Inside Saudi Arabia’s Secret Missile Bases

Añadido: 2026-06-07

[00:00:00]You know what baffles military analysts about Iran? A country under decades of sanctions, isolated from Western technology, facing two nuclear-armed adversaries, and it didn't fold.

[00:00:12]Its secret wasn't cutting-edge aircraft or a blue-water navy. It was tunnels, mountains, thousands of missiles pointed in every direction, a military doctrine built entirely around the idea that you don't need to win a conventional war.

[00:00:28]You just need to make the cost of attacking you unbearable. For decades, Gulf states had invested hundreds of billions into the conventional model.

[00:00:36]American jets, Patriot batteries, sophisticated radar systems. Impressive on paper, but Iran just demonstrated that mass and concealment can rival, maybe even outlast, technological superiority. So, quietly, methodically, the Gulf began to change course. Saudi Arabia's missile story actually begins in 1987, in secrecy and some controversy. The kingdom purchased Chinese DF-3A ballistic missiles, long-range, liquid-fueled, originally designed to carry nuclear warheads, though Saudi Arabia acquired them with conventional payloads. The range was extraordinary for the time, up to 5,000 km, enough to reach virtually any capital in the region. The deal was kept quiet for over a year before Western intelligence detected it, but the missiles stayed. By 2007, a second Chinese system arrived, the more advanced DF-21, shorter range, but far more accurate. Out of these acquisitions grew an entirely new branch of the Saudi military, the Royal Saudi Strategic Missile Force, formally announced in 2013. And then came the infrastructure.

[00:01:46]Deep in the mountains, about 200 km southwest of Riyadh, sits Al Watah, the crown jewel of the Saudi missile program. Built in the late 1980s with Chinese assistance, It has two large launch pads, underground storage tunnels, mobile launch areas, and most significantly, a solid fuel missile engine production facility completed in 2017. Further south, about 450 km from Riyadh sits As Sulayyil, one of the original Chinese-built bases recently upgraded in 2023 with a new multi-entrance underground complex.

[00:02:22]Then, there is Ranyah, carved into rock roughly 550 km southwest of the capital, and Al-Hariq, one of the oldest in the network, 65 km south of Riyadh, still operational, still being expanded with a new complex currently under construction as of 2025. The newest facility, An Nabahniyah, breaks a decades-long pattern. It's the first entirely new base built since the 1980s. What connects all of these sites is a single strategic philosophy. If your missiles can't be found, they can't be destroyed.

[00:02:56]And if they can't be destroyed, they deter.