US Forces vs Houthi Militia In The Red Sea Balance Of Power Insider

There's conflict bubbling in the Red Sea that could shake geopolitics and the global economy. The Iranian-backed Houthi militia is taking on all kinds of commercial ships that are bound for the Suez Canal. Houthis say that they're doing this as support for Palestinians. And US-led task force is fighting back. Let's look at the balance of power between the Houthis and US forces. Hi, I'm Sam Fellman. I'm defense editor with Business Insider. I'm US Navy veteran who served aboard destroyers. The United States is using an assortment of weapons in its arsenal to try to strike back at Houthi capabilities generally, and then specifically to take out observed missile launchers as they're spotted. In the big strikes the US-led coalition has increasingly had to make, they use cruise missiles like the Tomahawk cruise missile that costs about $2 million piece. These are the kind of weapons that were used to strike at Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan immediately after the attacks of September 11. The Tomahawk is very effective against variety of fixed targets, even hardened ones. So command center, an area where missile launchers are stored, air defense systems, radars. And so it has pinpoint accuracy. It has variety of different warheads it can carry, including nuclear. The US also uses Hellfire missiles. Those are air-to-ground, fairly short range, guided missiles. Those can be very effective. They can be fired by an MQ-9 Reaper drone. The Houthis are supplied by Iran. They have approximately 200,000 fighters in this pocket of Yemen that they control. The weapons that are flowing to the Houthis are Iranian-made, and those are predominantly of two types. One is drones, and then, secondarily, it is missiles, cruise and ballistic missiles. So, some examples of the different Iranian-made weapons, one is the Charlie-802 missile that was originally weapon associated with China that is manufactured in Iran. It's cruise missile. The US is showing that it can effectively stop the Charlie-802, but that's only if it's within the air defense intercept ranges. So outside of that, merchant ship has no defense against fairly accurate, powerful weapon like Charlie-802 cruise missile. Another example would be these Iranian-made ballistic missiles. Those can carry more payload and are faster than comparable cruise missile. cruise missile coming in more of sea-skimming attack, whereas ballistic missile may follow different type of terminal trajectory. Both are pretty threatening. And recently we've seen the Houthis firing what's known as ASBMs. Those are anti-ship ballistic missiles. They're more difficult to intercept, because they're coming in faster. It forces the air defenders to be that much faster and on point to identify threats and then assign weapons to them to knock them out and then try to warn ships that are threatened to get out of the area as fast as they can. The US is predominantly using two types of aircraft. The first one is the MQ-9 Reaper drone. The Reaper is an ideal platform for this kind of warfare. It's $30 million drone. It can carry the same Hellfire missiles that manned, fixed-wing planes can carry. It can basically glide, kind of hover over areas of interest to the US military. It has sensors like cameras to detect enemy movements that the US may want to stop. So in other words, the MQ-9 may be loitering around the coastlines of Yemen, but is zooming in with its sensors to look for movements of trucks that look to be carrying missiles, for example, or looking at potential launch points for where drones may be. The Reaper also is combat drone, meaning that if there is target of opportunity that's spotted, then the Reaper drone could potentially attack it with those Hellfire missiles. Another important aircraft in this air fight is the carrier-based fighter, the F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet. They're not going to have the on-station time of Reaper, but they'll also have sensors aboard that make it an ideal asset to spot enemy movements. And they're going to have weapons they could carry, like joint direct attack munitions. They may carry bevy of air-to-air missiles that would be useful for striking out, whether it's Houthi helicopter or Houthi drone. The US is also using SH-60 Seahawks. Those are multipurpose helicopters. Normally, they're doing whole range of missions, from potentially picking up aviators whose planes have splashed into the water. In this particular fight, the helicopters are assisting ships with identifying Houthi drones and also Houthi boats. The Houthis have, on couple occasions, sent boats maybe packed with explosives towards the international shipping, and helicopters are very effective way to spot them and stop them with onboard missiles and guns. One of the things that Houthis are doing is Houthis are also launching drones. These drones are pretty cheap. And so one of the problems of this kind of warfare is that drone that may cost $10,000 or $30,000, the US is forced to take out with $2 million or $4 million intercept missile. That raises problems for US production and how expensive it is to defend this critical strait. The eyes of this task force are the spy radar systems as well as the radar system aboard the E-2C Hawkeye that there's giant dish above this aircraft where this air and ground search radar is. And so these assets are able to look out and try to see where there may be Houthi missiles or drones. Spotting these threats as soon as they are in the air is critical to this fight, and so these sensors are the first part of the fight. The Houthis have surface-to-air missiles which look to be pretty antiquated, like the S-75 Soviet-made SAM system, so there are some threats to American aircraft in and around Yemeni airspace. We've seen two MQ-9 Reaper drones shot down, and the Houthis have taken them out, likely with surface-to-air missiles, so the threat to manned and unmanned aviation is not insignificant. The Houthis don't have navy. So the US has quite lot of firepower in and around this area as the tensions have risen with the Houthis. The US has the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, and that's made up of the aircraft carrier Dwight Eisenhower and its carrier air wing, the cruiser the Philippine Sea, and then the destroyers Gravely, Mason, and Laboon. And so those ships make up the bulk of the US-led coalition or the US-led task force that's in this area. The US has devoted significant combat resources to this task force in the Red Sea. There's probably 6,500 to 7,000 American sailors who are part of the effort. There is what's known as an SSGN. That is guided missile submarine. It's nuclear-powered American submarine that lurks and can carry up to 154 Tomahawk missiles. That's more than any other ship in the US fleet. Most of the weapons aboard surface combatant like destroyer or cruiser are stored in vertical launch cells. They're big tubes where the weapons are stored, and then when the weapon is fired, it's ignited in the tube and then blasts out over the deck. It goes from flat to moves vertical, exposing the missile underneath that's then firing and pushing out and leaving behind trail of fire and smoke as it takes off. The Gravely used the CIWS, or the close-in weapon system, to shoot down Houthi-fired cruise missile. That is really significant achievement by the Gravely and by the US Navy. This is the first combat use of the CIWS in naval conflict, and this was successful. served aboard destroyer. I've stared at plenty of air and surface search radars. This is very frightening situation that the Gravely was in, because you're down to one of your last resort weapons to defend the ship. actually had worked with that system when it was land-based. think it would be very stressful to be watching, either seeing something pop up on your screen, like this cruise missile, to see on your air search radar that it's either gotten through your first layer of missiles or it wasn't spotted and now needs to be engaged in such close range that you're only using this last-resort gun system. We do know that this is about as stressful as it comes in an air defense game. The Houthis control about third of the territory of Yemen and more than two-thirds of the population. They are challenging international shipping that is going through the Red Sea. That's really critical transit route, because the Red Sea connects to the Suez Canal, and that links the Mediterranean with shipping routes that go into the Indian Ocean. Twenty percent of the world's shipping containers are estimated to go through the route, and it's forcing the companies that operate these ships and their insurers to start thinking twice about which routes they're going to take. We're seeing that the costs of shipping are rising substantially. The cost of an average standard 40-foot shipping container that is going from Asia to the US East Coast has risen by 135% since last fall. The fight shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. The Houthis have attacked three ships with missiles so far in early March. They've killed three crew members and forced the abandoning of one vessel. Another one was sunk. recent attack featured as many as three dozen drones that forced American planes to shoot them down. So even after all the attacks, the US will escalate further. None of that has persuaded the Houthis to actually stop or reduce the attacks, and if anything, the Houthis are showing that they still have the capability to actually damage some of these ships, despite the widespread efforts of this US-led task force. The Houthis have survived brutal war against Saudi Arabia, and they are experts at evading air power. And the US has been hesitant to escalate for fear that it may lead to more attacks or larger confrontation with Iran. And there doesn't seem to be the political willingness to risk the larger confrontation with Iran that that may come with. The balance of power lies with the Houthis. The Houthis are next to this critical strait used by international commerce, and the Houthis have the weapons to threaten it indefinitely. And it would require the US to take much larger combat action in order to fully remove that threat, and at such scale that it may trigger larger confrontation with Iran. That's not fight the Biden administration really wants to provoke.