The U.S. Navy is reinforcing its units in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with an additional aircraft carrier battle group.
The U.S.-led campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen continues apace. In just four months, the U.S. military has attacked more than 1,000 Houthi targets, according to American defense officials.
The Houthis in America’s Crosshairs
“USCENTCOM [U.S. Central Command] strikes have hit over 1,000 targets, killing Houthi fighters and leaders, including senior Houthi missile and UAV officials, and degrading their capabilities,” Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Sean Parnell said on Tuesday, while reviewing the progress of the first 100 days of the new Department of Defense.
The U.S. military has been engaged in active operations against the Houthi rebels in Yemen for more than a year. But Parnell’s phrasing suggested that the U.S. military has hit over 1,000 Houthi targets specifically since January 20, when President Donald Trump took office. CENTCOM also suggested a similar number of strikes in a recent press release.
The U.S. Navy is also reinforcing its units in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with an additional aircraft carrier battle group. In addition to the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier and its support warships, the Navy is sending the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group to bolster air and naval capabilities. The fresh carrier strike group brings with it dozens of F-35 Lightning II, F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, and EA-18G Growler fighter jets.
Other Nations Are Helping America Fight the Houthis
But the U.S. does not stand alone in the campaign against the Houthis. Several other NATO countries, including France, Greece, Germany, and the United Kingdom, have added their warships and aircraft in an effort to stop the indiscriminate attacks against commercial shipping in the region.
On Tuesday, for example, the British military attacked Houthi military targets in Yemen alongside U.S. aircraft.
“U.K. forces conducted a joint operation with U.S. allies against a Houthi military facility in Yemen,” British Defence Secretary John Healy told British lawmakers on Wednesday. “Our intelligence analysis identified a cluster of buildings 15 miles south of Sana’a, used by the Houthis to manufacture drones of the type used to attack ships in the Red Sea and in the Gulf of Aden.”
The Royal Air Force participated in the operation with FGR4 Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets and Voyager air tankers and struck several Houthi targets with Paveway IV smart bombs.
“We did so in collective self-defense and to uphold the freedom of navigation as Britain has always done,” the British Defence Secretary added. “This action was limited, it was targeted, [and] it was devised to minimize the risk of civilian life.”
Although the Houthi rebels can trace back their beginnings in the 1990s, they came into prominence in 2014 when they captured Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, from the internationally-recognized government of then-President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. In the years since 2014, the Houthis have taken control of much of northern Yemen, and govern roughly 80 percent of the country’s population today.
Today, the Houthis receive their military support mainly from Iran. However, Russia has also reportedly provided targeting data, enabling the Yemeni rebels to accurately target commercial shipping and NATO warships in the Red Sea. Reports also indicate that China might have been providing indirect support to the group.
About the Author: Stavros Atlamazoglou
Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations and a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from the Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.
Image: Shutterstock / anasalhajj.
