The SteelNavy.Com Message Board: The Houthis are making their own missiles and drones

What the Israelis blew up were any missile factory/complex that was capable of lofting a nuclear weapon or conventional payload at Israel. The Houthis are building their own drones and missiles as did Hamas. Israel could care less about ASMs in the Red Sea. This gets back to my point that weapons technology becoming so cheap to be able to be proliferated through the ranks of terrorists.

Recently the US conducting air strikes on the Houthis concentrating on weapons stockpiles, radars etc. The strikes did not slow the Houthis. They just built more.

Russia, China and Iran are providing intelligence to the Houthis on which ships to strike while providing the raw materials and machinery do they can build their own weapons. Smuggling in ASMs and being caught would be an embarrassment to Russia and China. Iran would not care but a missile smuggling operation would take finesse and spy craft which Iran has yet to demonstrate.

NATO escorting merchant ships is not working due to logistics and lack of warship numbers.

What is needed is a blockade and not necessarily done by surface warships. Think minefields. The mere hint of active minefields around ports that could supply the Houthis should be enough reason for a merchant captain to allow his cargo and manifests to be inspected , then piloted through the minefields, If a ship does not wish to be inspected it is free to traverse the minefields at its own risk. China and Russia may not like it but really there is not much they can do about it.

There must be at least a few LCSs that don’t leak or breakdown that can be coupled to a LHD and a pair of Burkes. The LCSs can act as convoy escorts as well provide boarding parties. The LHD can provide air support and ensure air superiority via their F-35Bs while acting as sea base to the LCSs . The F-35B can down Houthis drones as well as their ASMs and reload far cheaper and quicker than a VLS.

With a handful of ships, aircraft and sea mines the Houthis can be denied what it needs to terrorize the Red Sea.

My two cents.

Previous Message

The problem is not the Houthis. The problem is Iran. The Houthis have been built up by them. Without Iran, the Houthis are just another regional extremist group in a region filled with an over abundance of them.

I try to avoid making predictions here, but I will offer a "potential future solution."

The attack Israel made on Iran was strategic, and seems to have accomplished three things. 1) It put Iran in a position where it must counter attack to save face. 2) It appears to have majorly crippled Iran's air defense system. 3) I also appears to have degraded Iran's missile making abilities.

The results are: Iran now has a more finite number of missiles, with no way of major resupply. The upcoming counter attack it says it will conduct will expend a lot of its ammo. That counter attack will be Israel's excuse to go back in and cause much more serious damage, and Iran's crippled air defenses should make that more likely.

If Israel has not already shut down Iran's missile making, an upcoming attack will probably do so. No more abundant missile supply to the Houthis. Their ammo stockpiles are then also finite, and the more they fire, the faster they run out.

The coalition should then run a large number of bait convoys through the region and encourage the Houthis to dump as many of their missiles as possible.

The problem should then diminish significantly with time.

War is about logistics.

Will this actually come to pass? Who the heck knows. Probably too complicated. Requires too much coordination between a number of countries with not overly unified objectives.

But, it's a potential solution, nonetheless.

Previous Message

"Reports reveal Houthi attacks extending into the Indian Ocean and even the Mediterranean . . . ."

"The United States Navy continues to send warships through the Red Sea, but its mission to protect merchant ships—Operation Prosperity Guardian—is considered a failure by several naval experts we interviewed and has significantly diminished in scope and size. As a result, even many US-flagged commercial vessels – which the US Navy is obligated by law to protect – are opting to divert their routes around Africa."

"If the 3rd-tier HOUTHIS, who have NO NAVY, can prevent a NATO naval vessel from transiting the Red Sea, what does it say about NATO's naval survivability in a sea war vs. Iran, Russia, China, or all three?"
(Matt Bracken)

"The broader question is even more stark: If NATO cannot send warships to face the Houthis, how will it possibly survive in a war against a larger adversary like China?"

https://gcaptain.com/red-sea-is-now-so-dangerous-even-nato-warships-are-avoiding-it/