Investors are asking how the world's third-largest defense spender could have left itself so vulnerable and what that means for the future.
Investors are likely asking themselves how the kingdom could have left itself so vulnerable and what that means for the future of oil, global markets and the long-awaited Aramco public stock offering.
"Saudi oil assets are vulnerable for the simple reason that when flying over them at night, they stick out against the desert background like a Christmas tree," Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and Middle East expert at the American Enterprise Institute, told CNBC in an email. Dave DesRoches, an associate professor and senior military fellow at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., told CNBC: "If an attack is of a different threat than the system was designed for — that is a low-altitude cruise missile instead of a high-altitude ballistic missile — then the system will not intercept it."Saudi Arabia boasts an arsenal of sophisticated and expensive air defense equipment.
"These were low-flying cruise missiles. They were coming in far below the engagement zone for Patriot. So you wouldn't have tried to hit them with Patriot." In its primary role of shooting down aircraft, Watling noted, the system does perform "very well." "The Saudis have a lot of sophisticated air defense equipment. Given their general conduct of operations in Yemen, it is highly unlikely that their soldiers know how to use it," Watling said. He added that the kingdom's forces have "low readiness, low competence, and are largely inattentive."
"Most of U.S. arms sales to KSA, particularly in air defense, have been to the military," she wrote on Twitter on Monday. "The MOI, to my knowledge, isn't well kitted out for this role as they tend to focus on domestic threats."Barely a month has gone by since 2016 without Yemen's Houthis firing rockets or missiles into the kingdom, which has been mired in a bloody war with the rebels since 2015.
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