U.S. Navy Faces Houthi Anti-Ship Missile Threat ‘Superior’ to Most States

The U.S. Navy in the Red Sea is contending with Yemen-based Houthi rebels, but little is known about what exactly the Iranian-backed forces have in their arsenal. Yet one thing is clear—they are stocked up with anti-ship missiles that could, under the right circumstances, pose a threat to the U.S. military in the Middle East.

On Sunday, the U.S. said there had been “four attacks against three separate commercial vessels operating in international waters in the southern Red Sea,” launched from Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen. Several drones were shot down by the U.S. warship, the USS Carney, as a series of missiles were fired from Houthi territory and damaged two of the cargo vessels, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement.

One of these missiles was an anti-ship ballistic missile, CENTCOM said.

A spokesperson for Houthi forces said one vessel was targeted with an anti-ship missile and the second with a sea drone.

The Houthi rebels’ “anti-ship missile arsenal is not only comparable but superior to probably most state actors,” according to Fabian Hinz, a research fellow specializing in Middle East defense and military analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.

It’s very difficult to pin down numbers, as the Houthis have not been forthcoming about the size of their smuggled and donated weapons stockpile, he told Newsweek.

Anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles are “a very, very niche capability that only very few countries have—including Iran—and Iran shared it with the Houthis,” Hinz said.

“Such capabilities are highly unusual for an insurgency,” said Sidharth Kaushal, a research fellow at the U.K.’s Royal United Services Institute think tank.

The Houthis originally hoarded missiles captured from the Yemeni government, but have supplemented their missile stocks in the last few years with weapons from Iran, said William Freer, research fellow in national security at the London-based Council on Geostrategy.

Tehran supplied at least six different types of ballistic missiles, three variants of cruise missiles and eight kinds of loitering munitions to the Houthis, as well as three forms of…