News - Yemen:  Reuters security sources reported that the use of USVs, loaded with explosives, represents a sophisticated shift in asymmetric warfare tactics, enabling Yemen to strike with precision and at a distance, thus minimizing their exposure to counter-attacks.

Insurance industry sources told Reuters that additional war risk premiums, paid when vessels sail through the Red Sea, were quoted up to 0.7% of the value of a ship in recent days from around 1% earlier this year, adding hundreds of thousands of dollars of extra costs and the latest threats could push rates higher in coming weeks.

"USVs strike vessels at the waterline, and this, combined with the substantial warhead size, has the potential for significant water ingress and damage control issues," Munro Anderson, head of operations at marine war risk and insurance specialist Vessel Protect told Reuters.

"It is highly likely that in light of the very public success such devices have had, when used by Ukrainian forces within the Black Sea, that Houthis have sought to deploy such tactics to their own ends."

In another emerging tactic, some of the USVs have been logged as potentially having dummies to resemble pirates in another psychological tactic aimed at confusing seafarers, an official with Greek maritime security company Diaplous said.

"In most cases we understand that the Houthis are using 'spotters' at sea, who often record the attack from a small distance, and on most (if not all) operations remotely steer the USV to the target," MARISKS Maniatis added.

After October 2023, Yemen’s Armed Forces carried out operations in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, who are enduring a genocidal Israeli war.

They were also meant as a response to the attacks that the US and the UK have been staging against Yemen as means of trying to stop its pro-Palestinian operations.

The Armed Forces have vowed to sustain their operations as long as the Israeli regime keeps up the brutal military onslaught that has so far claimed the lives of nearly 38,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

They have also pledged to continue their strikes so long as the regime retains a 2006-present siege that it has been enforcing against Gaza, and has markedly tightened during the war.