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This page is the English version of Almasirah Media Network website and it focuses on delivering all leading News and developments in Yemen, the Middle East and the world. In the eara of misinformation imposed by the main stream media in the Middle East and abroad, Almasirah Media Network strives towards promoting knowledge, principle values and justice, among all societies and cultures in the world

Yemenis Have Proven to Be a Formidable Force, Exposed the Inefficiency of Western Naval Powers

News - World: An American magazine affirmed that the United States, Britain, and other Western forces have clearly failed in their mission to confront Yemeni naval operations supporting Gaza. This failure has highlighted the inefficiency of Western naval forces and raised questions about their effectiveness in any future war with major competitors like China. Meanwhile, the Yemenis have proven to be a formidable force with an impressive military arsenal, imposing a new reality that everyone must adapt to.

Foreign Policy published a lengthy report on Monday evening, stating that after more than seven months since the start of Yemeni naval operations, global shipping has had to come to terms with a new normal where delays, derangements, and higher costs are only getting worse.

That is despite the efforts of the US, British, and European navies that have been on station the whole time attempting, without success, to neuter the threat, it added.

The magazine noted that t the world’s premier navies appear to be struggling to subdue the Yemenis raises painful questions about both the utility of sea power and the proficiency of the Western navies that are meant to carry the burden in any future showdown with a major rival such as China. The US Navy admits that it has been in the sharpest fight it has faced since World War II.

“The Houthis have proven to be quite the formidable force. This is a nonstate actor that fields a larger arsenal and is really able to give a headache to the Western coalition,” the report quoted Sebastian Bruns, a naval expert at the Center for Maritime Strategy and Security and the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University in Germany. “This is as high-end as it gets for now, and when navies are having a problem with sustainment at this level, it is really worrisome.”

“The Houthis have a truly astonishing level of depth in their magazines, of missiles and rockets and ballistic anti-ship missiles. It is truly something,” said Bruns, the naval expert. As long as the Israel-Hamas war continues, “the Houthis have a reason and an opportunity to be a nuisance.”

The report stated that "those disruptions were not expected to last long, especially after the arrival on the scene of Western navies to restore security; insurance premiums for shippers actually fell slightly when the joint US-British deployment was announced. And costs for shipping settled down in the spring, despite the ongoing campaign."

Yet eight months on, it added, the disruption to shipping has suddenly gotten a lot worse. In late June, Yemeni attacks sank a ship—the second since they began their attacks—and damaged another. 

The report said that "the list of attempted and successful attacks is a year-to-date litany; US Central Command’s public messaging is a near-daily drumbeat of reports of US vessels swatting away drones, missiles, and uncrewed surface vessels. The Yemenis, who’ve used anti-ship missiles to great effect, are now increasingly resorting to those surface drones."

The report explained that "as a result, the costs for a shipping container have soared from around $1,600 or so on average to well over $5,000, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. Rates are now higher than they were at the peak of the Red Sea panic earlier this year."

When a container ship diverts around Africa, it increases the direct cost of shipping by adding 10 days, a lot of miles, and a lot of fuel to the trip, said Chris Rogers, the head of supply chain research at S&P Global Market Intelligence. “But the big issue is that it effectively reduces the available capacity on the entire system” by about 6 percent, he said.

The report explained that "ports from Asia to Europe to the US West Coast have been unduly congested, leading to huge backlogs for waiting ships. Freight forwarders and retailers are inadvertently making things worse by front-loading bigger orders for the holiday season to make sure they get their goods, further hurting an already strained shipping market."

“Supply chains heal over time, but the events don’t disappear overnight. That bullwhip effect could take six months to a year to play out,” Rogers said.

The report confirmed that "the navies—the US, the British, and a rotating group of European ships—have been trying to restore normal shipping since almost the start of the Yemen campaign with little success, as evidenced by the fact that war-cover insurance rates for vessels risking the dangerous passage are apparently still up nearly 1,000 percent on preconflict levels. One insurer even launched a special, first-of-its-kind war insurance this spring for shippers that couldn’t get coverage otherwise, a sure sign that the Western naval presence hasn’t brought calm to the markets."

"Those higher premiums add up to about 1 percent of the value of the huge cargo ships for the risky transit," the report quoted Audun Halvorsen, the director of security and contingency planning for the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association and a former deputy foreign minister of Norway. But the ships that are really in the crosshairs are those linked to Israel, the United States, or other countries seen as supporting Israel. 

The magazine confirmed that "the US-UK effort to “degrade” the Yemeni Armed Force's ability to target shipping has ended up an expensive game of whack-a-mole. Yemen has proved to be more mobile, and better supplied, than initially hoped, making incidental wins by the US Navy—such as the destruction of a radar site last week—a drop in the bucket."

According to the report, the deployments, and constant interceptions, have eaten into the US Navy’s own magazines. Congressional aides said the United States isn’t producing nearly enough of the standard air defense missiles used by US escort ships in the Red Sea to shoot down Yemeni drones and missiles. 

“As long as the burn rate remains as precipitously high as it’s been over there, we’re in a bit more of a precarious position,” one aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about US munitions shortfalls.


The report indicated that it’s expensive, too. The Navy, and suppliers such as Raytheon, are looking to older, cheaper substitutes to use against the Yemeni low-tech weapons while keeping the high-end missiles for use in a possible future war with China.

“With some cruise and ballistic missiles or hypersonics, you’re going to want sophisticated capabilities,” said Seth Jones, a senior vice president and the director of the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But for drones, you’re not going to want to waste a million-plus-dollar US munition on it.” 

The magazine added that to judge by results—ships keep diverting, and insurance premiums remain high—the US approach has not achieved what it set out to do. “After months of doing that, if the 'Houthis' haven’t changed their behavior and their stockpiles are still there and they’re mobile and they have support from Iran, it is time to ask, ‘Should we really be doing this?’” said Alessio Patalano, a naval expert at King’s College London.

The report considered that the withdrawal of the aircraft carrier Roosevelt to replace Eisenhower indicates another problem felt particularly by European naval forces, which is the lack of sufficient ships to carry out even the limited mission they had set for themselves, as the German frigate Hessen spent a few months in the Red Sea before stumbling in a failed attempt to shoot down an American drone while it was there, and there are not enough ships to maintain the kind of continuous coverage from the Indian Ocean to the Suez Canal that will be necessary to make cargo escorting possible."

It pointed out that the "apparent failure" of the US and European mission in the Red Sea haven’t managed to coax commercial ships back to those "dangerous waters".
 

 

#Yemen #US #Armed Forces #Red Sea About 7 months
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This page is the English version of Almasirah Media Network website and it focuses on delivering all leading News and developments in Yemen, the Middle East and the world. In the eara of misinformation imposed by the main stream media in the Middle East and abroad, Almasirah Media Network strives towards promoting knowledge, principle values and justice, among all societies and cultures in the world

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