Great Disaster: Houthi's Underwater Drone Not Reverse Engineered U.S. Navy REMUS
Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi Movement, which controls parts of the west of the country, has shown a propaganda video of its latest maritime weapons. These are shown destroying a range of dummy American and Israeli vessels. While much of these videos should be taken with a large pinch of salt, the Houthi's weapons should be taken seriously. They have seriously damaged several merchant ships. One weapon shown is a one-way-attack autonomous underwater vehicle (OWA-AUV). This is named Al-Qar'iah (also written Al-Qaria, Al Qari'a), meaning Great Disaster.
There has been speculation that it is in fact a reverse engineered REMUS 600. This type of AUV is widely used by Western navies and a U.S. Navy example was captured by the Houthis in 2018. However, while there is a passing resemblance the two vehicles do not appear to have a single line in common. Note the different hull segments and 4 versus 3 aft control surfaces. Yellow is a common color to paint AUVs as it makes them easier to spot and recover after use, or if they sink.
In detail the Al Qar'iah (above) does not match the layout of the REMUS 600 captured by the Houthis in 2018 (below). In particular, note the aft control surfaces and hull segmentation.
The Al Qar'iah has been introduced as an indiginous type developed in Yemen. However developing autonomous underwater vehicles is inherently difficult, much more so than surface drones (USVs). It is therefore less likely that the Houthis would have been able to accomplish this locally.
Targets: these vessels shown in the the propaganda video are supposed to represent a U.S. Navy warship (left) and a surfaced submarine (right).
The likely source therefore is Iran which is known to have supplied the Houthis one-way-attack AUVs. This design may be a slightly different model than has been observed previously, but amounts to the same thing. It is not unusual for the Houthis to assign local names to imported Iranian supplied systems and claim them to be locally produced.
US Coast Guard / CENTCOM released photo of weapons seized aboard an Iranian dhow on February 15 2024. The seizure included UUV and USV components. The annotations, highlighting possible UUV parts, have been added.
Iranian 'loitering torpedo' AUVs.
Related articles (Full index of popular Covert Shores articles)
World survey of Underwater Attack Drones (OWA-AUVs)
Houthi's Blowfish: Guide To Explosive USV Threat Off Yemen
Explosive Boats world history