
Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes - xoa
https://www.wsj.com/articles/drone-strikes-spark-fires-at-saudi-oil-facilities-11568443375?mod=rsswn
======
aazaa
An unusual (and worrying) part about this incident is how drones are being
used, not with an explicit military goal in mind, but rather for the purpose
of economic strangulation.

Like terrorist operatives, drones are relatively cheap and expendible.

But unlike terrorism, which seeks to grind away at the enemy's resolve, this
kind of attack attempts to deprive an enemy of the money needed to fund its
operations.

Like terrorism, even the threat of loss of key infrastructure can have
consequences (e.g, the interest rate a country is forced to pay as risk
premium). Also as ub terrorism, the targets are "soft" and therefore difficult
to defend.

It looks like there's something new here that could serve as a model in other
conflicts. The most vulnerable players are those who have put all their
economic eggs in one basket.

~~~
wbl
You've just described air power. Except now it's actually possible to destroy
industrial facilities instead of maybe hitting a city.

~~~
beaner
What prevented that from being possible before?

~~~
HarryHirsch
You needed airplanes, and antiaircraft weapons were so much cheaper. With
drones the calculation is the other way around. It completely changes the face
of war, offensive warfare is now possible again. Ernst Jünger said something
similar when he witnessed the first tanks in World War 1.

~~~
paganel
> It completely changes the face of war

These changes are always really, really interesting. One of my favorite
moments similar to this is the Battle of Nicopolis [1] between the Ottomans
led by Bayezid I and a Crusader force which included many Western cavalry
forces. The much more mobile and easy-moving Ottomans were no match for the
Western (especially French) forces who were accustomed with using their heavy
armor during battle:

> The French knights thus continued up the hill, though accounts state that
> more than half were on foot by this point, either because they had been
> unhorsed by the lines of sharpened stakes or had dismounted to pull up
> stakes. Struggling in their heavy armor, they reached the plateau on the top
> of the slope, where they had expected to find fleeing Turkish forces, but
> instead found themselves facing a fresh corps of sipahis, whom Bayezid had
> kept in reserve. As the sipahis surged forward in the counterattack sounding
> trumpets, banging kettle drums and yelling "God is great!", the desperation
> of their situation was readily apparent to the French and some knights broke
> and fled back down the slope.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nicopolis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nicopolis)

~~~
aodin
Over 660 years before the Battle of Nicopolis, the French under Charles Martel
defeated the Umayyad Caliphate at the Battle of Tours[1] using phalanxes of
heavy infantry against lightly armored Arabian calvary. The difference being
that the French forces purposefully took a defensive position on top of
several hills instead of initiating an attack up them.

The battles are an interesting echo through history. Perhaps the lesson is
simply "hold the high ground".

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours)

~~~
paganel
> Perhaps the lesson is simply "hold the high ground".

One could think so, but then about 150 years later the Hungarian chivalry (and
pretty much the Hungarian kingdom itself) was annihilated by the same Ottomans
at the battle of Mohacs, where there was no "high ground" involved. From the
wiki page [1]:

> Hungary built up an expensive but obsolete army, structured similarly to
> that of King Francis I at the Battle of Pavia and mostly reliant on old
> fashioned heavily armoured knights on armoured horses (gendarme knights).

By that time the Ottomans had already started making heavy use of artillery
(which is also one of the main reasons they had taken Constantinople back in
1453):

> The Ottoman army was a more modern force built around artillery and the
> elite, musket-armed Janissaries. The remainder consisted of feudal Timarli
> cavalry and conscripted levies from Rumelia and the Balkans

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moh%C3%A1cs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moh%C3%A1cs)

~~~
aodin
The failure of gendarme knights at Mohács is probably the most salient point
to the original topic. The Hungarian forces were clearly obsolete. That fact
had been profoundly demonstrated over a year earlier with the French failure
at Pavia. So _why_ did they still field the forces they did?

If my understanding is correct, the existence of gendarme knights was deeply
entwined not only with the concept of nobility in Europe, but with the
economic foundations of Feudalism. The structure of which was primarily
focused on a how a unit of population could field a single knight into battle.
In short, a different army would require more than just additional training or
logistics, but an underlying societal shift. Just as Feudalism rose because
Martel recognized the effectiveness of armored cavalry, it would take the
adoption of gunpowder, which specifically made armored cavalry ineffective,
before there was need for another restructuring: one that led to professional
armies and eventually nation states.

It would be pure hubris to believe we're done with these sorts of societal
shifts. Just as nuclear weapons made large-scale warfare between nation states
pointless, we may find that drones, and other weapons that allow cheap,
asymmetrical force projection, may make even smaller engagements an exercise
in mutually assured destruction. And that could challenge the entire nature of
the American military-industrial complex and its global facsimiles.

------
rm999
Non-WSJ link: [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/14/saudi-arabia-is-shutting-
dow...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/14/saudi-arabia-is-shutting-down-half-of-
its-oil-production-after-drone-attack-wsj-says.html)

~~~
eee_honda
Wow, CNBC is really going all out to propagandize here. No mention of Saudi
led war on Yemen, which would obviously motivate the Houthi's to attack Aramco
(the Houthi's quoted in the article even make reference to the "aggression" of
the Saudi Monarchy against Yemenis).

Instead, they jump right to Mike Pompeo (on Twitter, no less) denouncing Iran
and concluding that there's "no evidence" the Houthis are responsible....
ridiculous.

~~~
fit2rule
I'm really expecting the 'no evidence' line to come back and bite Pompeo in
the ass. I hope someone has the balls to ask him "where's the evidence Iran is
behind the attacks - and real evidence this time, not fake national-secrecy
bullshit".

I won't hold my breath though. I know that America is in the grips of war
profiteers who will stop at nothing to get yet another heinous, evil, illegal
war started for their profits.

------
mrnobody_67
Playing out as Naval Ravikant predicted on the After-on podcast:
[https://after-on.com/episodes-31-60/044](https://after-
on.com/episodes-31-60/044)

Eventually cheap drones, anonymous assassination markets, etc. will make
commercial flying a thing of the past.

Written summary of podcast - [https://podcastnotes.org/2019/03/20/after-on-
naval-01/](https://podcastnotes.org/2019/03/20/after-on-naval-01/)

~~~
badfutureahead
Today it's basically a week-long project to train a neural network to fly
towards a jet engine in a 3D simulation. Then you just need to hook that to
the drone control software.

No amount of jamming helps you here, this is radio control off, GPS off,
entirely visual "guided missile" approach.

And this approach scales, with 20 drones, 2 drones assigned to each engine,
you can engage 5 taking off planes in a row off a busy airport. And you can
pick the direction which will make the planes crash in the nearby city.

With a "hire people to do stuff for bitcoin" project (there are several) you
can prepare this in a bunch of countries (you just tell them you need some
drones setup for an aerial shooting/light show or something).

The future is scary.

~~~
jvanderbot
"fly towards" doesn't scale too well with the huge speed difference. Your
intercept cone is super narrow when jets travel 10x your quads speed. Then
factor in altitude and this approach only works near airports, where defense
is arguably easiest.

where this works really, really well is with boats. Iran did this with 15m
RHIBs.

I work on these problems directly. Its scarey but mostly because we're not
thinking about it, not because it's something we can't prevent. Don't get me
started on all the truly horrifying things commercial drones are capable of
even worse than airline terror.

~~~
badfutureahead
With FlightRadar24 historical data you already know exactly where regular
flights will be, so you just wait there. The only thing left is that the pilot
will try to dodge you, but then you have automatic drone control versus human
(with low visibility).

I agree with you that this is a high touch attack, a kind of "drone 9/11",
versus other low hanging fruits like dropping drones on peoples head.

~~~
jvanderbot
Drones have 10 to 30 minute loiter time, and they don't reach 10k feet. You're
overestimating the ability of small craft to detect, track, and even reach the
operational area of large passenger jets. These things are moving at hundred
or more meters per second vs a drones ... 15? By the time a vision system had
enough pixels on target to detect, it would have seconds to move into position
in front of it. And how exactly is it supposed to know the jets velocity and
heading?

Let alone it must hit the inside of the engine to do more than become a
scratch on the paint.

Still, takeoff and landing maybe ... But still this kind of visual detection,
tracking, and maneuvering is harder than you think.

------
tdhz77
The use of drones in this way by rebels makes me rethink the media image of a
rebel. They are educated, lawyers, doctors, engineers.

~~~
rhegart
Iran funds this. The advanced rockets by Hamas, the drones by the Houthi.
Proxy war like usual. They are using Yemen for themselves uncaring of lives,
we are killing so many innocent in Yemen. Life’s complicated but after the
Iran deal, funding these groups by Iran increased significantly, and so did
our subsequent killing of innocents.

~~~
caoilte
Life is indeed complicated. What fueled Iran's involvement in Yemen was Saudia
Arabia invading it. They worked very hard to keep the Houthis at arms length
prior to that because as different religious sects go the only thing they
really have in common is that the really nasty fundamentalist women-hating
Sunni sects (ie the Saudis) hate them both for being different.

And what kick started the war in Yemen? That would be a daddy's boy prince
wanting to prove he could win his own war without daddy's help (that went
well).

None of which would happen if we didn't really enjoy selling guns to the
Saudis, on account of all the money they've taken from us when they sold us
oil.

And we'd still be happily selling arms to the Iranian King we installed if
they hadn't got sick of it and thrown us out.

So this is on us. All of it.

~~~
rhegart
Mostly agree, definitely agree that Iran meddling was 100% our fault.

------
kache_
Al Jazeera

>The attacks come as Saudi Arabia, the world's leading crude exporter, steps
up preparations for a much-anticipated initial public offering of Aramco.

I wonder if this was timed by the rebels, or if there were outside influencers
who had a vested interest in this.

~~~
dx87
The rebels said that they had help from allies inside Saudi Arabia, maybe it
was people who wanted to do economic damage, kind of like an over-the-top
version of a news article designed to hurt stock prices.

------
riazrizvi
John Bolton is fired and oil drops 2% as hopes for war and restricted oil
supply fade for the worlds exporters. A week later we get drone strikes
against Saudi Arabia by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. It’s like Jeff Goldblum
once said, ‘Nature finds a way’.

------
JacobiX
Unfortunately, there is no technical information yet about the type of drones
that carried the strikes. Could it be the shahed 129 ?

~~~
lefty2
No, it was actually the CX-6057 Flying Egg
[https://www.amazon.com/WayIn®-CX-6057-Flying-2-4GHz-
Control/...](https://www.amazon.com/WayIn®-CX-6057-Flying-2-4GHz-
Control/dp/B01828KFDS/)

------
SergeAx
Commercially available drones are easily detectable ("a week project", as said
before) and very fragile. I believe automatic anti-drone systems are now
months from being deployed worldwide. It is not even necessary to be very
powerful: something like airsoft gun gonna be enough.

~~~
WhoBeI
I don't think it's that easy..

There's numbers.. Systems using missiles can be zerged with disposable decoy
drones until they have no ammo or tricked if using thermal tracking. Gun based
ones can have a hard time tracking/predicting if the drones randomize movement
around their attack vector and/or randomize speed.

The environment and the approach will matter as well. They come in low,
tracing the terrain or snaking through it, will make keeping lock hard. What
if it's rush hours and they come in just above car height along a crowded
street.

Then, of course, you can just have them semi-adapt. If they see a bunch of
explosions in the air around them maybe switch to pre-programmed mission #2?

Defending against drone swarms is going to be tricky. Here they only had a few
low tech ones and had a significant impact. I wonder how one would go about
designing a system that should go for a target but be in no rush to get there
though..

~~~
microcolonel
Though of course at that point you might as well just use artillery.

------
peter303
Environmentalists say they might shut down Heathrow airport with drones
because they dont like new construction. They would announce an hour in
advance such a demonstration.

Authorities warn of severe prison sentences if they catch some doing this.

~~~
badfutureahead
Already done, 19 arrested, and it's a climate change protest:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
london-49696973](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-49696973)

------
peter303
Trump may be secretly transferring unspecified nuclear technology to Saudis.
(Jared goes there often) There is a meeting about this next week. The cover
story for this is that Saudi would like to diversify their energy production.
Some people fear this includes weapons technology.

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-the-secret-campaign-
to-...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-the-secret-campaign-to-export-us-
nuclear-tech-to-saudi-arabia)

------
trhway
One of the side effects of Russia's maintaining of the official decorum of
non-involvement ("little green men" of unknown origin in Crimea, and the whole
tank battalions taking their tanks on voluntary vacation to Donbass :) in
similar situation in Ukraine was avoiding opening themselves to the risk of
otherwise legitimate counter-strike by Ukraine and scaling up of the war.
Saudis seems to have forgo such risk in favor of full military power they can
apply in the open war. Nothing helps a regime popularity better than a quick
victorious war ... until counter strikes hit deep home where it really hurts,
like the Saudi oil fields in this case. Reminds about the Berlin bombing that
USSR did several months after the start of the war in 1941 - the almost
unstoppable, at the moment, German forces were already deep in the USSR
territory with the Moscow and the glorious relatively quick and easy victory
pretty much already in sight, the Germans had full air superiority, and
reaching Berlin from the yet unoccupied USSR territories was on the edge of
USSR bombers capabilities. 11 bombers took part in the raid. The actual damage
to Berlin, if any, was minimal, yet the psychological impact was huge on the
both sides. ( US have the similar story of bombing of Tokyo in 1942
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid))

~~~
cheaprentalyeti
The Houthi are Iran's "Little Green Men," in the same way as you say the
Donbasses in Eastern Ukraine were Russia's. Heck, Iran and Russia are allies,
and each other's "little green men" in this conflict, where the objective is
to boost your economy by wrecking your competitor's ability to produce or ship
to market.

------
yyyk
Didn't anyone look at the map? The drone strikes have nothing to do with the
Houthis, they don't have the range. This is a purely Iranian operation with
obvious motives - control oil supply from ME. This adventurism is going to
lead into a huge war which will be bad for anyone in the region. Perhaps that
can't be stopped now.

~~~
tyingq
From a WaPo story:

 _" U.N. investigators said the Houthis' new UAV-X drone, found in recent
months during the Saudi-led coalition's war in Yemen, likely has a range of up
to 1,500 kilometers (930 miles). That puts the far reaches of both Saudi
Arabia and the UAE in range."_

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/saudi-tv-
ch...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/saudi-tv-channel-fire-
at-aramco-facility-no-cause-
given/2019/09/13/6f419234-d69e-11e9-8924-1db7dac797fb_story.html)

~~~
yyyk
Well, if one believes their 'taking of responsibility', of course you believe
they have the flight range, which means you assigned 'their' drones a flight
range, which is then picked up to 'explain' it.

If you apply a more realistic standard (no actual evidence including footage,
no way to guide it, no facilities in Yemen to even test it), it's obvious this
is an operation by a state, and only Iran can fit the bill.

~~~
dragonwriter
The Houthi rebels and Iran are intimately connected; if Iran has the
capability, that lends support to the idea that the Houthis could have carried
out the attack, since the Houthis are extensively equipped, trained, funded,
and otherwise supported by Iran.

~~~
yyyk
So we go back to Iran either way. Except it's much easier for Iran to launch
the attack from other parts of the world, and let the Houthis claim
responsibility.

Note that it isn't even clear _Iran_ has this range, the foiled attack on
Israel suggested they don't, otherwise they'd have launched from further away.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Note that it isn't even clear Iran has this range

The Houthi claim is that it was done with assistance from sympathizers in
Saudi Arabia. That vastly reduces the required range, no matter whether it was
the Houthis, Iran, or the Easter Bunny directing the attack.

~~~
yyyk
Yes, I do think the actual range was far smaller. But smuggling drones, fuel
and bombs across the desert is a massive operation too, probably beyond the
Houthis either. IMHO, it's a direct Iranian operation from Iraq.

------
jrnichols
What concerns me (but doesn't surprise me) is seeing the news about how Wall
Street will handle this, and the immediate assumption that oil prices will
spike rapidly when trading begins on Monday.

------
carlsborg
Do the big CL option MMs keep positions open over the weekend?

------
tibbydudeza
Drone are similiar to the Toyota Hilux is akin to the BMP.

~~~
PorterDuff
The Toyota Jihad model does appear to be a popular truck in certain quarters.

I've been surprised for years that infrastructure wasn't more effectively
attacked. It seems to me that a ton of mayhem could erupt just from a guy with
a Barrett 50 cal.

~~~
zdkl
The problem there is that that's a well understood threat model, mitigated
with (unqualified) manpower. Responding to drones requires a more technical
solution which might not be realistic to deploy en masse.

~~~
PorterDuff
It's just one more case where there is a mismatch between offense and defense
realities.

I'd much rather try to design an anti-carrier missile than design a carrier
that was missile proof.

------
0xDEFC0DE
Defense Digital Services has a project working on defense of this kind of
stuff

If you're into that sort of thing, you should go check them out as they're
hiring a lot of folks

------
justinzollars
Fill up your gas tanks.

------
buboard
These are some kind of terrorists i can get behind

------
age_bronze
Make no mistake: these aren't rebel, this is Iran, trying to force the world
to buy oil from her by terrorizing the competition.

------
RocketSyntax
Has there, will there ever be peace in the middle east?

feels wrong to say middle east... arab world... don't want to box them in by
religion either.

~~~
salmon30salmon
Just to educate, “Arab” isn’t a religion, it is an ethnic group. A majority of
Arabs are Muslims, which is the religious designation.

The Middle East is no more warlike than the west. Remember is only been a
couple generations since World War 2, and sectarian violence has been around
within the last two decades in the west.

~~~
weberc2
You don’t refute “the Middle East is a violent place” with “there has been
violence in the west in the last 20 years”. Violence is a spectrum, not a
binary, and there is a chasm between the Middle East and the West with respect
to how violent each place is.

We can find non-racist explanations for the violence disparity without
forsaking reason.

~~~
RocketSyntax
hasn't the region been consistently violent compared to the rest of the world
for the last 2,000 years?

~~~
weberc2
I'm not a historian, but I doubt it. My understanding is that the middle east
was quite a lot more civilized (for some conventional definition of the term,
anyway) than most/all of Europe throughout most of the middle ages. I'm of the
impression that the middle east only became appreciably more violent in the
last century (oil-related conflicts in the middle east amid rising quality of
life all over the world). I'm only speculating though; I'd be interested to
hear from someone more knowledgable on the subject.

------
zxcvbn4038
So I guess that 5% someone will need to buy from the US? Sounds to me like
someone is making things great again...

~~~
phkahler
No, the 2020 slogan appears to be "keeping" things great.

