Raytheon-Manufactured Bomb Kills 23 at Yemen Wedding, Majority Women and Children

On April 22, 2018, a Saudi-led coalition airstrike struck a wedding celebration in northern Yemen, killing 23 people including the bride and predominately women and children. The weapon used was identified as a GBU-12 Paveway II precision-guided bomb, manufactured jointly by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and provided to the Saudi military through US government-approved arms sales. The Guardian and Bellingcat investigations confirmed that the majority of casualties were women and children attending a wedding ceremony in a rural village with no apparent military targets in the vicinity. The strike occurred in daylight hours when wedding celebrations were clearly visible, and witnesses reported no Houthi military presence or activity that could have constituted a legitimate military objective. The attack represented another instance in a documented pattern of Saudi coalition forces using US-supplied precision-guided munitions to strike civilian gatherings in Yemen.

Arizona-Manufactured Bomb

Weapons analysis conducted by Bellingcat using photographs of bomb fragments recovered from the wedding site confirmed the munition as a GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided 500-pound bomb. The Paveway guidance system was manufactured by Raytheon at its facilities in Tucson, Arizona, and assembled with bomb bodies produced by Lockheed Martin. The precision-guidance technology allowed the weapon to strike within meters of its intended target, meaning the attack’s civilian casualties resulted from deliberate targeting decisions rather than accuracy limitations. Raytheon marketed the Paveway system as technology that reduced civilian harm through improved precision, yet the wedding attack demonstrated how this accuracy enabled war crimes by allowing attackers to deliberately strike civilian gatherings with certainty. The bomb that killed 23 wedding celebrants traveled directly from Arizona factories to Saudi airbases to a Yemeni village, establishing a clear chain of custody linking American manufacturing to civilian deaths.

Pattern of Attacks on Civilian Gatherings

The wedding bombing was not an isolated incident but part of a systematic pattern of Saudi coalition attacks on civilian celebrations, funerals, markets, and other gatherings throughout Yemen. Human rights organizations documented dozens of similar strikes on weddings and social events between 2015 and 2018, with investigations consistently finding no legitimate military targets that could justify the attacks under international humanitarian law. The pattern suggested either catastrophically poor intelligence or deliberate targeting of civilians to terrorize the population—both violations of the laws of war. Precision-guided weapons played a central role in enabling these attacks, as the technology’s accuracy eliminated defenses based on targeting errors or collateral damage. Coalition forces struck exactly where they intended, and what they intended to strike were civilian gatherings. The wedding attack in April 2018 occurred while congressional debate over Saudi arms sales intensified, providing concrete evidence for opponents of continued weapons transfers.

Raytheon Profitability Amid Civilian Casualties

The Yemen wedding bombing occurred during a period of record profitability for Raytheon, with the company’s stock price rising significantly from 2015-2018 as Middle East conflicts and weapons sales accelerated. Saudi Arabia represented one of Raytheon’s largest international customers, with contracts worth billions of dollars for Patriot missile systems, Paveway munitions, and related military equipment. Company financial disclosures indicated that approximately 5% of Raytheon’s annual revenue came from Saudi sales, creating strong corporate incentives to maintain the relationship despite mounting evidence of weapons misuse. When confronted about Raytheon weapons being used in attacks killing Yemeni civilians, company executives consistently responded that decisions about weapons employment remained the purchaser’s responsibility, not the manufacturer’s. This position ignored international arms transfer agreements requiring suppliers to assess risks of human rights violations and avoid transfers likely to be used in war crimes. For Raytheon shareholders, the wedding bombing and similar incidents represented at most minor public relations challenges, not material threats to the company’s lucrative Saudi contracts.

Significance

The Raytheon bomb strike on a Yemen wedding in April 2018 exemplified the direct connection between US defense contractor profits and civilian casualties in conflicts where American-made weapons enabled systematic war crimes. The 23 deaths—predominately women and children celebrating a wedding—represented both individual tragedies and evidence of broader patterns of unlawful violence. The use of precision-guided Raytheon/Lockheed Martin munitions eliminated any technical excuse for the civilian casualties, demonstrating that coalition forces chose to strike a wedding celebration despite possessing the technological capability to distinguish between military and civilian targets. For US policymakers, the attack occurred during a critical period when congressional opposition to Saudi arms sales was building momentum, yet would ultimately fail to override executive branch support for continued weapons transfers. The wedding bombing revealed the moral logic of defense contractor profitability—Raytheon and Lockheed Martin reaped billions in revenue from Saudi sales, faced no legal accountability when their weapons killed civilians at weddings, and successfully maintained political support for continued arms transfers by leveraging the economic and strategic arguments for the US-Saudi military relationship. The 23 deaths joined thousands of other Yemeni civilian casualties enabled by US weapons, establishing Yemen as a case study in how defense contractor profits and government strategic interests could override humanitarian concerns and international law obligations.