Saudi Arabia looks to US for an AI edge as Yemen's Houthis up pressure

Under attack from the militant Houthi group in neighboring Yemen, Saudi Arabia has asked numerous allies for help.

That includes the United States, even though media report that US President Donald Trump refused when Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman asked him to take direct military action against the Houthis.

However the US is providing Saudi Arabia with intelligence, which includes a targeting tool that uses artificial intelligence, or AI. A September report by US broadcaster CNN, quoting several unnamed American officials, said that between 100 and 200 US soldiers were in Saudi Arabia as part of new joint force command to facilitate this.

The US personnel were helping the Saudis "use a targeting tool that allows military officers to see in real-time what is happening on the battlefield," CNN reported.

Officials said the system in Saudi Arabia was similar to that known as the Maven Smart System, or MSS for short, which the US military has also used as it sought targets in Iran, Iraq and Syria. 

UK sends warplanes as Saudi Arabia seeks more help against Houthis

What is Maven?

MSS came out of what's known as Project Maven, the US's flagship artificial intelligence program for the military, first launched in 2017. MSS itself is an AI-enabled digital platform that "aggregates, organizes and visualizes vast streams of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data," analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington explained in a June text.

The software system identifies patterns in data coming from, for example, live satellite feeds or drone cameras and then labels potential targets such as possible rocket launchers, tanks or suspicious vehicle convoys.

Previously human military analysts would have had to look at a wide array of different sources to try to find those, the CSIS researchers wrote. It was difficult and, in the case of hours of satellite or drone footage, almost impossible. But MSS now brings hundreds of sources together, analyses them all, then flags possible targets. It also calculates the best method of hitting the target. 

Tech commentator Bilawal Sidhu, a former Google product manager, has described the MSS set up as like a "Google Earth for war."

Using the MSS dramatically speeds up what is known as "the kill chain" — that is, the time it takes to detect a target, decide if it's dangerous and then order a strike.

When the US military used MSS while attacking Iran in late February, the AI-powered system facilitated hits on more than 1,000 targets within the first 24 hours of the war. Previously American soldiers were hitting about 100 targets a day.

A faster kill chain?

Up until recently, the long-simmering civil war in Yemen had been comparatively calm following an informal ceasefire negotiated in 2022.

The Houthi rebel group has held large parts of northern and western Yemen since 2015. Yemen's internationally recognized government and other groups held territory across the south and east. That latter is supported by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. 

The Houthi's latest military campaign, which began in September, has seen the group take further control of Yemen's coast. They also ramped up attacks against Saudi Arabia again, hitting the country's main airport and oil facilities. So far, though, military campaigns against the Houthi group by Saudi Arabia, the United States and others have all failed to significantly weaken the group.

This is partially because the Houthis take a "zero-sum approach," Farea al-Muslimi, a research fellow focused on Yemen at UK think tank Chatham House, told DW recently. The group's founding father argued that contemporary Muslim societies were too "soft," and that poverty and hardship are a divine test, al-Muslimi said. 

"They don't care if the Israelis bomb the airport or the US bombs a hospital," she said. "It actually serves them very well because their ideology is all about martyrdom and sacrifice." 

MSS's major issues

There are certain technical issues users have noted with the MSS in the past that could also prove problematic in Yemen.

The Houthis tend to be highly mobile, using truck-mounted ballistic missiles and small drone swarms as they operate from hills and canyons in rugged countryside. It's possible that fighters might be long gone before they can be attacked  even with the help of AI-assisted targeting.

Though MSS is known to work best in relatively unpopulated areas, factors such as changes in desert terrain, dust storms, high wind, snowfall and dense foliage — and even deliberately planted decoys — can reduce its success rate. 

There is also a worrying ethical aspect to shortening the kill chain. A human is always supposed to verify the target that the AI-assisted tool has identified and decide how to react. 

But it doesn't always work that way. For example, among the sites MSS targeted in Iran on the first day of the war was a school. An American missile killed almost 200 people at a primary school in southern Iran, most of them children aged between seven and 12.

Could AI defeat the Houthis?

In its military campaign in Gaza, Israel — arguably the Middle Eastern country with the most advanced military-use AI — has also used AI-assisted targeting. An Israeli system known as the Gospel, or Habsora, is the closest to MSS in the way it works.

But, as has been documented elsewhere, including by Israeli and British journalists and in the recent documentary Naza, the use of such AI targeting tools have also been highly problematic because of the numbers of civilian casualties that can result.

"On the one hand [in Gaza], AI has enhanced commanders' situational awareness, lessened the human costs of tunnel mapping, improved the speed of military strikes, and boosted the survivability of troops," analysts Frederic Wehrey and Andrew Bonney wrote for War on the Rocks, a specialist media outlet. "Yet the benefits afforded by such functions have been overshadowed by mounting civilian deaths reportedly resulting from this technology's safeguards being loosened or eliminated."

All of which is why Antony Loewenstein, an independent journalist based in Australia who has researched the impact of Israel's AI-assisted technology, doesn't believe similar technology will lead to the defeat of the Houthi group.

"I don't think there's much evidence at all that using an AI tool is going to make much difference on the ground, except for causing huge amounts of civilian casualties," Loewenstein, who authored the book, "The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports The Technology of Occupation Around the World," told DW. "And I think what the US and the Saudis will find is that the Houthis have an incredibly high tolerance level for destruction."

Edited by: Carla Bleiker

Saudi Arabia on the backfoot in the war against the Houthis