Britain is expanding its aerial refuelling of Saudi fighter jets to include bombing raids on Yemen, despite a major spike in civilians being killed in these airstrikes.

Wes Streeting initially said the UK would only provide air-to-air refuelling for Saudi jets patrolling the kingdom’s skies to ward off drone and missile attacks on airports and oil infrastructure by Yemen’s Houthi movement.

The defence secretary is now letting British fighter jets join those patrols, as well as providing refuelling for Saudi airstrikes on “Houthi military targets in Yemen”.

It comes as last month saw more civilian casualties resulting from Saudi airstrikes on Yemen than any other since 2022, according to the Yemen Data Project.

At least 66 civilians were killed and a further 90 injured, with eight children among the dead.

One of the deadliest strikes came on 22 September, when six civilians including a woman and two children were killed in the bombing of a residential home in the city of Mokha.

That same day, Britain agreed to provide air-to-air refuelling support to the Saudi air force, supplementing the deployment of air defence equipment and UK personnel already in the region.

Saudi forces struck a market in the Al-Taiziyah district of Taiz governorate five days later, killing seven civilians and injuring 40 others, including five children.

Defensive?

Despite the mounting civilian death toll, Britain announced this week that it will deploy Typhoon fighter jets and military advisers to help protect Saudi Arabia, and expand the scope of aerial refuelling.

The UK government says this is “defensive” support while largely ignoring that the reignition of the conflict in July was triggered when Saudi-led forces bombed Sana’a airport.

That attack on a civilian target in the capital of Yemen caused the breakdown of a UN-brokered ceasefire which had held for four years.

The Houthis, who are Yemen’s de facto government and control most of its major population areas, have since engaged in tit-for-tat attacks, a reciprocal blockade, and repeatedly hit King Khalid International Airport in the Saudi capital Riyadh, killing over a dozen people.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence said this week that the Houthis’ “attempts to destabilise the region and undermine the security and stability of the Middle East are unacceptable”.

Defence secretary Wes Streeting announced “we will be deploying the RAF with Typhoons to mount defensive counter air activity against what is outrageous Houthi escalation that we’ve seen in recent weeks”.

Ten of Britain’s leading trade unions urged the government to end its involvement in the war, saying the UK government “should not collaborate with a military that has repeatedly violated international law and has been central to creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises in Yemen”.

University of Sussex professor Anna Stavrianakis told Declassified : “We are told that deploying fighter jets to Saudi Arabia is good for our security, but it’s not.

“The primary cause of the current instability in the Middle East is the US-Israeli war on Iran: that is what is pushing up fuel prices. The UK should be using its diplomatic heft to rein in the US and Israel, not enable the Saudi military.

“Saudi Arabia has a terrible record in Yemen, responsible for what UN experts have said are likely war crimes. UK arms sales, military support and training make us complicit in those crimes.

“Now is not the time to be doubling down on that record but rather, putting all our efforts into political resolutions to the war in Yemen and an end to the assault on Iran”.

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British support

Since Britain announced additional support for Saudi Arabia last month, as many as 20 Voyager air-to-air refuelling missions have been sent to the region from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus.

The transponders of these aircraft are turned off while overflying the Red Sea, making it impossible to determine precisely which air operations have been facilitated by Britain.

This week, the MoD further announced “defensive counter air missions to support the protection of Saudi cities and critical national infrastructure against aerial attack”.

That will involve an undisclosed number of Typhoon fighter jets flying out from Qatar, potentially equipped with the new Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) anti-drone systems.

Declassified asked the MoD who is paying for this assistance, and whether violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) by Saudi forces are currently being monitored.

Those questions remain unanswered.

During the 2015-2022 Saudi-Yemen war, the MoD maintained a “tracker” database with more than 500 alleged IHL violations reportedly conducted by the Saudi-led coalition.

Although the RAF says its own Typhoon jets will not directly bomb Yemen, arms exports to Saudi Arabia mean Britain is deeply enmeshed in this escalating conflict.

In 2007, Saudi Arabia agreed to buy 72 Typhoons from British arms firm BAE Systems in a deal valued at £4.43bn.

The MoD previously acknowledged that “BAE Systems personnel, including seconded RAF personnel, provide routine training support” to Saudi air force crews.

It added that “BAE Systems personnel also maintain simulators providing synthetic training on the Typhoon platform”.

BAE runs a weekly Boeing 737 cargo flight from its Typhoon factory in Warton, northern England, to Ta’if airbase, from where Saudi Arabia operates its Typhoon fleet.

The BAE cargo flight, which refuels at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, is believed to carry spare parts needed to maintain Saudi Typhoons.

Saudi fighter jet pilots conduct their initial training on a fleet of British-supplied BAE Hawk aircraft, while their air force has another fleet of BAE-made Tornado aircraft which are not thought to be currently used in Yemen.

Alongside the US, which sold Saudi Arabia F-15 fighter jets, the UK is one of Riyadh’s main suppliers of combat aircraft.

In addition, Campaign Against Arms Trade recently revealed that the UK government approved £464.8m of arms exports for Saudi Arabia in the first quarter of 2026.

The licences covered items previously used in Saudi-led attacks on Yemen including bombs and missiles.

Stretching the concept

Defence secretary Wes Streeting justified the latest package of military assistance by saying the “continuing attacks from the Houthis on our ally Saudi Arabia are absolutely despicable”.

He added that the “targeting of the airport in Riyadh in particular shows the lengths the Houthis are going to escalate the situation in the region”.

This support contrasts strongly with Streeting’s earlier statements on Saudi Arabia, which included advocating for an arms embargo in the House of Commons.

In 2018, Streeting declared : “The UK’s ability to uphold the values of the rules-based international system is compromised unless we hold Saudi Arabia to account for the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Yemen”.

Shortly after, he referred to Saudi Arabia’s killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and its bombing of a bus filled with school children as “red lines”.

Eight years later, Streeting appears to be stretching the concept of “defense” in order to justify an increasingly important British role in the world, seen by some as “mission creep”.

Houthi politburo member Mohammed al-Bukhaiti previously advised Britain “to think carefully before becoming involved in the aggression against Yemen. Entering the war will not solve the problem; instead, it will make Britain a party to the conflict and hold it accountable for the consequences”.

Former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers told the Global Security Forum in Doha this week: “The Houthis are here to stay. They’re not going to be defeated, and they’re going to remain in control of a large part of Yemen for the foreseeable future”.

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