In Yemen, civilians have grown used to the high-pitched whine of drones overhead.

This past month was no exception, with Houthi rebels repeatedly using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) against the Saudi Arabia-led coalition they are fighting.

The Houthis, a tribal militia from Yemen’s mountainous north, have repeatedly stepped up their UAV campaign in their four-year war against the UN-recognized and Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which they view as corrupt.

On May 23, a Houthi drone attacked a missile battery at an airport in the Saudi city of Najran, near the Yemeni border. One week prior, on May 14, Iran-aligned rebels sent seven bomb-laden drones to hit oil-pumping stations deep into Saudi, more than 500 miles from Yemen’s northern border.

All the while, their enemy, the Saudi-led coalition, continued using its larger armed, Chinese-made drones to surveil and target Houthi leaders. Last year, a coalition drone strike reportedly killed one of the Houthi group’s top politicos, Saleh al-Samad.

Drone use has gathered pace in Yemen since the US first unleashed one of its unmanned flying killers on al-Qaeda in 2002. Now, drones take off round-the-clock in Yemen — a sign of how rebel groups and state forces alike have embraced this technology. 

But for Afrah Nasser, who left Yemen during a political crisis in 2011 and has lost family members as a result of the war and its side effects, turning Yemen into a UAV testing ground only makes a bad situation worse.

“With drones, the Houthis are showing their increased technical abilities, which are countered by more devastating responses from the Saudis,” Nasser, chief editor of Sanaa Review, a cultural news website, told The World. 

“It’s no longer Yemen’s civil war, but a face-off involving the Gulf, the US and Iran, and it’s civilians who suffer. But for every family destroyed by coalition bombs, enemies are created from ten of their relatives, driving a cycle of violence that we are unable to solve.”

In January, a Houthi drone strike on a military parade at al-Anad air base killed and injured some of Hadi’s military and intelligence chiefs. In 2018, the rebels claimed to have launched drone attacks at airports as far away as Abu Dhabi and Dubai, in the UAE, a coalition member.

Carrying out UAV hits on such far-off targets marked a breakthrough for the Houthis, who have no air force and achieved most of their military gains in Yemen with assault rifles, missiles, off-roaders and rocket launchers.

Justin Bronk, who wrote a report on drones in the Middle East for the Royal United Services Institute, a UK military think tank, said Houthis also use drone-mounted cameras as an “eye in the sky” so that other weapons, such as mortars, are better at hitting their marks. 

For the Houthis, there is no downside to using UAVs. They expose militiamen to fewer risks than conventional attacks and, according to Yemen’s Foreign Minister Khaled al-Yamani, cost as little as $45 per drone strike.

Houthis use “quadcopter” style drones or toy aircraft like those sold on Amazon and fit them with cameras and bombs wrapped in ball bearings. They can maim and kill, said Bronk, but won’t win a war any time soon.

Of course, the budget Houthi drones are not a patch on top-end UAVs, such as US-made Predators, which can travel vast distances, be piloted from thousands of miles away, hover in the sky for hours and unleash the fury of Hellfire missiles.

“The Houthis face vastly more technologically capable opponents, but if you smuggle gear in behind their border, quad drones offer a really effective way of irritating an otherwise extremely well-defended opponent,” Bronk said. 

“These little commercial drones won’t cause huge problems in terms of firepower, but they’re embarrassing, they cause a news story and it tells ordinary Saudis that they're not safe in their own country, all of which is a good, economical use of Houthi resources.”

Saudi Arabia says that arch-foe Iran has provided the Houthis with know-how, UAVs and other arms. Tehran denies this. The UN’s panel of Yemen experts has noted similarities between Houthi and Iranian drones and is investigating further.

For their part, the oil-rich Saudis and Emiratis use top-end gear, such as unarmed Predator XP drones, which are bought from the US, and Chinese-made Wing Loongs, which are deployed to surveil and assassinate Houthi leaders.

This month’s Houthi strike on Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline has drawn particular attention, as it puts the war in Yemen more clearly in the context of rising tensions between the US and its Gulf Arab allies, and Iran.

The Houthi UAV attack came within days of a sabotage hit on two Saudi oil tankers and other vessels that were bunkering off the coast of the United Arab Emirates as well as  a rocket attack on the Green Zone in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.AFP.