The Houthis are going underground. In 2019, the movement seems to have reactivated a Saleh-era underground facility at Hafa military base in Sanaa, which had been destroyed by coalition airstrikes back in 2015. (15.325075° 44.239581°)
Piles of tailings showing up near the Southern entrance to the site also indicate tunelling work and a potential expansion of the old site.
What appears to be another reactivated tunnel entrance can be observed at Sanaa's Nahdayn military base. (15.303035° 44.217263°)
While the overhanging rocks make it difficult to be sure, the roadwork at this part of Yemen's former Jabal Attan missile base, also looks pretty suspicious in this regard. (15.323562° 44.163392°)
The Houthis are well known to have used smaller tunnels and caves for a long time. Still, considering the total aerial supremacy of the coalition, it's a bit surprising they would put highly visible older Saleh-era UGFs back to use again.
Just as rockets and missiles, underground facilities are a crucial part of the Hezbollah playbook that the Houthis appear intent on copying. So I wouldn't be surprised if there is actually much more going on than meets the eye.
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Joint investigation by @AuroraIntel and me. Last weekend, a ballistic missile fired by the Houthis at Dhahran seems to have impacted in an open field, less than half a mile away from Aramco worker housing. Thread
Last Sunday saw an attack on the tri-city area of Dammam, Dhahran and Khobar with the the Houthis claiming to have attacked targets in Ras Tanura and the Khobar region using drones as well as a single Zulfiqar missile.
A video circulating on social media showed what appear to be interceptor missiles in the sky, as a loud blast can be heard in the background.
And while we are talking about Syrian CW, here's a short thread about the Syrian air force's decentralized chemical weapons production facilities destroyed by the OPCW.
In 2013, the Syrian government declared a large part of its CW program to the OPCW. While its official declaration has remained classified, some UN documents do mention the names of facilities.
This 2013 letter from the UN Secretary General lists a total of 18 fixed chemical weapons facilities and also mentions mobile units. securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BF…
So this is quite interesting. If I am correct, the Zoljanah motor test Iran showed us already took place in December 2015. How can we know and what does it mean for Iran's missile and space program? A quick thread.
Let's start with the basic location. The footage was recorded at AIO's large horizontal test stand in Khojir ( 35.653232° 51.658307°) which was built between 2005 and 2008.
The first thing to note is the scorch mark visible in the footage. A scorch mark first appeared at the site in Mar 2015. While it faded and regained strength after testing, it never completely disappeared. So the footage must have been recorded after Mar 2015.
A quick thread on the Tondar 69, a missile that is often forgotten but played an important role in Iranian missile development.
Like so much of Iran's missile program, the history of the Tondar 69 goes back to the Iran-Iraq war when the Iranians were seeking ballistic missiles from a variety of sources. Among them were the Soviet Union and Syria, both of which rebuffed their requests for Scuds.
Libya and the DPRK proved more cooperative but there was also a third country willing to sell ballistic missiles to Tehran – China. For reasons of secrecy, negotiations with the Chinese were held in Thailand and on the Iranian side they included both Moghaddam and Vahid Dastjerdi