Saudi Arabia carried out more than 2,900 air and missile strikes on Yemen in 100 days, aimed at missile stores, launchers and fuel depots.

The Houthis are the best-armed non-state force in the region, but they cannot meet Saudi Arabia in open battle. They have no air force and no warships, only remote-controlled attack boats. Their strength is long-range strike: experts quoted by The National on August 12, 2026 estimated fewer than 1,000 drones and several hundred ballistic missiles in all, of which perhaps 100 to 200 are long-range.

Those missiles are built on Iranian designs. The Burkan-3 is credited with a range of about 1,200 kilometers, the Hatem with about 1,450 kilometers, and the Palestine-2, which the Houthis call hypersonic, with 1,500 to 2,000 kilometers. The same experts credit their Samad one-way attack drones with ranges of up to 2,500 kilometers. How Far Can Houthi Missiles Reach Into Saudi Arabia? maps those ranges against Saudi cities.

Manpower is the other Houthi asset. UN experts estimated that the movement’s fighters grew from about 30,000 in 2015 to as many as 350,000 by 2024, the Associated Press reported on October 13, 2026. Many are tribal levies and lightly trained recruits, but the numbers let the Houthis hold mountain fronts and absorb losses.

No air-defence network stops every missile in a mixed salvo, and the Houthis fire mixed salvos on purpose: drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles of different speeds, launched together to stretch radars and crews. An analysis by King’s College London’s Department of War Studies, cited by The National, found Saudi defences intercepting 85 to 90 percent of incoming missiles. Nawaf Obaid of King’s College told Al Jazeera on October 11, 2026 that dozens of attacks are stopped for each one that succeeds, but that in a layered defence “one will always come through.”

Interceptor stocks are the second problem. Saudi Arabia, like other American partners, burned through Patriot and THAAD rounds in the early months of the war with Iran, which is why the January sale matters. A miss is costly: the ballistic missile that hit Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport on October 10 killed more than a dozen people and wounded over 300.

Saudi Arabia will not lose this war, but it will not win it from the air alone. The Houthis cannot take Saudi territory, cannot stop Saudi jets and cannot match the kingdom’s money or its allies. What they can do is keep firing at Saudi cities from caves and valleys in northern Yemen, where bombing wears down their stocks without removing their ability to rebuild.

Silent Dossier’s view, set out in Why Did the Houthis Target Saudi Arabia’s Defense Ministry?, is that Saudi air power will keep weakening the Houthis but will not deter them. The war ends when Yemen’s tribes turn on the movement, when Yemeni government forces break its front lines, or when a ground force enters the fight. The hardware favours Riyadh. The ground in Yemen will decide the outcome.