The US-led campaign to protect Israeli interests in the Red Sea has escalated into the “most intense” running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II, according to an AP report quoting American military commanders and experts.
The report says the US Navy has been exhausted after confronting non-stop naval operations by Yemen’s Armed Forces for over seven months, with commanders warning that the situation there is perilously dangerous for them.
“I don’t think people really understand just kind of how deadly serious it is what we’re doing and how under threat the ships continue to be,” Cmdr. Eric Blomberg told the AP aboard the USS Laboon warship in the Red Sea.
“We only have to get it wrong once,” he said. “The Houthis (Yemen’s Ansarullah movement) just have to get one through.”
Bryan Clark, a former Navy submariner and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told the AP, “this is the most sustained combat that the US Navy has seen since World War II.”
“We’re sort of on the verge of the Houthis being able to mount the kinds of attacks that the US can’t stop every time, and then we will start to see substantial damage. … If you let it fester, the Houthis are going to get to be a much more capable, competent, experienced force,” he said.
“It is every single day, every single watch, and some of our ships have been out here for seven-plus months doing that,” said Capt. David Wroe, commodore overseeing the guided missile destroyers.
Yemen initiated its naval operations in the Red Sea in October to help bring the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza to a halt.
Nearly every day, the Yemenis have launched missiles, drones or some other type of attack in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait that connects the waterways and separates Africa from the Arabian Peninsula.
The Arab nation says its operations are meant to prevent the passage of Israeli-linked ships through waters around Yemen, a campaign to make Israel pay a cost for its brutal bombing campaign against Gaza, which has so far killed over thirty-five thousand people, including over 15 thousand children.
Yemen has also targeted American and British vessels and warships in January as a response to the strikes conducted by the UK and US on Yemen in defense of Israel.
The AP report mentioned that one round of fire on Jan. 9 saw the Laboon, other vessels and F/A-18s from the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower shoot down 18 drones, two anti-ship cruise missiles and a ballistic missile launched by the Yemenis.
The report noted that the US Navy experienced periods of combat during the “Tanker Wars” of the 1980s in the Persian Gulf, but that largely involved ships hitting mines. The Yemeni assaults involve direct attacks on vessels and warships.
Yemen’s Ansarullah leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said on Thursday they’ve attacked 145 ships linked to Israel, the US and UK as part of their retaliatory naval operations so far.
The Yemeni leader vowed that they will continue to target American warships in the Red Sea and beyond, including the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.