On 4 May, the Houthis — Yemen’s Iranian-backed rebel group — launched a hypersonic ballistic missile targeting Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion International Airport, in a bid to demonstrate their ability to strike critical infrastructure. This once again marks a dramatic escalation in the capabilities and threats posed by the Houthis in particular and non-state actors in general in the modern security landscape.
The Benjamin Netanyahu-led government has vowed a “sevenfold retaliation” against the rebel group. Within hours of the announcement, Israeli forces launched airstrikes on Yemen’s Hodeidah port—a vital lifeline for the country that handles the bulk of humanitarian and commercial supplies. Strategically located, Hodeidah is also widely believed to be a key conduit for Iranian arms shipments to the Houthis.
Despite this swift response, the effectiveness of the Houthi missile strike cannot be overlooked. Their projectiles not only reached central Israel but also managed to evade some of the world’s most advanced air defence systems, including Israel’s Iron Dome and Arrow systems, as well as the US-deployed THAAD anti-missile batteries, raising serious questions about the evolving capabilities of non-state actors.
The strike by the Houthis not only disrupted flight operations and brought Israel’s Airport to a temporary standstill, but also triggered a wider aviation alarm, prompting several international airlines to re-route or suspend flights to and from Israel amid fears of further missile attacks. The incident underscored how a single, well-timed strike by a non-state actor can send shockwaves through global air travel networks, altering flight paths and insurance risk assessments almost instantaneously. Such long-distance precision strikes have raised serious concerns across regional and global security establishments. It underlines a grave new dimension wherein a non-state actor has demonstrated precision-strike capabilities over nearly 2,000 kilometres which is roughly the distance between Yemen and Israel’s airspace.
The Houthis’ growing mastery of technological improvisation often optimised through their do-it-by-yourself (DIY) techniques and their access to state-of-the-art weaponry often beyond the reach of many conventional state militaries marks a remarkable and alarming evolution in the nature of asymmetric warfare. This shift demonstrates that non-state actors, once dismissed as guerrilla insurgents, can now deploy advanced systems such as hypersonic missiles, precision-guided drones, and naval strike assets with a level of coordination and effectiveness that challenges the monopoly of state power on high-end military capability. It also amplifies that battlefield is no longer defined by state boundaries or formal armies, but by networks, proxies, and technological adaptability.
The Houthis, formally known as Ansar Allah, are a Zaydi Shia minority and Islamist political and military organisation which emerged from northern Yemen in the 1990s. They rose to prominence during the Arab Uprisings of 2010-2011 when the fragility of the Yemeni state was exposed by street protests against the regime. With significant support from former President Ali Abdullah Saleh who openly allied with them during May 2015 civil war, the Houthis steadily gained ground, but their alliance fractured in 2017. Saleh’s subsequent killing by the Houthis only underscored their growing influence and capacity to eliminate even their former allies.
Allegedly backed militarily, financially, and ideologically by Iran, the Houthis overthrew the internationally recognized Hadi government in 2014, taking control of Sanaa and prompting a Saudi-led coalition intervention. Since then, they have entrenched themselves in Yemen’s political and military fabric, transforming from a local insurgency to a regional Middle Eastern threat. If left unchecked, days are not far when they will transform into a global threat.
The first major global alert about Houthi capabilities came in September 2019, when they attacked Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq and Khurais oil processing facilities which served as the key nodes of Aramco’s production infrastructure. These installations, guarded by advanced US-supplied Patriot missile systems and the French-supplied Thales radar networks, were penetrated using a combination of drones and low-flying cruise missiles.
UN investigations and open-source intelligence pointed to Iranian origin of components and Chinese-supplied drones that had been reassembled and modified in Yemen. What alarmed defence analysts worldwide was the precision of the strike. As many as 17 critical points were hit with near-perfect accuracy, temporarily cutting Saudi oil production by half and causing a 5% spike in global oil prices.
Following the Aramco strike, the Houthis targeted the UAE in early 2022, using drones and missiles to strike oil storage facilities near Abu Dhabi. These attacks shocked the Emirati leadership, which had until then considered itself relatively insulated from the Yemen conflict.
Parallelly, the rebel group expanded their naval warfare capabilities, deploying anti-ship ballistic missiles, explosive-laden drone boats, and sea mines. In the aftermath of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023, they launched a de facto naval blockade in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, targeting Israel-bound and Israel-flagged commercial ships. The group even fired upon US and UK warships, prompting retaliatory strikes that failed to decisively neutralize their operations.
Their use of water-borne improvised explosive devices (WBIEDs), advanced radar-guided missiles, and Iranian-provided Noor and Qader anti-ship systems elevated them from regional irritants to serious maritime threats. The recent strike on Israel reveals yet another leap in capabilities. This marks the first time a non-state actor has used such a platform against a modern air defense-protected airport. Hypersonic missiles, defined by their ability to travel at speeds exceeding Mach 5, have evasion and manoeuvrability features that even sophisticated systems like Israel’s Iron Dome or Arrow-3 may struggle to intercept.
The targeting of Israel’s largest International Airport disrupted not just Israeli civilian life but also international travel routes. Airlines from India, the EU, and other nations cancelled flights to and from Israel for at least three days. The economic and strategic costs of such attacks are also considerably high and are felt far beyond immediate war zones.
Iranian support to the Houthis—while officially denied—has further included smuggling networks for arms, missile blueprints, UAV components, and technical training. Several UN reports have confirmed the expanding inventory of the Houthis from Burkan and Quds missiles to Shahed drones. Moreover, US Navy seizures during 2022 and 2023 intercepted Iranian shipments including over 2,000 assault rifles, UAV parts, and missile guidance systems en route to Yemen, highlighting the scale of assistance and threat convergence.
This trajectory demonstrates how a non-state actor can evolve into a technologically sophisticated proxy with regional and even global impact. The convergence of ideology, technological sophistication, and proxy geopolitics in the Houthi case should serve as a wake-up call. Their successful strikes have already targeted three of the region’s most powerful countries—Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and now Israel—revealing systemic vulnerabilities in even the most advanced defence architectures.
If these nations do not coordinate their efforts to contain the Houthis’ growing capabilities, they risk further erosion of their regional security. More than ever, states must further invest cohesively in intelligence-sharing, maritime domain awareness, and missile defence integration. Beyond hardware, a coordinated and precise counter-terrorism approach is critical. Without such recalibration, states will continue to be consistently out-manoeuvred by such sophisticated technologically advanced proxies.
More alarmingly, what is today a threat to regional actors could tomorrow be a global menace. The growing sophistication of non-state actors like the Houthis holds significant implications beyond the Middle East. India, too, must remain vigilant in the face of this evolving threat landscape.
There is increasing evidence that insurgent tactics are being diffused across regions; for example, The Resistance Front (TRF) operating in Kashmir has reportedly drawn operational cues from Hamas, adopting similar asymmetric and propaganda-based strategies. It is not implausible that such groups could seek logistical or ideological inspiration or even material support from actors like the Houthis in the future.
As the boundaries between local insurgencies and global terror networks blur, India must also enhance its threat-mapping and counter-terrorism posture, particularly in tracking transnational linkages that may empower domestic adversaries. The challenge posed by technologically advanced non-state actors is no longer geographically confined; it requires early intelligence, regional coordination, and global policy alignment to prevent these groups from becoming emboldened and replicating the Houthi model elsewhere. There is a need of a strategic imperative to prevent the rise of non-state actors who, if left unchecked, could outpace traditional threats posed by state adversaries.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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