A battle is playing out in the Red Sea as Yemen's Houthi militia attacks commercial shipping vessels headed to the Suez Canal using weapons supplied by Iran. Now a US-led task force is fighting back. We compare the weapons and tactics and tell you who holds the power in this global conflict.
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00:00 There's a conflict bubbling in the Red Sea that could shake geopolitics and the global
00:06 economy.
00:07 The Iranian-backed Houthi militia is taking on all kinds of commercial ships that are
00:12 bound for the Suez Canal.
00:15 Houthis say that they're doing this as support for Palestinians and the U.S.-led task forces
00:22 fighting back.
00:23 Let's look at the balance of power between the Houthis and U.S. forces.
00:28 Hi, I'm Sam Fellman, I'm a defense editor with Business Insider.
00:32 I'm a U.S. Navy veteran who served aboard destroyers.
00:36 The United States is using an assortment of weapons in its arsenal to try to strike back
00:46 at Houthi capabilities generally and then specifically take out observed missile launchers
00:53 as they're spotted.
00:55 In the big strikes the U.S.-led coalition has increasingly had to make, they use cruise
01:00 missiles like the Tomahawk cruise missile that costs about $2 million a piece.
01:04 These are the kind of weapons that were used to strike at al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan
01:10 immediately after the attacks of September 11th.
01:14 Tomahawk is very effective against a variety of fixed targets, even hardened ones.
01:20 So a command center, an area where missile launchers are stored, air defense systems,
01:26 radars.
01:27 And so it has pinpoint accuracy, it has a variety of different warheads it can carry,
01:33 including nuclear.
01:35 The U.S. also uses Hellfire missiles, those are air-to-ground, fairly short-range guided
01:41 missiles.
01:42 Those can be very effective, they can be fired by an MQ-9 Reaper drone.
01:47 These are supplied by Iran, they have approximately 200,000 fighters in this pocket of Yemen that
01:55 they control.
01:56 The weapons that are flowing to the Houthis are Iranian-made.
01:59 And those are predominantly of two types, one is drones and secondarily it is missiles,
02:05 cruise and ballistic missiles.
02:08 And so some examples of the different Iranian-made weapons, one is the Charlie 802 missile that
02:13 was originally a weapon associated with China that is manufactured in Iran.
02:18 It's a cruise missile.
02:20 The U.S. is showing that it can effectively stop the Charlie 802, but that's only if it's
02:25 within the air defense intercept ranges.
02:29 So outside of that, a merchant ship has no defense against a fairly accurate, powerful
02:35 weapon like a Charlie 802 cruise missile.
02:38 Another example would be these Iranian-made ballistic missiles.
02:43 Those can carry more payload and are faster than a comparable cruise missile.
02:49 A cruise missile come in in more of a sea-skimming attack, whereas a ballistic missile may follow
02:54 a different type of terminal trajectory.
02:57 Both are pretty threatening.
02:59 And recently we've seen the Houthis firing what's known as ASBMs, those are anti-ship
03:05 ballistic missiles.
03:06 They're more difficult to intercept because they're coming in faster.
03:10 It forces the air defenders to be that much faster and on point to identify threats and
03:16 then assign weapons to them to knock them out and then try to warn ships that are threatened
03:21 to get out of the area as fast as they can.
03:25 The U.S. is predominantly losing two types of aircraft.
03:31 First one is the MQ-9 Reaper drone.
03:34 The Reaper is an ideal platform for this kind of warfare.
03:37 It's a $30 million drone.
03:39 It can carry the same hellfire missiles that a manned fixed-wing planes can carry.
03:45 It can basically glide, kind of hover over areas of interest to the U.S. military.
03:50 It has sensors like cameras to detect enemy movements that the U.S. may want to stop.
03:56 So in other words, the MQ-9 may be loitering around the coastlines of Yemen, but is like
04:03 zooming in with its sensors to look for movements of trucks that look to be carrying missiles,
04:09 for example, or looking at potential launch points for where drones may be.
04:14 The Reaper also is a combat drone, meaning that if there is a target of opportunity that's
04:18 spotted then the Reaper drone could potentially attack it with those hellfire missiles.
04:24 Another important aircraft in this air fight is the carrier-based fighter, the F/A-18 Hornet
04:32 and Super Hornet.
04:33 They're not going to have the on-station time of a Reaper, but they'll also have sensors
04:38 aboard that make it an ideal asset to spot enemy movements.
04:42 And they're going to have weapons.
04:44 They could carry joint direct attack munitions.
04:47 They may carry a bevy of more air-to-air missiles that would be useful for striking out, whether
04:52 it's a Houthi helicopter or a Houthi drone.
04:56 So the U.S. is also using SH-60 Seahawks.
05:00 Those are multi-purpose helicopters.
05:02 Normally they're doing a whole range of missions from like potentially picking up aviators
05:08 whose planes have splashed into the water.
05:10 In this particular fight, the helicopters are assisting ships with identifying Houthi
05:16 drones and also Houthi boats.
05:18 Houthis have on a couple occasions sent boats, maybe packed with explosives, towards the
05:24 Houthi, international shipping, and helicopters are a very effective way to spot them and
05:30 stop them with onboard missiles and guns.
05:33 So one of the things the Houthis are doing is the Houthis are also launching drones.
05:37 These drones are pretty cheap.
05:39 And so one of the problems of this kind of warfare is that a drone that may cost $10,000
05:45 or $30,000, the U.S. is forced to take out with a $2 or $4 million intercept missile.
05:52 That raises problems for U.S. production and how expensive it is to defend this critical
05:58 strait.
06:02 The eyes of this task force are the spy radar systems as well as the radar system aboard
06:10 the A2C Hawkeye.
06:13 There's like a giant kind of dish above this aircraft where this air and ground search
06:18 radar is.
06:19 And so these assets are able to look out and try to see where there may be Houthi missiles
06:25 or drones.
06:27 Spotting these threats as soon as they are in the air is critical to this fight.
06:33 And so these sensors are the first part of the fight.
06:36 The Houthis have surface to air missiles, which look to be pretty antiquated, like the
06:41 S-75, Soviet-made SAM system.
06:45 So there are some threats to American aircraft in and around Yemeni airspace.
06:51 We've seen two MQ-9 Reaper drones shot down and the Houthis have taken them out, likely
06:56 with surface to air missiles.
06:57 So the threat to manned and unmanned aviation is not insignificant.
07:05 The Houthis don't have a Navy.
07:07 So the U.S. has quite a lot of firepower in and around this area as the tensions have
07:13 risen with the Houthis.
07:16 The U.S. has the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, and that's made up of the aircraft
07:20 carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and its carrier air wing, the cruiser, the Philippine Sea,
07:26 and then the destroyers, Gravely, Mason, and LeBoon.
07:30 And so those ships make up the bulk of the U.S.-led coalition or the U.S.-led task force
07:37 that's in this area.
07:38 The U.S. has devoted significant combat resources to this task force in the Red Sea.
07:43 There's probably 6,500 to 7,000 American sailors who are part of the effort.
07:49 There is what's known as an SSGN.
07:52 That is a guided missile submarine.
07:55 It's a nuclear-powered American submarine that lurks and can carry up to 154 Tomahawk
08:02 missiles.
08:03 That's more than any other ship in the U.S. fleet.
08:05 Most of the weapons aboard a surface combatant, like a destroyer or a cruiser, are stored
08:12 in vertical launch cells.
08:13 They're like big tubes where the weapons are stored.
08:17 And then when the weapon is fired, it's ignited in the tube and then blasts out over the deck.
08:24 It goes from flat to moves vertical, exposing the missile underneath.
08:28 It's then firing and pushing out and leaving behind a trail of fire and smoke as it takes
08:35 off.
08:36 Gravely used the CWIS, the close-in weapon system, to shoot down a Houthi-fired cruise
08:42 missile.
08:43 That is a really significant achievement by the Gravely and by the U.S. Navy.
08:47 This is the first combat use of the CWIS in naval conflict, and this was successful.
08:54 I served aboard a destroyer.
08:56 I've stared at plenty of air and surface search radars.
09:00 This is a very frightening situation that the Gravely was in because you're down to
09:06 one of your last resort weapons to defend the ship.
09:09 I actually had worked with that system when it was land-based.
09:12 I think it would be very stressful to be watching, either seeing something pop up on your screen,
09:19 like this cruise missile, to see on your air search radar that it's either gotten through
09:25 your first layer of missiles or it wasn't spotted and now needs to be engaged at such
09:30 close range that you're only using this last resort gun system.
09:35 We do know that this is about as stressful as it comes in an air defense game.
09:42 The Houthis control about a third of the territory of Yemen and more than two-thirds of the population.
09:50 They are challenging international shipping that is going through the Red Sea.
09:55 That's a really critical transit route because the Red Sea connects to the Suez Canal, and
10:02 that links the Mediterranean with shipping routes that go into the Indian Ocean.
10:07 Twenty percent of the world's shipping containers are estimated to go through the route, and
10:14 it's forcing the companies that operate these ships and their insurers to start thinking
10:19 twice about which routes they're going to take.
10:22 We're seeing that the costs of shipping are rising substantially.
10:26 The cost of an average, standard 40-foot shipping container that is going from Asia to the U.S.
10:33 East Coast has risen by 135 percent since last fall.
10:41 The fight shows no sign of stopping any time soon.
10:45 The Houthis have attacked three ships with missiles so far in early March.
10:50 They've killed three crew members and forced the abandoning of one vessel.
10:54 Another one was sunk.
10:56 A recent attack featured as many as three dozen drones that forced American planes to
11:02 shoot them down.
11:04 So even after all the attacks, the U.S. will escalate further.
11:08 None of that has persuaded the Houthis to actually stop or reduce the attacks, and if
11:13 anything, the Houthis are showing that they still have the capability to actually damage
11:18 some of these ships.
11:19 Despite the widespread efforts of this U.S.-led task force.
11:23 The Houthis have survived a brutal war against Saudi Arabia, and they are experts at evading
11:31 air power.
11:32 And the U.S. has been hesitant to escalate for fear that it may lead to more attacks
11:40 or a larger confrontation with Iran.
11:42 And there doesn't seem to be the political willingness to risk the larger confrontation
11:48 with Iran that that may come with it.
11:54 The balance of power lies with the Houthis.
11:56 The Houthis are next to this critical strait for international, used by international commerce.
12:03 And the Houthis have the weapons to threaten it indefinitely, and it would require the
12:09 U.S. to take much larger combat action in order to fully remove that threat.
12:15 And at such a scale that it may trigger a larger confrontation with Iran, that's not
12:21 a fight the Biden administration really wants to provoke.
12:25 [MUSIC]
12:35 [MUSIC]
12:45 [MUSIC]
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