Saudi Arabia is the 3rd largest military spender, just behind China and America. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in 2019, it spent a staggering 100$ billion dollars.
Comparatively, military superpower like Russian spends only $65 billion. The strength of the Russian military and hardware is not a hidden truth. From hypersonic, laser, and directional nuclear weapons to state-of-the-art fighter aircraft, it’s a real competitive challenger to the Americans. And Russian developments in futuristic warfare from Cyber to Space are progressing each day. All this progress with a military budget 40% less than Saudi Arabia.
This leaves everyone wondering how come Saudi Arabia is among the top 3 military spenders and yet for years of fighting cannot even defeat, hunger-ridden and impoverished Yemen.
Well, as long they remain consumers of Western warfare giants. They keep spending billions, with no real gains. As long as Saudi’s have oil and money, the West will keep squeezing. There is no shortage of threats under the pre-text of the Sunni-Shia Muslim conflict.
Recent history has taught us that the West has always turned their backs on their allies in times of need. From Qaddafi to Saddam, the primary cause of their fall was lean towards the West. Bashar ul Assad survived; he did not lose trust in Russians.
Recently, a Saudi F-15 scrambled to shoot down a Yemeni IED drone with an air-to-air missile. The total cost of a drone was around $200-500, and Saudi’s used US-made medium-range AIM-120 AMRAAM or AIM-9 Sidewinder missile, with a price tag between $600,000 to 2 million US dollars. Considering that F-15 is a $100-130 million platform, and costs around $30,000 per flight hour, one can only laugh at the effectiveness of Saudi military spending.
What Saudi’s need is a serious change in their strategy. Aside from a balanced lean towards Russians, they should rely more on proxies to keep Houthi’s engaged in their own territory. It will be a long-running conflict. If Saudi’s keep its military engage, spending billion dollars per month, it will eventually erode its economy and morale of the military.
Since 2015, the full-blown military invasion has not taken Saudi’s anywhere. The more they keep dragging the conventional war against non-conventional fighters, the results will remain humiliating for the kingdom. Saudi’s cannot win or even disgracefully end this war, without a serious twist in strategy. Regular soldiers are not trained for non-conventional wars. It is a totally different fighting mind set, which can be brought in this war using proxies.
