Red Sea Attacks and Counterstrikes

US Naval History Podcast

US and UK forces have been jointly carrying out a continuous drumbeat of strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen over the past three weeks.

Unfortunately, in the words of President Biden, “Well, when you say are they working, no. Are they going to continue, yes.”

In the meantime while we wait for the strikes to work, the Houthis continue to launch anti-ship missiles at merchant shipping in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, and they have scored a few hits that the US and UK destroyers have not been able to shoot down in time.

We are playing an escalating game of tit-for-tat with the Houthis. We don’t really want to launch an all out air war against them because that would risk drawing in Iran. We could win that fight if it came down to it of course, but if the goal is to open sea lanes, and a war zone pretty definitively closes a sea lane off, so it would be a bit of an own goal in that regard.

In the meantime two U.S. Navy SEALs remain missing and were declared dead after going into the water January 12th during the search and seizure of Houthi weapons sourced from Iran being carried by a vessel in the Arabian Sea.

On the more comical side on 24 January, the Houthi claimed to have attacked and sunk a U.S. destroyer with a missile, which is very not true.

Given the situation, insurance companies are not eager to insure ships sailing into a quasi-war zone and have raised rates appropriately. This means a huge percentage of the shipping traffic which would normally be routed through the Suez Canal will now divert around the Horn of Africa, leading to much higher shipping rates, inflation pressure at home, and disrupted supply chains around the world.

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