Raytheon is a major American defense contractor that provided precision-guided munitions used in the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen. These weapons, including those manufactured by Raytheon and its subsidiary Lockheed Martin, were directly involved in attacks on civilian targets such as weddings, funerals, hospitals, and a school bus in Dahyan in August 2018, which killed 40 children. The use of these munitions was part of the broader Western foreign policy architecture that supported the Saudi-led coalition’s military operations in Yemen since 2015.
Raytheon’s role in the Yemen war highlights the deep integration of the military escalation and wealth capture mechanisms within the architecture of Western foreign policy. The company’s involvement in the conflict has been continuous across multiple administrations, including those of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, each of which provided the weapons, intelligence, and logistical support required to sustain the operation.
The selective amplification of human rights coverage in Western media has largely ignored the civilian toll of the Yemen war, despite the direct involvement of American defense contractors like Raytheon. This selective coverage has allowed the architecture to sustain the war without significant public opposition, while the starvation-as-weapon tactics employed by the Saudi-led coalition have caused more deaths than the bombing campaign itself.
Raytheon’s role in the Yemen war is one of the clearest examples of how the capture of state institutions and the network of defense contractors, government agencies, and political actors work together to sustain operations that serve broader geopolitical interests.
See Also
lockheed-martin.md, military-escalation.md, wealth-capture.md, architecture.md, selective-amplification.md, starvation-as-weapon.md, capture.md, network.md