It has been, so far, impossible to verify the Houthis claims that they killed or wounded 500 Saudi-aligned troops and captured 2,000 more. At the time of writing, Saudi Arabia has declined to respond in any way to the Houthi's claims.

At an earlier press conference, with foreign journalists in attendance, Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree would not say where or when the fighting occurred, specifically, claiming operational security concerns. He did claim that it had taken place within Saudi Arabia's southern Najran province, which borders Yemen. Al Jazeera reported that the battle had taken place sometime in August 2019.

On Sept. 29 and 30, 2019, the Houthi-aligned Al Masirah television channel broadcast footage from the reported battle, showing the Yemeni rebels firing anti-tank guided missiles and other weapons at a convoy consisting of LAV-25 light armored vehicles , M163 Vulcan Air Defense System (VADS) vehicles, as well as various types of mine-protected or otherwise armored trucks and unarmored Toyota pickup trucks. Additional footage shows allegedly Saudi personnel, as well as possible foreign mercenaries under Saudi direction, surrendering.

Yemen's Houthi rebels have released video footage that they say is from a recent major battle with Saudi Arabian forces that resulted in hundreds of Saudi casualties and the capture of many more, along with the seizure of vast array of vehicles and other weapons and equipment. The Houthi's specific claims cannot be independently verified and follow questionable assertions from the group about its involvement in recent unprecedented attacks on key pieces of Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure . However, the disclosure does come nearly two years after a senior U.S. military advisor publicly highlighted worryingly high casualty rates and poor training and sustainment practices within the Saudi Arabian National Guard, specifically, which appears to have been involved in this particular incident.

At the same time, however, there are many details available already that lend weight to their claims with regards to fighting in or around Najran, even if the Houthi's assertions about the total number of Saudi casualties, and personnel and equipment they captured, remain dubious. The presence of LAV-25s, for example, strongly indicates that members of the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG) were among those in the convoy that the Houthis attacked.

The credibility of Houthi claims, in general, has seen significant challenges recently after the group claimed responsibility for a series of unprecedented suicide drone and missile strikes on Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq oil processing facility and Khurais oil field earlier in September. There has been a growing body of evidence that suggests that these attacks did not originate in Yemen. That the Iranian-backed Yemeni rebels have released their own clearly fabricated "evidence" to support their claims has only further called them into question.

The Saudis have the largest force of LAV-25s, and other associated variants of that 8x8 wheeled design, in the world, with more than 1,900 examples in total, Major General Frank Muth, then-head of the Office of the Program Manager-Saudi Arabian National Guard (OPM-SANG), the top U.S. advisory body to this Saudi force, said during a presentation at the Association of the U.S. Army's main annual convention in October 2017. With the exception of Qatar, which dropped out the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis in 2017 over a still-ongoing political spat, no other country that has been part of this bloc operates these vehicles. Since at least 2016, SANG has been rotating its mechanized brigades, one at a time, through deployments to the border region with Yemen, according to Muth. "They [the SANG] are on the border with Yemen right now, fighting the Houthis, fighting the Houthis crossing the border," he said in his 2017 presentation. There is also evidence that the SANG has deployed with these vehicles into Yemen proper.

Unlike the U.S. National Guard, the SANG is a sort of praetorian guard that is publicly charged with protecting the ruling monarchy in Saudi Arabia, as well as key religious sites and other important infrastructure, including oil-related sites. This Saudi force also has a large irregular component that recruits heavily from various tribal groups within Saudi Arabia, which would help explain the general appearance of a large portion of the individuals the Houthis reportedly captured. Many of the supposedly captured fighters were wearing flip flops and traditional clothing found in this region has led experts to question whether or not these individuals were Saudi Arabians or foreign mercenaries, including pro-Saudi Yemeni militiamen. At least some of the troops that the Houthis captured were wearing Saudi uniforms or claimed to be Saudi Arabian nationals, which could have been the SANG officers leading the force.

Joseph Trevithick A slide from Major General Muth's 2017 presentation, showing the general dispositions of SANG mechanized forces in the country, including a brigade's worth of forces along the southern border with Yemen.

If the Houthis claims are at all true, the battle will be a particularly embarrassing episode for the Saudis, who have been fighting a brutal war with the Yemeni rebels since March 2015. Unfortunately, the SANG's apparent performance, as well as that of the irregular forces that appear to have been under their immediate command, is not necessarily surprising to anyone who might have caught Major General Muth's discussion nearly two years ago. Though Muth, who had taken over the post as head of OPM-SANG in July 2016, was upbeat in his talk about the progress that the Saudis had made, he highlighted a number of extremely severe deficiencies that had he and his team of advisors had been working to rectify. His descriptions of SANG experiences in fighting with the Houthis along the border align well with the Houthis latest claims. “They were having problems with people not getting off the point of injury and not surviving," he said in 2017. "We had to show them, it only takes like four basic things for you to learn and understand at the soldier level, be able to bring that – I’m not going to use an exact number, but let’s say its very high, 70 to 80 percent died of wounds, just an example, that may not be the case – down to a much lower number.” Muth pointed out that, on average, only two percent of U.S. Army soldiers typically died at the point of injury in recent American conflicts. The general officer said that, as of October 2017, the SANG, with great effort, had been able to get their rate down to 16 percent.

US Army US Army Brigadier General Frank Muth, then-head of OPM-SANG, receives the King Abdul Aziz Medal, First Order, from His Highness Prince Khalid bin Abdul Aziz bin Ayyaf Al Megren, Minister of the National Guard, in May 2018.

It is “night and day how much better they’re fighting now. Why, because they know somebody’s there to care of them," Muth said, a comment that further highlights how dire things must have been initially. Still, the "improved" casualty rate meant that nearly two out of every 10 SANG casualties were still dying right on the battlefield and it is unclear how much better their prospects may have been at the next level of care, if they even got there. We don't know if these figures have improved or regressed since then. Training, in general, was also a problem. Muth said that he had initiated plans in 2016 to establish officer and non-commissioned officer academies to improve the performance of SANG's leadership, but that it was unlikely they would produce results for at least five years. Bear in mind that OPM-SANG has been working in Saudi Arabia since 1973. In the interim, American advisors had helped craft a six-week "Warrior Leaders Course" to try and improve the force's overall quality. “We’re going to pull staff sergeants and sergeant first classes out of the LAV formations, put them through an intensive six-week training cycle, and we’re focusing on some basic stuff," Muth explained. "I’m talking patrolling, weapons fire, communication, land nav [sic; navigation], P.T. [physical training] – let me say that again, P.T., a lot of P.T. – and just basic skill sets."

US Army US Army advisors to Saudi Arabia pose with members of Saudi Arabia's G3 Military Police Command and instructors of Riyadh's Military Police Training Academy after a graduation ceremony in 2016.