Since starting his second term in January 2025, President Trump has continued a drone war in Yemen that has gone unnoticed in the US, according to a report from the Yemen Data Project (YDP).
From January 2025 to March 2026, the YDP found 21 reports of US drone strikes in Yemen through an investigation of open-source material. In some of the strikes, the victims were said to be members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), or sometimes the slain were not identified. In at least one strike, which targeted an AQAP gathering in the Marib Governorate on December 8, 2025, a woman and a child were injured.
The drone strikes against AQAP in central and eastern Yemen are separate from the bombing campaign the Trump administration conducted against the Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, who govern Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and territory in northwestern Yemen, where most Yemenis live.
Trump’s bombing campaign against the Houthis, dubbed “Operation Rough Rider,” was conducted from March 15, 2025, to May 6, 2025, and involved very heavy missile strikes that killed more than 250 civilians.
The YDP noted the fact that the US military hasn’t taken credit for strikes against AQAP since 2020, despite the attacks continuing through the Biden administration, raising concerns about transparency. The report said that eight US drone strikes occurred during the final year of Biden’s presidency, and 16 were launched in the first year of Trump’s second term.
During his first term, President Trump dramatically expanded US operations against AQAP in Yemen, starting with a botched raid in January 2017 that killed Nawar al-Awlaki, an eight-year-old girl, and an American citizen whose father, Anwar al-Awlaki, and brother, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, were killed by US drone strikes under President Obama in 2011.
The YDP pointed out that Trump’s escalations in Yemen in his first term received significant coverage, while his drone war in this term has received virtually no media attention.
