What the Navy is learning from its fight in the Red Sea

"And while it remains to be seen whether last week’s U.S.-led bombing of Houthi sites in Yemen will cause the rebels to meaningfully relent, current Navy leaders and analysts agree: The volume of intercepts in the Red Sea is without modern precedent for the Navy, and the surface fleet is quickly learning from the encounters."

(Well now I think we can safely say our bombing did little, if anything to cause the Houthis to relent. Do "higher up's" just not get it? This group has been under bombardment from the air for close to a decade. THEY DONT CARE! Damn the torpedo's full speed ahead seems to be their MO. Why in the world did we think that anything we do was gonna have any significat impact becomes my question.)

"Those lessons are also raising questions about which warship weapons are right for such a job. While McLane (Vice Adm. Brendan McLane, now the head of Naval Surface Forces) declined to get into the specifics of how the Red Sea fight is impacting tactics and training during a recent interview, citing classification levels, he said the surface fleet is tracking developments “very closely.”

(Translation?

We only have so many interceptor missiles.

Supply lines are in a state of flux.

And we dont have the people necessary to make a bunch more quickly.)

"While destroyers have taken part in a variety of missions over the years to keep commerce flowing in the Middle East, the months-long effort to shoot down Houthi missiles and drones is new, and something the Navy hasn’t done regularly since gunfire support missions during the Vietnam War, according to Jan van Tol, a retired forward-deployed warship captain and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments."

(Translation?

We didnt ever expect this on this scale.)

"The surface fleet finds itself steaming through uncharted waters in the Red Sea, when it comes to the types of munitions they are intercepting and the sustained nature of the threat.

“This is a mix we haven’t seen before, and it does represent a new wrinkle,” retired Vice. Adm. Robert Murrett, a former vice director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff who now leads the Institute for Security Policy and Law at Syracuse University.

(See my comment above.)

"The Navy’s Red Sea engagements have often pitted relatively cheap, Iran-made attack drones against a Navy destroyer’s SM-2 missiles, which cost roughly $2.4 million each but allow a ship to take out a threat from a greater distance compared to other onboard weapons systems.

To date, the SM-2 munition is the only one used in the Red Sea that the sea service has officially confirmed."

"Relying on a pricey asset to eliminate cheap threats raises questions about the sustainability and efficiency of the tactic, multiple analysts told Navy Times."

(It aint exactly rocket surgery to figure out.)

"Navy leaders have indicated that they feel good about the surface fleet’s munitions stockpile.

“Right now, we’re stable in our inventory,” Rear Adm. Fred Pyle, head of the Surface Warfare Division for the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, told reporters this month. “But it’s something we are very focused on and we continue to work on it."

(Two years ago was anybody concerned about the amount of 155 mm howitzer shells we had?

"it’s something we are very focused on"

Thanks I feel so much better.)

“Today’s operations will stress the sustainability of the U.S. surface fleet, which relies on relatively expensive weapons for self-defense,” Bryan Clark, a retired submariner and current senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said in an email to Navy Times."

(Were being 'softened up" before we even get going. Been saying it for a long time.)

“Anything we can do to bring about a soft kill, whether through the new electronic-warfare upgrades to our destroyers, or through directed energy, is certainly worth exploring as we try to keep costs down and manage weapons inventories,” he said

(Okay but were in this fight today yo.)

"While the Navy has been “pretty cagey with operational details for obvious reasons,” Holmes noted that these expensive engagements are “expending a finite inventory of surface-to-air missiles.”

(It's the whole plan! And if I know it?

Surely others do as well, 

so why are we continuing on this trajectory becomes the question.)

“[I have] no idea what specific doctrine our ships are using in the Red Sea, but you generally train to use multiple missiles per engagement,” Holmes said. “If it’s an SM-2 engagement … the latest variant of the SM-2 seems to run about $2.4 million per round, so you’re talking just under $5 million to bring down what is probably an inexpensive threat. And again, weapons expended in the Red Sea are weapons not available in the primary theater, East Asia, and are not quickly replaced.”

Big Navy is likely grappling with such questions internally, according to Holmes."

"Destroyers could also use shorter-range weapons, like the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile or the Rolling Air Frame missile, munitions that can be carried in greater numbers, according to Clark.

Four Sea Sparrows can be loaded into one vertical launch system cell on ship, he noted, and the Rolling Air Frame missile can be reloaded at sea.SM-2s, however, cannot be reloaded while a ship is underway.

While the Navy has confirmed the use of SM-2 missiles, Clark said he suspects ships are already using other systems against less-capable drones.

“[Five-inch] guns do have an anti-air capability, though, and the Navy has been fielding man-portable counter-drone [electronic warfare] systems like those used by the Army and Marine Corps,” he said."

“Ultimately the likely future increase in numbers of simultaneous incoming threats will require higher capacities of defensive fires, and those can’t only be expensive [long-range, surface-to-air missiles], both for cost imposition and limited ship [vertical launch system] capacity reasons,” he said.

("the likely future increase in numbers of simultaneous incoming threats"

They know they are gonna get overwhelmed eventually.)

Rough seas

Analysts say the very nature of the Red Sea makes it a challenging fight for the Navy.

In a way, the Houthis are firing into a prime theater. The Red Sea is shallow and relatively narrow, and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait at the sea’s south end is only about 16-nautical-miles wide, van Tol noted.

“The Houthi targeting challenge is not high if they just want to whack a ship since there are multiple ways to detect it and get the targeting info to the shooters,” he said. “There’s obviously also limited reaction time once an incoming [anti-ship cruise missile] or drone is detected.”

"The volume of Houthi strikes thus far has not suggested that any Navy destroyers would need to head to the Mediterranean Sea or Bahrain to refill their missile cells, Holmes said."

“If someone attacked shipping in the Suez Canal, closing it, or interfered with passage through the Bab el-Mandeb or Hormuz strait, things could get uncomfortable trying to resupply our Red Sea flotilla,” he said.

(and that is exactly where we are headed.)