Irregular Naval Warfare And You (Houthi Edition)

militant resistance can take. We've chatted extensively on this network about Rojava. We've talked a fair amount James Stout and I. James is on the show today, by the way, Hello James, Hi Robert. We've talked a lot about me and mar and the gin Z Revolution, there three D printing of firearms and kind of this war that these people have been waging in the Jungles successfully in order to overthrow the military dictatorship of their country. But we haven't talked

a whole lot about naval warfare. And this is because for most of history, for most of at least our recent history, naval warfare was not really a thing insurgents could engage in, right you know, you could every now and then, if a ship was docked or something, you might be able to get off a bombing, right, like

what happened to us as coal. And I'm not expressing general sympathy for everybody who does a militant insurgent act, but I am talking about like the overall kind of like tactics and strategy that underline how that stuff works.

And one of the things that's really changed in the last couple of years, since twenty twenty two, you can really mark it out, is that irregular non state groups can now to an extent never before possible, challenged the sea power of nations like the United States, which has an unquestioned, previously at least unquestioned level of dominance in sort of conventional naval power. And we talked about conventional naval power in the twenty first century. That means aircraft

carrier groups. Right, the US has eleven of them, which, if I'm not mistaken, is more than the rest of the world. We have a lot of fucking aircraft carriers. And previously that was believed to be you know, a guarante of book dominance on sea. And if a carrier group or two is in the area. You generally, we generally, the United States generally could count on having air supremacy.

You certainly wouldn't expect it to be countered. You know, you could expect, like, for example, if we were to have a conflict over Taiwan, the Chinese navy could or the Chinese army could potentially interdict a carrier group using ground based you know, ground to see anti ship missiles

or something like that. But we're increasingly in an era in which these kind of irregular non state groups have access to similar technology and have access to kind of even more bespoke technology like drone swarms that poses a unique threat to the naval dominance of the United States. And I wanted to start, you know, we've got a two part of here. We're going to be talking about

the Huthi's in Yemen. We're going to be talking about the Ukrainian navy, which does not really have much in the way of boats, but is still challenging the Russian navy. And we're going to be talking about rebels in Myanmar. We're going to start today, we'll be talking about the Huthi and to understand Huthi resistance to the United States and why a militant group has had such success challenging

US naval power. You first have to understand how they got to the point that they're at right now, where they are kind of, in a lot of ways a near state actor, you know, not a world power actor, but near state actor. You know, they're probably more capable in some ways than the State of Yemen, which they are at war with. Yeah, yeah, And to get how they got to that point, you have to understand what

happened with their fight against the Saudis. So, the Huthi Movement or ansar Allah, which means Supporters of God, is a Zaidi Shia Islamist movement run primarily by members of the Huthi tribe. Zadi Islam is a bit of an odd duck. You'll hear it described as, yeah, like a sh a Shia segment. It's really probably more accurate to look at it as like it's kind of in between Shia and Sunni of like the Shia kind of denominations,

it's kind of closest to being Sunni. I'm not an expert on any of this, but it comes out of a guy named Zaid Iban Ali's rebellion against the Umi Yad caliphate, which did not succeed, but we still have the Zadi. What matters for our purposes today is that the Huthi as a movement came out of opposition to the Yemen's president Abi Abdullah Salah, who was corrupt as hell. He was seen as corrupt, and he was in fact corrupt as hell, and it was specifically they were accusing

him of basically being bribed by the Saudis. That's where like the Huthi started the rebellion in around two thousand and three. So they began as a resistance movement to this corrupt president Salah. They adopted the slogan God is the greatest, death to America, death to Israel, and a curse upon the Jews, which is still their slogan. So they are not what you would call unproblematic again, but now that they are fighting out there, they're not hiding it, you know, dig for this stuff.

we're talking about this now. Who they armed activities against the Saudis really kicked off and hit a major level after the mini civil war, which officially started in twenty fourteen. The new president of Yemen, who was not Salah at this point, asked for military support from the international community, which in this case meant the Saudis right. So the Saudis. It's called a coalition. There's technically some other people involved,

but it's the Saudis right. And the president of Yemen calls in the Saudis when his forces are kicked out of the capital of Yemen, Sana by hoothy fighters. By the way, when the Houthi take sna Is, when they get their first cruise missiles, largely just like a bunch of scuds and stuff, so like old Soviet shit, right. Operation Decisive Storm is the name that Saudi Arabia gives to their intervention in Yemen, and a lot of people will say this is basically Saudi Arabia's Vietnam, not an

inappropriate comparison to make. So the Saudis start bombing the shit out of the Huthi and then they send in ground forces, because bombing the shit out of people who are motivated never really works as well as you want it to.

lot of this, you know. So by the way, I should also state that, like now, the Houthies are on

the side of former President Sala. It's a complicated conflict, right, but at the end of this all they have a shitload of Iranian weapons because Iran is a geopolitical enemy of Saudi Arabia and they see the Houthis as allies, and so they spend a lot of time this during this conflict shipping in agtms, which are wire guided missiles that are just aces and blasting holes in Saudi Arabia's tanks, which are US supplied, if I'm not mistaken as a general.

battlefield environment. But this is kind of when people start to realize, oh, fuck, you know Syria as well, this is really going to change a lot about how armor gets used. And this is also where we start to see the first Hothi deployments of ballistic missiles, which were used sort of they initially use them, not dissimilarly to how the Germans used V two's right in World War Two. There are terror weapons and they're used in retaliation for Saudi Arabia's use of a terror weapon, which is US

jets and missiles. Right, So Saudi Arabia is terror bombing Yemen, and Yemen starts firing missiles back at Saudi Arabia because you know that's what you do, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm going to quote here from an article in the National News, quote Huthi militias and Yemen launched and this is from twenty twenty two, who the militia's and Yemen launched ballistic missiles at Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia

on Monday and the latest attack on neighboring states. Two missiles were destroyed in midflight during the attempted terrorist attack on Abu Dhabi, while in Saudi Arabia one was shot down and another missile wounded two civilians in an industrial area. So that gives you an idea of like where they are a couple of years ago. And these are not super advanced cruise missiles, as you can see by that

kind of like casualty rate. Right, they're not doing massive amounts of damage, but they caused terror.

to a non state actor is fairly new. You see how that has already changed the game in terms of like you can't really say the Saudis don't have the air supremacy. You can still say they have air supremacy because again, the Houthies don't have much in the way of airpower at this point, but they can't stop missiles from hitting their cities entirely, which is a different game

than when you know that's not really a possibility. The Houthi arsenal today includes a dizzying array of different Iranian, Soviet, Syrian, and indigenously produced rockets, including the Burkhan three missiles. These are for long range strikes up to twelve hundred kilometers, and the Botter P one rockets, which have one hundred and twenty two one hundred and sixty kilometer range. They also have old Soviet Frog sevens which are useful to

about sixty five kilometers. None of these are accurate in cruise missile terms, you know, but they work well enough for the Houthis' purposes. The Botter Pa is indigenously produced. It's made by the Houthies. It's thought to be based on the Syrian Kaibar rocket. It is unguided, and experts will say it's closer to being functioning as just like artillery than an actual cruise missile. U and inspectors claim quote it is produced locally from steel tubing, very likely

sourced from the oil industry. You hear this a lot in a regular conflict in the Middle East. When I was in Mosel covering the fighting with Isis, their mortars were made off out of tubing that was like part of construction projects. I think that traced back to the oil industry, at least some of it. Now. There are several variants of this rocket, like the Botter F and the P one. It's not really useful going through all of them. You can find some interesting studies on this,

but it's not necessary to understand their capabilities. Their most accurate missile, as far as I can tell, is the OTR twenty one Totchka, which has a range of about seventy two one hundred and twenty kilometers and a four hundred and eighty kilogram payload. They only are believed to have a few dozen of these, although that's an estimate from an earlier report, and these were the ones they would use most regularly on ground targets during the Saudi

intervention when they needed a precise strike. And I'm going to quote from an article and an analysis of their missile capability. The Houthis first fired a Tachka missile in September twenty fifteen, targeting the coalitions, that's the Saudi's Soffa military base in Marib, Yemen. The strike hit a weapons storage depot and killed sixty coalition soldiers. The Houthis fired another Toatchka on December fourteenth, twenty fifteen, targeting a coalition

base south of Taia's City in Taia's Yemen. The strike reportedly killed over one hundred and twenty coalition soldiers. The most recently recorded tachka fire took place on November nineteenth, twenty sixteen, landing in a desert in eastern Marab Province. The target was unclear, but was likely the Arab Coalition's all weak military camp. So those are significant casualties. These are very effective weapons that do a lot of damage.

Right Yeah, Now, international experts, and especially if you read just kind of like think tank analysis of what the Houthis are doing, we generally say all of this is only possible because of aid from his Belah and Iran. Right, That's the only reason the Hoothies have these weapons. Right now, there is an arms embargo on Yemen. This has not

stopped anyone from getting weapons to Yemen. It also, to be very fair here, didn't stop anyone from didn't stop us from selling arms to the Saudis even though they're bringing those arms to Yemen. Right, yeah, yeah, it possible, Yeah, don't. I don't know who you want to get angry or at here. I'm not really convinced either side is you know, better than the other. Certainly the Saudis are not better, right right? Yeah that matters. I don't know.

But even without Iranian aid, there's a there's a signet probably a significant degree of time to which they could continue to produce some of these weapons because they are making them themselves.

state militant group. Again, this is this stuff. If you think back ten fifteen years, the idea of a non state insurgent group having access to a cruise missile library like this, you know, not to say about like the other weapons they have, the drones and stuff they have, It would have been kind of unprecedented. That said, these are not good weapons in the modern military sense of

the word. Bosh. I mean, they are not very accurate for the most part, and compared to more advanced missiles like the kind of the United States, Russia and China have, they are easy to shoot down with the kind of weapons systems aboard say, US aircraft carriers. We will discuss that more later. This is largely inconsequential to what's been happening in the Red Sea because the vast majority of naval traffic that passes by Huthi territory does not have

access to say FAYLANKX, FELANX systems. Yeah, you don't have much in the way of anti missile systems on a normal containers.

anti ship missile. In an article for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a guy named Fabian hens Rights quote the parades these are Huthi military parades also featured a variety of anti ship ballistic missiles ASBMs and guided rockets

employing Iranian infrared or imaging infrared seeker technology. The four hundred and fifty kilometer range SEF appears to be a rebranded ASBM version of Iran's FATA three one three missile, while the Tongue Kill represents a previously unseen anti ship version of the IRGC Iranian Revolutionary Guardcore developed five hundred kilometer range SO higher. The two designs constitute the heaviest hoothy anti ship missiles, both with warheads of more than

three hundred kilograms and are of Iranian origin. Three smaller ASBMs. The one hundred and forty kilometer range Fhlek, the Mayun and the bar al Amar strongly resemble Iranian design philosophy and seeker technology, but do not precisely match known Iranian systems.

They could either be Iranian systems not observed before in smuggle to Yemen, or Huthy produced rockets combined using Iranian guidance skits, not unlike developments made by another Iran proxy, the Lebanese has Belah and its position guided surface to surface missile program. Finally, the Huthis have presented an S seventy five s A two surface to air missile, likely from pre war Yemeny Army stocks modified for an anti

ship role using an Iranian guidance kit. So that's a that's that's a potent and it's probably more some ways more advanced than their general cruise missile stockpile arsenal for

taking out ships. Now, the Huthis are still a non state force, and when people say online that like the US is fighting Yemen, not quite accurate, because the Huthis are fighting Yemen too, right, like the government if you're if you're saying the government, you're talking about the people, Well, people in Yemen are fighting each other, right, yeah, it's it's that is the situation. They are at war with the government of Yemen. Right, that is still the right case.

too dangerous to continue. Their stated goal here is to force damage on Israel and the Western nations who support it by hitting the only thing they care about, commerce, and their actions here have done real damage to international trade, not exclusively Western international trade. I should note the latest several months have seen them capture or sink a couple of merchant vessels. They've sunk one. They've hit at least

sixteen vessels with drones and missiles. I found a Bloomberg report with the telling title Houthy missiles do far more damage to trade than to actual ships, which is an interesting way to frame it. Yeah, and they're kind of trying to minimize what's going on here. While sixteen strikes is a large number for the industry to withstand, there

have been even more failed attempts. Since the Houthies began their attacks, there have been more than sixty incidents of some kind in and around the world way, including everything from near misses to hijackings and harassment by armed militants and small boats. If you look at the damage that's occurred in most of these incidents, it has not been significant, says said Marcus Baker, head of the Marine and Cargo

at Marsh, one of the world's top insurance brokers. So far, we haven't seen a total loss caused by a missile strike. That changed in March when the Houthi successfully sank the Ruby Mar despite more than a month of US strikes to degrade their capability. The vessel was initially wounded and drifted unmanned for almost two weeks before sinking. While it listed, A Hoothy representative promised the ship could be salvaged if aid trucks were allowed to enter Gaza. The Ruby Mar

wound up sinking. Now Hoothy strikes have also hit at least one ship bound for Iran and another that was going to be delivering aid supplies to Gimmen. At least three civilian sailors have been killed thus far, and a strike on a bolt carrier named the True Confidence. Now, how you kind of interpret this as a success by the Houthy stated goals which is right to inflict enough pain on the West and on Israel economically that it forces an earlier end to what Israel is doing in Gaza. Right,

if that's their goal, well, it hasn't happened yet. Right, that's one thing we can say, right, it has not yet. There's no evidence that I have seen that it has affected the tempo of Israeli operations substantially.

But yet I think the US has this very like strong incentive to not let it become a thing that keeps happening.

the Red Sea. Right, there's I've heard some argument that the tempo is reduced since the US got there, But it's also unclear to me, is like, well, they only have a limited amount of these missiles. Right, has the t changed because they need to marshal their ammunition effectively, or has it changed because there's been damage done to their infrastructure. I don't know that we'll ever really get a perfect answer on that, right, I know the US

claims that it has. You know, we claim that our strikes have weakened them, but we always claim that, right, Yeah, I mean what we're gonna say, right, Yeah, we all lived through Afghanistan. Right, you're aware of what the US says about ship like this.

That is a hit, and it's hurt a lot of people. Right. It also has not wholly blocked like there's a longer route you can take around Africa to get into the Red Sea, but that makes everything more expensive too. The country hurt most is actually Egypt, because Egypt depends on the Suez Canal for about a quarter of its currency earnings, and you go through the Red Sea to get to the Suez Canal. For reasons that are obvious if you

look at a map. Right, people who rightly see what's happening in Gaza as a crime against humanity are unlikely to care too much about the Egyptian economy, nor should they necessarily. But the bigger questions here are can the hooth He's actually force it into what Israel's doing? And how long can they keep this up? The answer to the first question, can the hooth He's forcing into his Raeli aggression is not yet. And the answer to the second question is how long can they keep this up?

I don't know they might be able to eventually bring about international pressure through economic damage, but given the state of the US presidential election, I don't see that as particularly likely a method for changing net Yahuu's behavior. The answer to the second question is, you know, you know, how long can they keep this up? Probably forever? Right, US strikes have been lauded by the US's damaging infrastructure, but we don't know that that's true. Our air strikes

in the region have been launched by the USS. D White D. Eisenhower, the head of the carrier strike Group in the Red Sea at present. And again, when you look at kind of like leftists analyzing this, because they don't often know much about the military, you'll get a mix of like people being like, ah, the houthis are going to kill a carrier because they put out a video of like a carrier in their sites and shit, and like, I don't think so, guys, doesn't seem likely.

These are very well defended ships, and they are very competently led. Look I have looked into the capital of the ship, I've looked into how they have handled the considerable tempo of tax against them. I think that these guys are operationally competent as the US tends to be. Now,

that doesn't mean they're going to win. The US soldiers tend to be operationally competent most of the time, and we also lose a lot, right because operational competence doesn't matter if the operations you're being asked to undertake have no chance of victory. And that is more or less the situation. I think that these sailors are in right where they're pretty good at sailing around in an aircraft

carrier and not getting killed. But that doesn't mean they're going to defeat the Houthies in a meaningful way right right, And the Hoothies are aware of this. They're in a holding pattern. They understand that the primary thing that is that all of strategy really hinges around stopping and denying

terrain to the enemy. And all the Hoothies have to do to deny a significant amount of terrain to the entire west is keep lobbing missiles, often blindly, in this sea and it will make everything more expensive for everybody, keep them in the news, and that's a win. And it's unlikely, if not basically impossible, that using current methods, the US Navy and US you know, airpower in this area, based in this carrier group is going to be able to do anything but spend a shitload of money.

a state actor, for example, could. But people are looking at how how close some hits have gotten to the carriers and being like, well, shit, if you had a lot more of these things, you could really cause some fucking problems for these boats. Right. Yeah. They've also used unmanned boats and unmanned underwater vessels. These are basically unmanned drone boats with explosives in them, right, and again, significantly

more of these could potentially do some damage. This is, by any account, the most direct combat US naval forces have seen since World War Two, and one thing. I fun thing I've learned reading articles about the operation is that our jets now get kill markers for the bombs they drop.

ships that cannot defend against them. They have since some manned boats, which the US has fucking murked immediately, and they don't seem to be doing that anymore because it's dumb and the Hoothies didn't get where they did by repeatedly doing dumb shit. What they seem to have settled on is sending out drone swarms. Both of these boats, these underwater drones and of aerial drones, and these things

can cost just a few thousand dollars each. Some of the biggest ones are probably only tens of thousands of dollars. But the navy missiles that we use to interdict this shit and some of these they also have some dumber cruise missiles that are pretty cheap. The missiles we use to interdict this shit are two point one million dollars is shot. Right. This is all in an adition to the insane cost of keeping a carrier battle group in

the field and fighting. It's not at all cheap. I found one political article that quotes a DoD official admitting the cost offset is not on our side. Now, we have some cheaper systems that can work really well on particularly drones, that can work on missiles too. We've used them and that these are air burst shells fired from the conventional guns on destroyers. These have worked really well, especially against drones and tests, but they're only effective from

about ten miles or less away. In ballistic missile terms, that's extremely close. You don't want to rely on these for AICs, and it's not even all that far away in drone terms right As a result, the US has expanded research into more efficient anti drone and anti missile weapons, including what amounts to layer, laser and microwave weapons that

could be fired indefinitely for the cost of electricity. Given the nature of these weapons, that's not insignificant either, but it's a lot less than two point one million is shot. As is always the case, the kind of fight the Huthies are waging right now has an expiration date right now.

Any group that can put together a few million dollars to make hundreds and hundreds of explosive drones right which a number of groups are capable of, could at least exact a substantial toll on a US carrier battlegroup, make it, spend a shitload of money, potentially even do some damage. And again, even if this stuff hits an aircraft carrier,

you're like very unlikely to see that thing sink. There's a story that's worth knowing that, Like when we decommissioned one of our aircraft carriers fifteen or twenty years ago. They started. They shot at a bunch like they just to see like how well it would hold up, and like they such a great sink and they couldn't sink the fucker like you can do you could kill sailors. It would be a big deal if they hit a fucking aircraft carrier and killed some sailors, even if the

carrier doesn't go down, that's a huge fucking deal. I don't know that they're capable of doing that, but it's unlikely they're going to kill one, right.

just the way war works, right. You know, the Hoothies ten to fifteen years ago wouldn't have been able to wage a war like this against the US Navy. They fought the Navy to a stand still. That's the only way to analyze this, right, and again, that doesn't mean either side is achieving their operational goals. Right, The Houthis have not ended the genocide in Gaza, and the US doesn't seem to be capable of ending the Houthis. So they fought each other to a standstill in this matter.

And that wouldn't have been possible twenty years ago. So right, twenty years from now, what's going on will be different. You know, the fact that the US seems to be pretty close to developing more efficient anti drone and anti missile weapons that are a lot cheaper to use doesn't mean that non state actors will not find a way around those. But that is the situation we're in right now with the Houthis, and that is the end of

this episode. We're going to get back to you tomorrow for part two, where we're going to talk about irregular naval warfare in Ukraine and Myanmar. James, you got anything else to say? No, No, it didn't, I didn't think so you need to be a bad day to be a boat. I guess bad day to be a boat. Bad day to be a drone. They're really suffering in this.