Yemen’s Houthi militia has now downed over a quarter billion dollars’ worth of General Atomics MQ-9 Reapers. Sputnik asked a leading regional affairs observer what will happen if the humbling trend continues.
The latest Reaper shootdown took place last Saturday while the drone was carrying out intelligence-gathering activities over Marib province in central Yemen, according to the Houthis. The US military initially refused to confirm the loss, holding out until Friday, when an anonymous DoD official told US state media that an Air Force MQ-9 had been “struck but then landed safely and was recovered by US partner forces on September 9” somewhere in the Middle East.
The Pentagon did not elaborate on where exactly the drone touched down, who recovered it or what shape it was in.
The damaged Reaper is at least the eighth $32 million-apiece US reconnaissance and strike UAV downed by the Houthis since last November.
On August 4, the Houthis blew a Reaper out of the sky over Saada, northwestern Yemen. An informed source told Sputnik the militia used a modernized Soviet 2K12 Kub air defense system to do. The Houthis are known to have adopted the Kub to fire Yemeni-made Fater-1 interceptor missiles.
On May 29, the Houthis destroyed an unmarked Reaper, possibly belonging to the CIA, over Marib, releasing footage of warriors wearing sandals standing on top of the downed drone......More Below
By PHILLIP NIETO, US POLITICAL REPORTER
GOP lawmakers have released a trove of new emails from pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, including the financier claiming to have compromising photos of 'dirty' Donald Trump.
The House Oversight Committee, which includes Trump loyalist and Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna, published 23,000 pages of documents from the estate of the deceased pedophile on Wednesday after the Democrats released a selective batch of emails earlier in the day.
Republican and Democratic members of the committee are investigating Epstein.....more below
Gustavo Petro said that the US president’s actions don’t help stopping drug traffickers
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has denounced the US strikes on alleged cartel vessels in the Caribbean Sea as the Pentagon announced a new operation to fight drug traffickers.
In an interview with NBC News, Petro did not mince words when criticizing US President Donald Trump. “He’s a barbarian,” Petro said in excerpts aired Thursday. “He wants to frighten us,” he added.
The Colombian president did not rule out that some of the vessels hit by the strikes were linked to cartels. “Maybe or maybe not. We do not know,” he said, adding that, “According to due process, the civilized treatment of people, they should be seized and detained.”
Petro described the victims as “poor boatmen” hired by cartels. “Then when one.....more below
China’s innovation drive is reaching fever pitch in 2025. Let’s cut to the chase and focus on four crucial domains.
1.The Huawei Factor
Huawei is already testing its first, self-developed EUV lithography machine capable of producing 3nm chips. Trial tests are going full blast at the research center in Dongguan, and mass production should start in 2026.
It’s impossible to overstate how much of a game-changing paradigm this Chinese breatkthrough – specifically in laser-induced discharge plasma (LDP) - is
all about. It’s set to turn the seminconductor technology...more below
