Is the U.S. Conducting Air Strikes Against Al Qaeda in Yemen?

Is the United States conducting drone strikes in Yemen against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)? If one relies on official statements by the U.S. government, the answer appears to be no. Indeed, the United States has not confirmed a strike against AQAP since 2020, when President Donald Trump was in the final year of his first term. However, local Yemeni media, Yemeni analysts, and a few non-Yemeni news outlets reported several U.S. airstrikes throughout 2025 and into 2026, suggesting that there may be a covert campaign.

America’s drone war in Yemen has a long history. And if this clandestine campaign is ongoing, then the lack of transparency greatly complicates efforts to ensure accountability for errors and civilian casualties. It also exacerbates the risk of further embroiling the United States in an endless war with no clear strategy.

Reported U.S. Strikes in Yemen in 2025 and Early 2026

On May 23, 2025, the United States conducted a drone strike in the Yemeni province of Abyan, according to reports in Xinhua (Chinese state media) and Agence France-Presse (AFP). Xinhua cited an anonymous Yemeni government official who stated that six AQAP members were killed. AFP cited two anonymous security sources who put the death toll at five AQAP militants. When asked about the reported strike, a U.S. defense official told New America that the U.S. government had not conducted any deliberate strikes since Trump announced a ceasefire in the air campaign against Yemen’s Houthi rebels on May 6, 2025.

Between May 23 and January 2026, however, New America tracked at least four other reported strikes — and possibly seven.

On Nov. 3, 2025, Asharq al-Aswat, South24, and Yemen Online all alleged that the United States had conducted another strike in Yemen, this time in the Wadi Ubaydah area of Marib. The airstrike reportedly killed a senior AQAP official by the name of Abu Muhammad al-San’ani, who allegedly played a leading role in the group’s negotiations with the Houthis. Asharq al-Aswat cited an anonymous local security source. South24 cited unspecified sources, and Yemen Online referenced local security sources and eyewitnesses. The Asharq al-Aswat report also suggested that al-San’ani was one of the individuals targeted in the May 2025 strike.

On Nov. 29, 2025, two al Qaeda operatives were killed in another U.S. strike in Marib, according to reports in Xinhua, Yemen Online, Asharq al-Aswat, South24, and the Houthi-aligned Yemen Press Agency. According to Mohammed bin Faisal, a researcher focused on Yemen, jihadist sources said the strike killed Munir al-Ahdal, who he described as an important field commander. (South24 also described al-Ahdal as an important local AQAP figure in a report published months earlier.) Importantly, AQAP al-Ahdal’s death in a martyrdom notice, which bin Faisal shared on social media.

Then, on Dec. 8, 2025, the United States conducted another strike against AQAP, according to Xinhua, Yemen Online, and Yemen Press Agency. According to Bin Faisal, jihadist sources said two senior AQAP officials were killed. One of them, known as Abu Ubaydah al-Hadrami, was reportedly a senior AQAP judicial and sharia (religious) official. The other, Anis al-Hasali, was described as a security figure. (Both the Houthi-aligned Yemen Press Agency and the Southern Transitional Council-aligned South24 followed Bin Faisal’s reporting.)

The United States may have conducted a fourth strike on Dec. 23, 2025. According to Yemen Online, Bin Faisal’s jihadist sources (repeated by South24) and Agenzia Nova, an al Qaeda operative known as Kamal al-San’ani was killed in Marib. According to a report published by in 2023, members of an alleged AQAP cell had confessed to Southern Forces that al-San’ani was a drone expert. Notably, this same cell’s members identified Munir Al-Ahdal as an AQAP leader.

Reports of U.S. strikes against AQAP have continued into 2026. According to Yemen Online, two senior AQAP officials were killed in a U.S. strike on a motorcycle in eastern Marib on Jan. 11, 2026. The report did not identify who was allegedly killed. According to Yemen Online, Xinhua, and other sources, there was another U.S. strike in Marib on Jan. 25, 2026. Yemen Online reported yet another U.S. strike on Jan. 29, 2026, against AQAP in Yemen’s eastern al-Mahra province by the border with Oman.

The Long History of Alleged and Covert Strikes in Yemen

In March 2025, the Trump administration launched Operation Rough Rider, a campaign of more than 1,100 airstrikes against the Houthis. That campaign, intended “to restore freedom of navigation” in the Red Sea and restore “American deterrence” after the Houthis repeatedly attacked shipping, eclipsed the entire multi-decade history of U.S. strikes against jihadists in Yemen. And it may have also obscured the administration’s alleged targeting of AQAP operatives throughout 2025.

However, covert strikes against AQAP predate the current administration, raising long-term concerns over transparency and accountability. During President Joe Biden’s administration in early 2023, for instance, the United States reportedly conducted two strikes targeting senior AQAP leaders. Neither was officially confirmed by the U.S. government.

First, on Jan. 30, 2023, the United States allegedly conducted a strike in the Wadi Ubaydah area of Marib that killed three al Qaeda operatives, according to multiple reports citing local government officials, including by AFP and the Associated Press (AP). AQAP acknowledged in a martyrdom statement that one of its members, Hassan al-Hadrami, was killed. According to the AP, Houthi state media had previously identified al-Hadrami “as one of several ‘specialized’ explosives experts” in AQAP. A U.N. report, authored after al-Hadrami was killed, likewise referred to him as “one of the group’s prominent explosive manufacturing experts.”

Then, on Feb. 26, 2023, the U.S. government reportedly killed two people in Marib, according to Arab News, which cited local residents and a journalist in the area. Similar reports emerged from Yemen Press Agency and Xinhua. Further reporting in AFP, The National, as well as the aforementioned U.N. report, stated that the strike killed Hamad bin Hamoud al-Tamimi, a senior AQAP official. Indeed, the al Qaeda branch acknowledged al-Tamimi’s death.

There were other reported U.S. airstrikes. However, sourcing for these incidents and their attribution to the United States is less clear. For example, reports of a March 2021 U.S. airstrike in Houthi-aligned media and by various social media accounts appear to have wrongly attributed a Houthi ballistic missile attack to American forces. Multiple investigations, as well as Yemeni governmental sources, concluded it was a ballistic missile. In other cases, it is not clear whether strikes were conducted by the United States or by the United Arab Emirates.

This uncertainty highlights the significant challenges that face reporting on airstrikes in Yemen, whether by foreign or local media. These challenges are compounded by the U.S. government’s silence. Regardless, the most recent alleged strikes have been attributed to the United States by a range of outlets with varying political and factional leanings. Some of these reports cite local officials.

Overhanging the allegations of covert U.S. strikes under both Biden and Trump, is the covert character of the Obama administration’s air campaign, as well as the Bush administration’s intent to keep the very first strike in Yemen in 2002 clandestine. From its very first days, the United States has failed to prioritize building transparency and public trust regarding its airstrikes.

The Dangers of Covert Strikes: A Loss of Accountability

The U.S. government’s lack of transparency greatly complicates efforts to hold officials accountable for errors and civilian casualties. It makes congressional oversight more difficult and impedes non-governmental organizations from confirming or disproving such allegations.

Throughout 2025, there were multiple instances of alleged targeting failures and potential civilian casualties in other theaters of the war on terror. These examples emphasize the importance of transparency with respect to Yemen. For example, the AP reported that an October 2025 U.S. raid in Syria may have mistakenly targeted and killed an individual working for the new Syrian government against ISIS.

In Somalia, the U.S. government to have targeted and killed an “al-Shabaab weapons dealer” in the vicinity of Badhan on Sept. 13, 2025. However, other reporting suggests that the man killed was a clan elder, not a member of al Shabaab (al Qaeda’s Somali branch), and was involved in efforts to prevent terrorism. Raising even more questions, the government of the semi-autonomous Somali state of Puntland, which cooperates with the U.S. government in some operations, denied having prior knowledge of the strike. A criminal investigation into the elder’s death concluded he was not an al Shabaab operative. There are also allegations of civilian casualties in U.S. strikes and U.S.-supported operations in the vicinity of Jamaame in southern Somalia on Nov. 14-15, 2025.

United States Africa Command’s (AFRICOM) decision to stop reporting initial battle damage assessments, a result of the Trump administration’s policies, has contributed to a lack of clarity around these and other operations. But at least AFRICOM has been announcing its strikes, reporting that helps enable reporters and non-governmental organizations investigate the allegations and more effectively push for greater detail. For example, some initial reporting on the strike in Badhan it might have been conducted by the United Arab Emirates, rather than the United States, but a press release by AFRICOM clarified it was responsible – even if questions persist about the legitimacy and wisdom of the choice of target.

The Trump administration’s airstrikes against alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean further highlight the need for transparency in Yemen. The White House has publicly promoted some of these attacks, announcing them and releasing partial videos and imagery. However, it soon came to light that the United States had conducted not one but two strikes against an alleged drug boat on Sept. 2, 2025. The second attack heightened already substantial concerns over the legality of the strikes when it came to light that those targeted were likely shipwrecked and, therefore, hors de combat. That is, they were not targetable under international law. The Department of Defense’s Law of War manual cites operations against shipwrecked persons as an example of when servicemembers are “required” to refuse “clearly illegal orders.”

Another Danger of Covert Strikes: A Muddled Strategy and Endless War

A covert campaign can lead to muddled strategic thinking. The U.S. government has conducted airstrikes against AQAP in Yemen on and off since November 2002, meaning that its drone war against the group began more than 23 years ago. This air campaign has not been consistent. The frequency of airstrikes has varied across several presidential administrations, with the first Obama administration escalating the campaign, which then peaked during the first Trump administration. The strikes have been far fewer and less frequent in recent years. Still, one can argue that the war has taken on an endless character, where the United States pursues objectives it can never fully achieve.

In a 2012 speech, three years into the U.S. government’s escalation, the Department of Defense’s then-General Counsel Jeh Johnson stated that he believed there would be “a tipping point at which so many of the leaders of Al Qaeda and its affiliates have been killed or captured and the group is no longer able to attempt or launch a strategic attack against the United States,” and at that point “the organization that our Congress authorized the military to pursue in 2001, has been effectively destroyed.” Johnson’s speech was largely focused on American drone strikes in Yemen.

Ten years later, in 2022, Just Security’s Brianna Rosen astutely wrote that the United States had entered “the most dangerous phase of perpetual war, when public attention has shifted, and elected officials no longer speak of a ‘tipping point’ where the United States can declare victory and move to an approach that relies on law enforcement, intelligence, diplomatic, and other instruments of national power to address the residual threat of terrorism.” Now, more than three years later, Rosen’s warning is even more relevant in Yemen.

Are airstrikes such as those reported in 2025 necessary to contain the threat posed by AQAP today? The answer is unclear. And the U.S. government is not making that case to the American public.

When the Obama administration began targeting AQAP in December 2009, the threat from the group to the United States was far clearer than it is today. Indeed, AQAP attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009, and then followed up with a series of other plots against aviation targets.

There are indications that the U.S. military and intelligence community still view AQAP as a potential threat to the homeland. For example, Admiral Frank Bradley, the Special Operations Command Commander since October 2025, told West Point’s CTC Sentinel: “At least two affiliates—al-Qa`ida in Yemen and ISIS-Khorasan—have the potential to emerge as a homeland threat.” Similarly, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence stated that AQAP has the “intent to target the United States,” but said nothing about its actual capabilities.

Indeed, there are reasons to suspect the group’s capability has declined substantially since the height of its external threat from 2009 to 2012. These reasons range from the damage done by U.S. air strikes on the group’s leadership, to the challenges it has faced from its rivals in ISIS, to the group’s struggles in Yemen’s multisided civil war. That war, and heightened counterterrorism measures throughout the West, have made it more difficult for AQAP to dispatch operatives such as the Christmas Day 2009 bomber. In December 2019, AQAP operatives virtually assisted in the terrorist attack on Naval Air Station Pensacola, an attack that left three people dead and wounded eight others. But there has been little indication of a specific, direct threat since then.

Therefore, there is a real question of whether the logic behind U.S. strikes against AQAP is now one of preventive war rather than a response to direct threats. There is also a significant risk that continuing to strike a potentially degraded AQAP can obscure Yemen’s far larger challenges – an issue recently emphasized not just by the rise of the Houthis as a threat of global concern but by the sudden escalation of tensions within the anti-Houthi coalition. The uncertainty and lack of transparency regarding whether the U.S. government is conducting strikes in Yemen muddles the kind of strategic analysis needed to develop an effective U.S. counterterrorism (and broader) policy in Yemen.

Finally, even if the alleged strikes in Yemen are not being conducted by the United States, the lack of transparency can pose its own challenges by creating a bad information environment. This is risky in a context in which the U.S. government is often blamed for strikes whether or not they were conducted by its forces. The spectral sense of American violence, even around operations carried out by others, risks fueling enmity that can undermine the U.S. government’s efforts to generate support for its policies. Only on occasion does the United States seem to recognize the need for such clarity, such as when U.S. Central Command CENTCOM that its drones or aircraft were responsible for an April 2025 explosion at a UNESCO World Heritage site. According to CENTCOM, that explosion was the result of a Houthi missile and not a U.S. strike.

The Responsibility to Clarify and Provide Oversight

The United States has a responsibility to clarify whether it is currently conducting strikes against AQAP in Yemen. The president should be actively creating the structure for transparency regarding any air campaign and for clear denials when the United States is not responsible. With extremely rare exceptions, every U.S. strike should be accompanied by a press release providing detail on the date, location, and assessed death toll. The U.S. government should also provide an accounting of every strike it has conducted in Yemen over the full course of its multi-decade campaign.

Unfortunately, Trump has not provided such transparency and has instead further undermined the already strained trust needed to enable effective denials. During his first term, Trump reportedly sought to expand the CIA’s covert role in drone strikes, reversing trends towards military control under Obama. According to the New York Times, the CIA was responsible for at least one strike in Yemen at the end of Trump’s first term. Even more concerning, according to Mark Esper, who served as secretary of defense during the president’s first term, Trump mused about whether the U.S. could conduct military operations in Mexico and conceal its responsibility by blaming other countries.

In the absence of presidential action, Congress should provide more oversight and transparency regarding U.S. strikes, while also pressing military and intelligence officials on their current assessment of AQAP’s threat and the strategy to confront it.

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