For the sailors moving the aircraft around on the hangar deck of USS Harry S Truman last week, the ship’s sudden manoeuvres came as a rude surprise. But what happened next served as a salutary reminder of the costs of the western way of war when confronting an elusive enemy.
One jet, being towed by a small tractor, lurched towards the lift opening, where planes are sent up to the flight deck. With the Truman still heeled over, banking to evade incoming missiles fired by the Houthis, the plane kept rolling, and a young crew member leapt out of the cockpit before it, with tractor still attached, disappeared out of the door, dropping into the Red Sea.
The loss of a $67 million F/A-18 fighter on Monday can be added to the $7 billion bill for American operations against the Iran-backed Yemeni group over the past 15 months.
President Trump has promised to “annihilate the Houthis” and a campaign that involved 202 strikes during its first two months, under the Biden administration, has intensified to the point that more than 800 have been delivered. The United States Central Command said it will “continue to increase the pressure and further disintegrate Houthi capabilities as long as they continue to impede freedom of navigation”.
However, having begun this new wave of strikes, co-ordinating policy through the then national security adviser Mike Waltz’s ill-fated Signal group chat, it is unclear whether the Trump administration knows how far to escalate or indeed how to conclude the campaign.
“We see your LETHAL support to the Houthis,” Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, last week warned Iran in a post on X. “You will pay the CONSEQUENCE at the time and place of our choosing.”
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Simultaneously though, the US has been trying to negotiate a deal with Iran over its nuclear programme. Elisabeth Kendall, an expert on Yemen and the head of Girton College at the University of Cambridge, said: “What we’re seeing is a true internal division inside the Trump administration, where a lot of the people who were so staunchly behind Trump are very hawkish on Iran.” This split adds one more complication to America’s avowed aim of ending Houthi attacks on international shipping.
Ansar Allah, the official party name for the Yemen Houthi movement, has responded with characteristic defiance. And while this disguises some genuine pain at the multi-pronged US effort that has geared up since mid-March, it continues to launch missile attacks against Israel as well as the merchant shipping that passes through the critical Bab-El-Mandeb “chokepoint” where the Indian Ocean becomes the Red Sea.
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On Wednesday, Royal Air Force Typhoon jets joined in America’s Operation Rough Rider, after a pause in strikes since last February. There is growing speculation within the Ministry of Defence that the Prince of Wales carrier group, currently exercising in the Mediterranean before it transits the Suez Canal into the Red Sea, will also join in the bombardment of the Houthis.
For the UK, taking part in such missions serves the political purpose of standing shoulder to shoulder with the Americans and the military and proving its new carrier and F-35 jets are battle ready.
But this involvement is not without risk. The Houthis combine the nimbleness of a non-state group and an insurgent army, while having Iranian support, and boasting an arsenal of strike weapons that would put most countries to shame.
So, there is danger for British and American pilots — the Houthis have shot down 19 Reaper drones (which cost $30 million each) since this blitz started. And Monday’s attempt to hit the Truman shows their continued ability to threaten nearby shipping with a blend of ballistic and cruise missiles as well as uncrewed aircraft and boats, testing their defences from all angles.
One member of Rishi Sunak’s former cabinet told me that they had decided, “the best thing to do with the Houthis was simply to ignore them”. The Houthis say their strikes on around 100 passing merchant ships are a response to Israel’s campaign in Gaza. Many insurers now decline cover, and traffic through the Bab-El-Mandeb has fallen to less than half of what it was.
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However, for those in the region, looking the other way while this goes on is not an option. Ports depending on Red Sea shipping, from Eritrea to Sudan, and Jordan, have seen traffic plunge, to say nothing of the loss of most of Egypt’s Suez Canal revenues. Continued Houthi ballistic missile attacks on Israel run the risk of triggering wider conflict.
Intercepting these occasional launches of long-range Iranian-made weapons is one of the most expensive issues facing the Pentagon. The Israeli Arrow missiles used to counter them are $4 million each, the American Thaad missile defence systems cost $8.4 million, and the ship-launched SM-3 anti-ballistic missile is an eye-watering $27 million.
As for protecting naval vessels off Yemen, a salvo of defensive missiles costs millions, but the price of such a strike getting through, crippling a warship, could easily top a billion dollars.
The issue is not just one of cost but of running down critical stockpiles of US weapons that would be needed in any wider conflict with Iran or China and will take years to replace. By performing this eminently helpful service, the Ansar Allah justifies its place in Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” forces and the long-term efforts made to supply them.
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Smaller drones are manufactured by the Ansar Allah in Yemen at a cost of a few thousand dollars each. Fabian Hinz, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: “While Tehran’s support has, in some areas, evolved from the direct provision of complete systems to enabling localised manufacturing, it remains a critical enabler of Houthi military activity.”
President Trump like his defence secretary, has publicly threatened to hold Iran responsible for the Houthis’ actions, a move some think might mean strikes on the Islamic Republic. But in seeking to engage the country in talks over its nuclear programme, he has discovered that this is an escalatory path closed to him, for the moment at least. The Houthis’ ability to take Iranian help while they remain removed from the possible consequences is another factor that has made them so hard to beat.
The Pentagon insists that it has reduced strike capabilities, claiming last week that it had destroyed 69 per cent of Ansar Allah’s ballistic missile launchers and 55 per cent of cruise missile platforms. It’s also true that attacks on shipping have diminished, with 18 in December 2023 dropping to three in November 2024, though of course this is in part a result of reduced traffic through the Red Sea.
In an attempt to prevent the Houthis from rebuilding their organisation, the US has adopted a comprehensive approach, declaring Ansar Allah a terrorist organisation earlier this year, seeking to choke off its finances, as well as interdicting resupplies of weapons from Iran.
“This is the first time we’ve had a concerted effort by the Americans on both fronts, both the military and on the sanctions front,” said Kendall.
This will undoubtedly put pressure on the Ansar Allah but she notes that the group will capitalise on the privations and bombing casualties suffered by the population to sustain its anti-American stance.
Ultimately though, the Houthis, ruling through a combination of activism and coercion, have withstood attempts by western countries and Saudi Arabia to coerce them so will retain some capability to continue launching missiles. Some believe only a ground operation can do them serious damage, as happened with last autumn’s Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon which caused big problems for the Ansar Allah’s allies there, Hezbollah.
Since western countries will never send in troops, eyes are on a Yemeni faction backed by the United Arab Emirates which appears to be mobilising for an attack on Houthi heartlands. But the country’s recent history of inconclusive civil war, and thwarted outside actors, suggests that these factions will not be strong enough to achieve anything dramatic.
Given that, conversely, a viable peace process involving reconciliation among the country’s myriad factions is also a pipe dream, there is little hope that the Houthis can be completely neutralised. The Americans and others will struggle to stop the menace to shipping and the wider region.
