Did you know that the U.S. Navy is now engaged in its biggest sea battle since World War II?
That’s the news from the Red Sea, where U.S. Navy and other allies’ warships are patrolling the waters, trying to keep shipping safe on its way to and from the Suez Canal despite constant bombardments by the Houthis.
That renegade faction in Yemen, with weapons supplied by Iran, has been attacking ships since November using drones, missiles and unmanned surface vessels (boat bombs). They claim to be doing these attacks because of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, but their targets have included many ships with no ties to that country.
Those attacks (60 so far) have sunk two ships and killed four mariners, most recently this week in an attack captured on video by a boat bomb on a Greek-owned bulk carrier.
Why should we care? Two reasons:
First, 12% of all the world’s shipping goes through the Suez Canal, or used to. Because of the Houthi attacks and resulting “surge pricing” (up 900%) for war risk insurance, most ships bound from Asia to Europe are now taking the longer, safer route around the tip of Africa adding 4,000 miles and about 14-18 days of extra travel time and a 70% bump in fuel costs. That means shipments are late and the added cost ($1,000 per shipping container) is being passed along to customers.
Aside for the now-all-too-familiar “supply chain disruptions,” these attacks have now put U.S. sailors literally in harm’s way.
The aptly named Red Sea safety patrols of “Operation Prosperity Guardian” include the U.S. aircraft carrier Eisenhower and its escort ships (cruisers, destroyers and support vessels) staffed with a combined 6,000–7,000 crew members. Now, they too, are under attack by the Houthis.
For nine months the U.S. Navy ships have been under constant alert, watching for incoming attacks… some with swarms of low-speed armed drones, others with anti-ship cruise missiles or even 15,000 mph ballistic missiles.
That means that, 24/7, these U.S. warships are watching for Houthi attacks, sometimes responding with American warplanes, missiles and, as a last resort, the Phalanx Gatling gun which fires 3,000 rounds per minute with a range of about one mile.
From the time of a Houthi missile launch to possible impact on a target, we’re talking about minutes, maybe even seconds.
Nothing would please the Houthis more than hitting a U.S. Navy ship. And they’ve already made several claims of bombing the U.S.S. Eisenhower, though those claims seem to be more for domestic PR than based in fact.
The U.S. and its allies have fired back on the Houthis’ radar sites, but the guerillas’ truck-mounted launch systems are almost impossible to track let alone destroy. And the supply of Iranian armaments seems endless.
How will the Pentagon react if (or when) a U.S. Navy ship takes a direct hit or American sailors are injured or killed? What would an escalation of this war mean to the world’s economy, still struggling to recover?