🔥 Houthis’ Volcano missiles can help trigger seismic shift in regional balance of power
 
📌 Ansar Allah have proven themselves highly adept at asymmetric warfare, taking old Soviet Scud missiles delivered to Yemen in the 70s and 80s, repairing and modernizing them to create the Burkan (lit. ‘Volcano’) series of ballistic weapons.

🌏 The first in the series was the Burkan-1 – unveiled in 2016 and used to target King Fahd Air Base, a joint Saudi-UAE base on Zuqar Island in the Red Sea, and other strategic location. The road mobile, liquid-fueled SRBM has an ~800km range, 500kg warhead and simple but effective inertial guidance system.

🌏 In 2017, the Houthis rolled out the Burkan-2H – an upgrade with a 1k+ km estimated range, 250 kg payload and distinct triconic separating reentry vehicle. That missile has been used to target Saudi Aramco facilities, Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, and the Al Yamamah Royal Palace.

🌏 In 2019, the Burkan-3 made its combat debut, flying over 1.2k km to strike a military target in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. In 2023, Ansar Allah began firing these missiles and other ballistic and drone weapons at Israel in solidarity with Gaza. The Burkan-3 has a combat range up to 1.7k km, and a 100-150 kg payload.

🌏 The latter’s range is enough to hit anywhere in the Arabian Peninsula. The entire family of missiles is also within range of Somaliland, which recently expressed readiness to join the war against the Houthis.

🌏 The Burkan is part of a lineup of Houthi ballistic, cruise and hypersonic capabilities, including the Toufan (Storm), based on an Iranian Ghadr, the solid-fueled Hatem (Decisive Judge), modeled after Kheibar Shekan, and Palestine-2, a hypersonic system with non-ballistic maneuverability capabilities.

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