8 ms·

Yemen is a really poor country, they don't have this capability. This is a proxy war, we had a lot of them in the past 100 years.

lacker 7y ago
Do they really not have this capability? You can buy a decent drone off the shelf for a thousand bucks, how hard is it to strap an IED on the back?
- bidatzi 7y ago
  With a range over 1000km?
  - iagovar 7y ago
    The drone doesn't need 1000km rage, you just need a pickup and a few people to get somewhat close.
  - hos234 7y ago
    How do they know how far the drone flew? Could be just Lawrence of Arabia on a camel crossing the desert and launching from outside the compound wall for all anyone knows.
    - bidatzi 7y ago
      Could be just that, but it doesn’t seem that’s what happened https://twitter.com/tobiaschneider/status/1172919700147396608?s=21 https://twitter.com/tobiaschneider/status/117291970014739660...
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    The attack was, per their claim, carried out with assistance from inside Saudi Arabia. The required range is vastly smaller than 1000km.
chvid 7y ago
My thought exactly. This is too expensive an attack. But for Iran it makes sense (or at least follows the pattern of their recent behavior) and they also have the capability.
- droithomme 7y ago
  Absolutely absurd claim. It's not expensive at all. Iran may or may not be providing technological assistance, but US amateur enthusiasts and mom and pop chinese resellers definitely are. No Iranian conspiracy here or needed. Drones are not magic genies unavailable to all but the elite. Drones, including these fixed wing models, are kid tech these days, including drones with 1000 mile ranges that can carry bombs that can destroy a facility.
  - yyyk 7y ago
    BS. Even if you magically had a 1000 mile drone (extremely unlikely even for US 'amateurs', much less wartorn Yemen), it can't do anything without guidance, which they can't provide. Everybody, but Everybody, knows Iran is responsible for this.
    - snovv_crash 7y ago
      Guidance is easy. Throw on Ardupilot with a preprogrammed mission onto an EPP wing. 100km of range with 2kg payload is possible for under $1000.
      - yyyk 7y ago
        So you say can get a small range with a tiny bomb (nowhere near enough to cause this damage), and also without any real guidance (Preprogrammed mission isn't real guidance. Deviations are very likely to kill the mission). All this while (presumably) not living in a wartorn county. Now guess how hard it must be for the Houthis. Either Iran did it directly or had so much involvement it's practically the same.
        7y ago
mhkool 7y ago
The Houthis are genuinely fighting for their own country. Iran may help them but Iran is not commanding them, so I do not see this as a proxy war but an internal affair to Yemen.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  The Afghan Mujahedeen were genuinely fighting for their own country, and yet the war they fought in was absolutely a US-USSR proxy war.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Yemen is a really poor country, they don't have this capability. The Houthis capabilities for anything short of deploying regular military forces is essentially ide identical to Iran’s since they.are actively supported by Iran including deployment of the Iranian Republican Guard to aid, train, advise, and support them. Saying the Houthis are too poor for this kind of drone attack is like saying the Mujahideen in Afghanistan were too poor to have had shoulder-launched SAMs. Also, arguing whether it was the Houthis or Iran based on capabilities that Iran could have easily supplied to the Houthis is kind of silly given the nature of the conflict.

lacker 7y ago

Do they really not have this capability? You can buy a decent drone off the shelf for a thousand bucks, how hard is it to strap an IED on the back?

bidatzi 7y ago
With a range over 1000km?
- iagovar 7y ago
  The drone doesn't need 1000km rage, you just need a pickup and a few people to get somewhat close.
- hos234 7y ago
  How do they know how far the drone flew? Could be just Lawrence of Arabia on a camel crossing the desert and launching from outside the compound wall for all anyone knows.
  - bidatzi 7y ago
    Could be just that, but it doesn’t seem that’s what happened https://twitter.com/tobiaschneider/status/1172919700147396608?s=21 https://twitter.com/tobiaschneider/status/117291970014739660...
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  The attack was, per their claim, carried out with assistance from inside Saudi Arabia. The required range is vastly smaller than 1000km.

chvid 7y ago

My thought exactly. This is too expensive an attack. But for Iran it makes sense (or at least follows the pattern of their recent behavior) and they also have the capability.

droithomme 7y ago
Absolutely absurd claim. It's not expensive at all. Iran may or may not be providing technological assistance, but US amateur enthusiasts and mom and pop chinese resellers definitely are. No Iranian conspiracy here or needed. Drones are not magic genies unavailable to all but the elite. Drones, including these fixed wing models, are kid tech these days, including drones with 1000 mile ranges that can carry bombs that can destroy a facility.
- yyyk 7y ago
  BS. Even if you magically had a 1000 mile drone (extremely unlikely even for US 'amateurs', much less wartorn Yemen), it can't do anything without guidance, which they can't provide. Everybody, but Everybody, knows Iran is responsible for this.
  - snovv_crash 7y ago
    Guidance is easy. Throw on Ardupilot with a preprogrammed mission onto an EPP wing. 100km of range with 2kg payload is possible for under $1000.
    - yyyk 7y ago
      So you say can get a small range with a tiny bomb (nowhere near enough to cause this damage), and also without any real guidance (Preprogrammed mission isn't real guidance. Deviations are very likely to kill the mission). All this while (presumably) not living in a wartorn county. Now guess how hard it must be for the Houthis. Either Iran did it directly or had so much involvement it's practically the same.
      - 7y ago

mhkool 7y ago

The Houthis are genuinely fighting for their own country. Iran may help them but Iran is not commanding them, so I do not see this as a proxy war but an internal affair to Yemen.

dragonwriter 7y ago
The Afghan Mujahedeen were genuinely fighting for their own country, and yet the war they fought in was absolutely a US-USSR proxy war.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> Yemen is a really poor country, they don't have this capability. The Houthis capabilities for anything short of deploying regular military forces is essentially ide identical to Iran’s since they.are actively supported by Iran including deployment of the Iranian Republican Guard to aid, train, advise, and support them. Saying the Houthis are too poor for this kind of drone attack is like saying the Mujahideen in Afghanistan were too poor to have had shoulder-launched SAMs. Also, arguing whether it was the Houthis or Iran based on capabilities that Iran could have easily supplied to the Houthis is kind of silly given the nature of the conflict.