Yemen: How many years would it take to catalog Yemen’s military achievements? The task can be shortened by focusing on one commander whose career embodied a share — and perhaps the greatest share — of those accomplishments: Major General Mohammed Abdulkarim Al-Ghamari. His leadership helped turn Yemen’s military-industrial revival from improbability into reality.

Since assuming the post of Chief of Staff in 2016, Al-Ghamari is credited with ushering in a new era of domestic arms production and strategic capability. Once reduced to near-zero by prior restructurings that saw missiles buried and arsenals dismantled, Yemen’s defense industry has been rebuilt under severe constraints — tight blockade, limited resources and sustained external pressure — into an indigenous force that now figures prominently in regional calculations.

What began as a program of defensive restoration advanced into credible deterrence and, at times, precision offensive capability. Yemen’s forces moved from improvised responses to organized campaigns that repeatedly struck at adversaries’ assets. Over successive rounds of confrontation, the balance of power — at least in specific maritime and strategic niches — shifted noticeably, proponents assert, with Yemen demonstrating an ability to impose costs on the Zionist entity and its partners.

The military production effort ranges, by local description, from small arms and munitions to increasingly sophisticated systems: drones, cruise and ballistic missiles, and naval strike capabilities. Defenders of the program say these capabilities matured rapidly, enabling a tempo of operations that surprised many regional and international observers and forced adversaries to reassess assumptions about Yemen’s reach and resilience.

Yemen’s recorded operational milestones — maritime interdictions in the Red Sea, long-range strikes, and the deployment of new drone types — are presented as proof that the country converted scarcity into technical ingenuity. The striking tactical effects have altered adversaries’ behavior and imposed new constraints on hostile maritime and economic activity.

Al-Ghamari is not merely as an architect of hardware but as the steward of a doctrine that fused faith-based motivation, improvisational engineering and strategic patience. His name, observers say, has become synonymous with Yemen’s broader military transformation — a symbol of how political will, organizational learning and indigenous production combined to make the once-unthinkable achievable.