ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

On March 22, the Yemeni Missile Forces, that’s loyal to the Houthis, announced in an official statement that it had tasted a new short range “ballistic missile” named Bader-1. According to the statement, a key oil facility of the Saudi Aramco oil company in the southern province of Najran was successfully targeted with the new “ballistic missile” during the test. The Yemeni Missile Forces said that Bader-1 is a solid fuel “ballistic missile” with a speed of up to 4,5 Mach and high accuracy. However, the projectile’s images suggest that it is a solid fuel artillery rocket, not a “ballistic” missile. The Badr-1 is likely a copy of the Iranian Fajr-3 artillery rocket, as both rockets appear to have similar diameter and length. Furthermore, the range of the Fajr-3 is over 43km. This is more than enough to hit Najran province form the Houthis-held areas in northern Yemen. Meanwhile, Saudi Aramco denied in an official statement that any of its facilities had been hit by the Houthis. It ...

Click to see the full-size image On March 21, the Iraqi Army received the last batch of Russian-made Pantsir-S1 short to medium range air defense systems, which consisted of fourteen systems, according to several Iraqi sources. The Iraqi Army now has 48 Pantsir-S1 systems in active service. Preliminary agreements to sell $4.2 US billion of Russian weapons to Iraq, including 48 Pantsir-S1 systems, were signed during then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s state visit to Moscow in October 2012. The Iraqi Army’s variety of the Pantsir-S1 system is equipped with the advanced Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) target acquisition radar, which can detect and track targets from 40km (wider ranges is reported, probably under ideal conditions), with a higher jamming resistance. The Pantsir-S1 is armed with two dual 2A38M 30 mm autocannon guns along with up to twelve radio-command-guided 57E6 surface-to-air missiles with the operational range of 20 km and the flight altitude of ...

After welcoming Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the White House for a series of meetings earlier this week (which provoked a mini-scandal when the  New York Times  reported that there were no women in the room) the  Associated Press  and Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration has officially approved a $1 billion arms sale to the Kingdom – complete with 6,700 Raytheon anti-tank missiles worth $670 million. The approval came just hours after former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivered his farewell remarks. Today’s deal should not come as a surprise: during his trip to the Kingdom last year, President Trump touted business deals that he claimed to help facilitate – including the largest US arms-sale agreement ever,  worth some $350 billion . Furthermore, over the past year Trump has repeatedly voiced his desire to consummate major arms deals with any willing buyer of US equipment, even Ukraine recently, a move which is sure to provoke esc...