Riyadh loses F-15 as Washington approves USD 24.3 bn F-35 sale

Saudi Arabia announced its first death on home soil from Houthi drone attacks this week and faced credible claims it lost an F-15 over Marib, as a decade of largely unchallenged Saudi air operations over Yemen met locally produced surface-to-air missiles. The day after the F-15 claim, the US State Department cleared a potential USD 24.3 bn sale of 48 F-35s to the Kingdom.

Saudi warplanes struck Hajjah province near the Red Sea coast and the area around Taiz on Thursday, Houthi-controlled television reported, and Yemenis took to boats in the Red Sea to escape the fighting, Reuters reports. Saudi civil defense said a Yemeni resident of the Kingdom was killed by debris from a drone intercepted over Taif — the first death Riyadh has announced since fighting escalated last week, against more than 80 wounded previously.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree put Saudi air strikes at as many as 450 this week and claimed fresh drone and missile strikes on the Yanbu oil port and the Khamis Mushait airbase, without saying when.

The Houthis said Wednesday they downed a Saudi F-15 over Marib with a locally produced missile, releasing footage of charred desert and debris resembling wings, an engine and a tail fin carrying the Saudi flag, the Wall Street Journal reports. Saudi Arabia has yet to confirm the incident, and the fate of the jet’s crew remains unclear.

One day later, the US State Department approved a potential USD 24.3 bn sale of 48 Lockheed Martin F-35s to Saudi Arabia, along with 49 Pratt & Whitney engines, communications equipment, spare parts, and support items. The sale is meant to “[improve] the security of a major non-NATO ally that is a force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf region,” the State Department said. It still needs to clear Congress, and it would be several years before the first aircraft reach the Kingdom, Axios reports.

What could hold it up: Israel did not object as forcefully as it did to a Turkish F-35 package but wanted the sale conditioned on Saudi normalization with Israel, which Trump declined to require. US intelligence analysts have raised the risk of Chinese access to F-35 technology through Saudi partnerships.