© APHouthi fighters stage a rally against the US government designating Houthis as a terror group and against the US-led sustained airstrikes on Yemen, near Sanaa, Yemen, on January 25, 2024.
Comment: That's odd wording, because their attacks were against ships owned by, or ferrying to, Israel, because of its genocide in Gaza. The US and UK, which were facilitating the genocide, only became added to the target list because they attacked Yemen. Other ships are free to pass.
The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unnamed official but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine.
However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about "surprises" they plan for the battles at sea to counter the United States and its allies, which have so far been able to down any missile or bomb-carrying drone that comes near their warships in Mideast waters.
Comment: Not quite; the West is being humiliated:
Meanwhile, Iran and the US reportedly held indirect talks in Oman, the first in months amid their long-simmering tensions over Tehran's rapidly advancing nuclear program and attacks by its proxies.
Iran, the Houthis' main benefactor, claims to have a hypersonic missile and has widely armed the Houthis with the missiles they now use.
Adding a hypersonic missile to their arsenal could pose a more-formidable challenge to the air defense systems employed by America and its allies, including Israel.
"The group's missile forces have successfully tested a missile that is capable of reaching speeds of up to Mach 8 and runs on solid fuel," a military official close to the Houthis said, according to the RIA report.
The Houthis "intend to begin manufacturing it for use during attacks in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, as well as against targets in Israel."
Mach 8 is eight times the speed of sound.
Russia has maintained close ties with Iran, relying on Iranian bomb-carrying drones to target Ukraine.
Hypersonic weapons, which fly at speeds higher than Mach 5, could pose crucial challenges to missile defense systems because of their speed and maneuverability.
Comment: And, up until now, the Houthis have been thwarting the 'allies' with relatively simple weaponry.
The danger from a hypersonic missile depends on how maneuverable it is. Ballistic missiles fly on a trajectory in which anti-missile systems like the US-made Patriot can anticipate their path and intercept them.
The more irregular the missile's flight path, such as a hypersonic missile with the ability to change directions, the more difficult it becomes to intercept.
China is believed to be pursuing the weapons, as is America. Russia claims it has already used them on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Also, as is becoming increasingly clear, US engineering is in a downward spiral. As an engineer who works with expats from lots of ME countries, I can say that they are at least on par with US engineers. They're still not as good as US engineers used to be (curmudgeon alert!), but they're getting better while we're getting worse.