I'm particularly interested in how Egypt responds to this. They lose about $300,000 per vessel that diverts around the cape. In fiscal 2023, about 25,000 vessels went through the canal.
Egypt has a vested interest in stabilizing the region and returning to the status quo. They are politically and economically aligned with the West and Israel and their best, and only, option is to remain a stable partner.
Egypt doesn't have the advanced anti missile cruisers. Egypt has a massive tank force.
There is already a multi national naval fleet in the Red Sea patrolling the waters. Mostly US but also UK and some others.
Edit
There's more :) Egypt can't counter the missiles better than the US can, but it could certainly get pulled into a larger conflict if it started deploying military assets outside it's borders. They can't really make their situation better but they can definitely make it worse.
The only military option to stop the attacks are drone / bomber incursions into Yemen which of course Egypt has no interest in doing since it could turn into a full hot war pretty easily.
After they withstood years of war with Saudis? Those sandal-and-skirt guys are much tougher than people think.
The history of area bombardment is it strengthens civilian resolve. Think: the Battle of Britain, Vietnam and America’s wars in the Middle East.
Strategic bombing has only influenced one country to surrender.
Japan's political environment during the war was incredibly complex, and trying to view their rationale and motivation through a Western lens is very dangerous. And I don't think the Soviets were anywhere close to an imminent invasion of the Home Islands. I don't think they had the appetite for doing more than grabbling the Kuriles and Sakhalin Island, instead preferring to let the US suffer the casualties.
While the Soviet declaration of war surely had some impact, the Emperor said there were three primary factors in his decision to accept the Potsdam conditions; his lack of confidence in Ketsu Go plans to defend Kyushu. The increasing devastation caused by the conventional and nuclear bombing campaigns, and finally, concern about the "domestic situation" meaning internal revolt. Later in private letters he referred to Nippon's deficiency in science, meaning a lack of nuclear weaponry. Hirohito and PM Suzuki realized that with nuclear weapons, the US didn't need to invade Japan.
I would say that Dresden is not a counterexample. Every year on February 13, many Dresdeners gather on the Neumarkt to commemorate the destruction of the city on the Bombennacht (night of the bombings) in 1944. The spectacle polarizes German society. Right-wing revisionists like to point to the destruction of Dresden to portray Germany as a victim of the Second World War. But for many Dresdeners, this is actually a matter that is associated with personal grief because they lost family members in the bombing. As a result, the possible political implications of this culture of remembrance fade into the background for many Dresdeners. Dresden is therefore a good example of how people move closer together after extensive bombing and how this effect can last for 80 years.
You need to degrade their capability to fire long-range assets precisely. That’s doable. If it’s locals lobbing unguided rockets into the ocean, that’s commercially manageable. Guided missiles and helicopter landings are not.
That’s fine. Let them fight their civil war. The problem is long-range precision warfare extending past their costs. Knocking out that capability doesn’t require boots on the ground.
Also, this move is making the Houthis immensely popular: they are winning the PR war internally right now.
As I mentioned elsewhere [1], this is fine. A stable, adversarial Yemen is better than the clusterfuck it currently is. A big part of the problem with the current situation is there is nobody to negotiate with who can credibly claim to control these armed factions.
Different aims. Riyadh sought to remove them from power. That’s a boots-on-the-ground operation they attempted from the air.
Egypt would just need to degrade their coastal capabilities. Taking out vessels, helicopters and arms stores could do that from the air.
Counter-battery fire is tremendously precedented and always done at standoff. You can also start hitting arms stores, port infrastructure, training and C3 facilities.
The beauty of this is it’s cruelly win-win-win. The Houthis can use the bombing to strengthen their domestic image, maybe even boost recruitment. Iran can piggyback on that. And America can claim it cleared the Strait. As long as everyone stays in their lane (literally), it’s a stable conclusion.
Training and top level command is most likely not even in Yemen. You could hit the ports, that wouldn't stop the import of these missiles - they are shipped in small boats as a kit, assembled wherever, and then kept in a cave somewhere or in a car, ready to be fired. No port or infrastructure needed.
These tactics have been used since the 80s, and no solution short of a ground invasion can stop them. Israel couldn't even stop Hamas and the PIJ from firing guided rockets from Gaza - at the end of the day when the IDF bomb houses that rockets were fired from, it's just theater: they never store more than a dozen munitions, and by the time counter battery fire arrives, they've likely fired all munitions already. This is a tiny 2.4sqm strip fully blockaded, I don't see how you can stop it in Yemen.
This is blind counter-battery. You use the shot to place loiters. That then trains your fire.
Despite much media ado about destroying the launchers, those are typically just welded pipe or wooden catapults. There's no value in them and no point in ever coming back there.
Those arms stores do not exist as such, they're most probably highly dispersed and only at the limit can one call them "stores", and if gathered in one place that place is most probably located underground, where aerial bombings would have close to no effects.
Just look at how difficult it is right now for Israel to take out Hamas's weapons cashes in Gaza, and we're talking about a much concentrated operation in terms of space and most probably Israel knows a lot more about Hamas's weapons caches than the US would be able to ever know about where the Houthis store their weapons.
See the thing is, if shipping companies don't trust the waters they simply won't send ships there - claims don't matter one whit.
What part of removing long-range precision strike capability suggests an empty claim?
Getting information on where things are stored is hard. It needs boots/spies on the ground (satellites can only get limited information and are easily fooled). As pointed out elsewhere, modern best practice is to not have a large warehouse that is easy to find and destroy, instead you scatter this stuff around in small units.
If they launched their entire stockpile, it’s no longer an issue. The question was using one launch to take out a couple missiles, maybe a launcher and those operating it. Done repeatedly, this will degrade a static force. (Additional levers would need to be pulled on resupply.)
When it comes to missile (whether drone, cruise missiles, or ballistic missiles), it's much more difficult. The US had a hard time countering the SCUD missiles in 1991. And that was with a huge military, with the best ISR the world has ever seen. A 6-pack of Shaheds can be launched from a trailer that looks all the world like a normal flatbed style semi. A cruise missile can be fired and navigate a course that obfuscates its launch point. Ballistic missiles can fire, then drive away to hide in a city.
The only way to win this fight is to blockade the country from receiving shipments from Iran. Air blockade and naval blockade, combined with strikes to hit known depots etc. This is called war. Not a presence mission, not a "response," but the literal definition of war. The US has no stomach for this entanglement, and hopes that the problem goes away. It won't, but the pain level is relatively low, and the USN is getting some great practice in fighting a LIC in the littoral regions.
So if hitting the launchers is hard, how about destroying one of those assets every time they attack shipping?
Aren't Egyptian Navy vessels much cheaper than american? They can just zerg rush and eat the damage. I don't think that Houthi have a lot of cruise missiles piled up.
The last time the StarCraft doctrine was used in a real war was over a century ago and it did not go well.
> I don't think that Houthi have a lot of cruise missiles piled up.
Are you willing to bet the lives of Egyptian sailors on that assumption? How about your own?
This isn’t a video game.
Blitzkrieg was early combined-arms warfare; its modern iteration underwrites American military supremacy.
Zerg rushing is an r-production analog that uses swarms of cheap, expendable units to overwhelm the enemy numerically. This is closer to the Soviet (and now Russian) doctrine of using humans to absorb ammunition. It fails against combined-arms armies because it lacks manoeuvre. It works when the enemy is production constrained, e.g. Ukraine.
Zerg rushing works in video games.
The Soviets in WWII used human waves against the Nazis. (EDIT: They did not, they used them against the Finns in the Winter War.) That said, the USSR was capable of combined-armed warfare.
Russia has proved incapable of combined-arms warfare. They launched human waves in Bakhmut, and are largely using numerical advantages in raw recruits to push for marginal gains. This isn’t how a modern army fights.
The Red Army definitely used them against Finland. But you are right, they weren’t used against the Nazis.
at sea, this approach took down the Russian Fleet at Tsushima Strait. The MCII exercise, contentious as it were, showed that an Iranian attempt at that might have worked.
hell, for all of their losses in Ukraine, the Russians are still gaining ground, and a lot of that came at the expense of modern Straf-Bat penal units.
that said, Egypt is a tank power, not a ship power, and flooding the area with older gear is a good way for most of it to end up at the bottom of the ocean. it's a non-starter of an idea for them.
It is in any case a full brute force approach that bellies an enemy that is unwilling or unable to train their troops.
Yes, quantity is a quality all its own, but that's why the US military is one of the biggest armed force on the planet. We do literally have the biggest air force in the world, for example.
In fact we have 4 of the top 10: #1 (airforce), #2 (Navy), 4(Army), and #5(marines).
Egypt usually doesn't have any problems with that. They're not a liberal democracy, so enduring high casualties is not a political problem for them.
The economy where consumer credit card debt just hit 5 trillion.
The economy where high skill jobs like people on this forum can’t find work.
If you think this is a healthy economy you’re either too rich to care, or being lied to by whatever news outlet you read.
That’s a 150x cost difference. Well within an order of magnitude of America versus Iran’s economies and defense budgets.
Which is irrelevant, since before this becomes a production problem it would become the diplomatic ones of bombing Houthi supplies in Yemen and intercepting IRGC vessels on the high seas.
A US interceptor of 0.000013% of US GDP.
So, yes, I know, LOTS of details (like Iran) here, but the overall point being even if our $3M missile is more than their $20K drone in absolute dollars, we can afford it more than they can.
About what a third of $3mm is to the U.S. (15x larger) or U.S. defense budget (50x larger). A 3x production-cost advantage in an economically unconstrained conflict is not an advantage. It’s at best a Twitter PR point.
Given that Iran is producing thousands to tens of thousands of these missiles every year, and is looking to expand production even more, there actually really is a risk that the stockpiles will not keep up, after which dozens of billions of dollars will have to be expended to seriously ramp up production. This dynamic is also the reason why it's been so difficult to ramp up artillery production in support of Ukraine.
Additionally, given that the expensive parts in these drones seem to be homemade in Iran (engines, fuselage, even some of the electronics), and given the sanctions, USD equiv. GDP isn't a great metric since there's no free market to convert Iranian production to USD.
Then there's the problem that these missiles are sorely needed in case of a war in China, so actually going through a significant expenditure, even if money is allocated to increase production in 2-3 years, means that the US Navy may find itself with insufficient stockpiles to defend itself against the PLA, should the need arise. Its' ability to defend against credible Chinese saturation attacks is already marginal.
If anyone is talking about escalation risk, production isn’t the bottleneck. We are nowhere close to being resource constrained in the Middle East.
> the US Navy may find itself with insufficient stockpiles to defend itself against the PLA
In a production contest it’s maximum sustainable flows, not stocks, that matter. (Stocks buy you time to get flows up.) To the extent challenging the PLA is a concern, boosting production to counter the Houthis is a net win.
> ability to defend against credible Chinese saturation attacks is already marginal
You’re arguing both ways. If their value is marginal, expending them now is fine.
Your broader point—I think—is correct. America doesn’t want to spread itself thin. But that’s a constraint at the CVN level. Once the carrier strike force is positioned, it’s immaterial whether it’s firing off missiles or guns.
Anyone positioning Iran et al v America et al is missing key pieces in the logistics of war.
The older SM-2s may have more plentiful stocks, but most of them have been deemed too dangerous to use after causing serious damage in test firings, and there are only around 180 modernized versions available, and the missile itself is no longer produced.
Defending against a saturation attack means that the value experiences a step function. Either you have enough missiles to stop most low-tech enemy missiles, and you're going to be largely fine, or you don't, and your entire fleet might sink. It's not something you can afford to. The US Navy is never going to allow stocks to go under what is necessary to stop at least a long-range Chinese attack, and that means at least 600 missiles, which is a serious chunk of what remains.
Boosting production to counter the Houthis is surely something the US will do. It will take 2-3 years to bear fruit. In the meantime, stocks are not sufficient to tank Iran's capability to produce these kinds of missiles.
I think that the most likely outcome is either more shipping companies negotiating terms to transit unharmed, like China's COSCO has all but admitted to have done, or these detours to continue.
Agree.
> stocks are not sufficient to tank Iran's capability to produce these kinds of missiles
My core point is it never gets to Iran making missiles, the Houthis firing them and the U.S. doing nothing more than intercepting. Well before it becomes a production contest, the situation is resolved diplomatically or escalated.
> the most likely outcome is either more shipping companies negotiating terms to transit unharmed
This would be difficult for a Western company to do without risking sanctions.
Given the “final warning” issued 4 days ago by the coalition, I think escalation or resolution (probably the former) is very much a “sooner rather than later" thing.
Perhaps.
We have a tightrope to walk: trying not to spark a regional war but also ensuring that warnings and redlines are taken seriously.
At the same time, if your adversary knows what the response will be, they have the option of deciding the action is still worth it (or even the response would be desirable). This can even be perverse (e.g. two level games; leaders deciding to take a punch that is a net loss for their nation to rally support around themselves).
So blurry redlines --- and the full range of responses ("in a time and manner of our choosing"), including covert and deniable ones --- are employed. Ambiguity is usually advantageous to maintain, and players employ mixed strategies.
And the production capacity can easily be ramped up if there's enough funds.
I'm basing off on : https://apps.dtic.mil/procurement/Y2014/Navy/stamped/P40_223...
Given the production numbers, it seems that stocks even of SM-2 block 3 through 4 are at most in the low four digits.
I'm sure production capability for the SM-6 can be ramped up I'd there's enough funds, my point is that it's going to be even more expensive than the figure price of the missiles used looks like, and that it's going to be 2-3 years at least before that pans out.
ESSM is cheaper at around $2M per round, and quad packs help increase the magazine depth on Navy ships. Production for it is also too low in my opinion, currently at roughly 140 year. Routine testing and missile qualifications could easily eat up 20% of that each year. Sigh.
I just find it hard to believe that increasing production totals wouldn't help decrease unit cost significantly. My USN friends won't mention inventory totals, but they do mention that a lot of ships are going to sea without full magazines. And since at-sea replenishment of VLS systems is still a fantasy, that's a huge issue.
I also would love to see why you think there's only 180 modernized versions, and what you consider modernized. My understanding is that all versions have been either upgraded or their upgrade is budgeted. If you think that the USN has only 680 SM-2 and SM-6 in inventory I don't know what to say. That would be only 10 or so Standards per Arleigh Burke. There are 73 Arleigh Burkes active with a capacity of 90 missiles. Even if they only allocate 50% of these VLS slots to SM missiles, that would require over 3K missiles. And this ignores the Ticos completely. I know the USN puts to see without filling all the VLS slots, but that would be a dangerous, ridiculous loadout that I can't see escaping Congressional scrutiny.
Raytheon says they've produced over 11k SM-2 missiles worldwide. I know that testing has consumed around 3K, leaving 8K for the USN and allies. Even being generous with FMS, I doubt Raytheon has sold more than 2K overseas. That would leave the US inventory around 6K. A far cry from 180.
I wouldn't be so sure that the parts are locally sourced.
[0] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/bizarre-theft-wave-tar...
Maybe $3M missile isn’t that costly to the US, but if you have like 1000 of them and it takes 6 months to replenish the stock, while the other side has 10000 drones that they can replenish in 3 months, you have a massive problem at your hand. (The same problem Ukraine is having re: stockpiling artillery shells that are sourced from US/NATO)
That said if they were actually 0.1% GDP each then 10000 * 0.1% GDP each = 100% of GDP for 10 years. Which would obviously not happen.
That the Russian Federation has a small fraction of US GDP but has launched more cruise missiles in a single conflict (~7500) than the US has ever produced (4000 tomahawks) is an important example of this.
The RU missiles have killed plenty of civilians though.
If there's a level at which you don't have all three options, there exist political situations that can leave you vulnerable.
E.g. if the US has no proportionate response to a Russian tactical nuclear strike on Ukrainian soil, it may hazard towards not escalating.
Similarly, why the talking points of US response strikes for the past few decades have generally been 'this was a proportionate response.'
But after the last warning to the Houthis, I expect the next ASBM or large drone that hits a civilian ship prompts a large US/UK (and maybe France and Germany) strike.
The drones are relatively light, cheap, and can be launched with nothing but springs and wood. There's no value in the launch locations and in fact you can launch them from anywhere.
S-300 is still a very capable system today and 1990s' S-300 systems are only really a generation behind modern systems. They're about as recent as the systems on Ticonderogas and Arleigh Burkes that are very much still in service today.
S-300 (and S-400 which is really enhanced S-300) in their most modern configurations are incredibly lethal systems against 4th Gen aircraft that aren't accompanied by extensive SEAD/DEAD resources and jamming. But Ukraine has 1st generation S-300P, from the 80s. These might have been upgraded to S-300PT-1, giving them cold launch with the newer 5V55KD missiles.
6 hours from Russia and they still can’t take them out
These have very different dynamics, inherently.
At best, their weapons aren’t terribly precise and they don’t particularly care about that.
But the "echo chamber" framing you use for what's at best a nitpick/misinterpretation of what I said, that says so much more about you and your own biases than anything about me.
Something like 90% of deaths by US military are civilians, and huge chunk of that is women and children. This isn't a uniquely Russian thing.
Setting aside the numbers you've opted to pull out of your ass, there's absolutely no comparison between how the US wages war vs the Russians. Your attempt at drawing an equivalence is ignorant, at best. Just stop.
Claiming these bad things as Russian specific is flat out wrong, harmful to the discourse, and massively lacking awareness.
You also make a claim with zero support. Here's mine:
The 90% number is a pretty accurate number for modern wars in general: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/30823/qc7809568enc.pdf (ctrl F 90%)
For Iraq specifically, the number calculated by one group is 77% civilians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio#Iraq_W...
Google for yourself, there's tons of information to corroborate this. Other US wars have much worse figures.
Your tone is frustrating especially given the appearance of hypocrisy when calling someone ignorant when there's easily verifiable evidence if you put in any effort to look. I don't see the need to be nasty to me like that especially when your bold black and white claim is so very clearly wrong.
Given that Russia has openly talked about targeting civilian infrastructure to "freeze them out" (and then tried to pull that off last winter), I think you should be rather careful with your assertions about others' echo chambers...
There is a lot of cases of Ukrainian army to use indiscriminate and "dumb" weapons to attack civilian districts of Donetsk (and now, Belgorod) just to terrorize population.
And, sure, the Ukrainian attack on Belgorod is similarly problematic. But if you're willing to go there, how many attacks have Russia carried in the same time period?
URL? that's got to be super interesting data.
The US has built a lot more cruise missiles than just its Tomahawks [0], and the US has a less cruise missile dependent doctrine because it is heavily invested in acheiving air superiority and delivering smart glide bombs, and shorter-range missiles that are much cheaper.
[0] ~7500 Harpoons, some large number I can't readily pin down of SLAM (AGM-84E) and SLAM-ER (AGM-84H/K) developed from the Harpoon, ~2000 AGM-86, ~1600 AGM-129, 2000+ AGM-158, plus some more developed ans retired in the first half of the Cold War
What is the source for that number? The only long-range weapons Russia has launched thousands of are the Iranian-made long-range suicide drones.
They've also used lots of (mostly, IIRC, air launched) ballistic missiles and (conventional) cruise missiles. The reason there have been deep strikes by Ukraine on Russian bomber bases are because those bombers were used to fire long range missiles into Ukraine.
Though the “suicide drones”, while designed as loitering munitions, are basically used as propeller driven cruise missiles rather than in a loitering role.
By their fruits you'll know them. If Russia was able to destroy the enemy like USA did with half the number of missiles - they absolutely would. But they can't (mostly because USA has system where it takes minutes from recognizing targets to destroying them, and in Russia it takes hours - so they can only hit stationary targets reliably), so they have to go into quantity instead.
Also USA use bombs much more often (because they could - because they obliterated the air defence in the first hours which Russia still can't do).
Yemen's GDP is $21B, not $21M.
Are you saying that entire Yemen's GDP is just $20M ? Does not seem plausible.
Examined on its own, that's a bold claim.
The Houthi strategy isn't an economic strategy, it's a "hope the US isn't willing to kill us" strategy.
Yemen's already in famine: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_Yemen_(2016%E2%80%.... The drones are supplied by Iran.
Is there some intrinsic right that the rocket-firers are defending that warrants treating them as other than aggressors in this situation?
Why do you call it genocide? Surely if you shoot at ships in international waters, and it is not defence, then you're bringing whatever acts of defence follow on your own head. Acts of defence seem impossible to class as genocide (but I'd like to hear arguments to the contrary if you have them).
Regaeding the latter, yes, for bow I think doing nothing militarily is exactly what is needed.
Never in my wildest dream would i think that the Houthis would be one doing the first modern blockade of a strait. I always expected the US to do the first modern block in the Malacca strait, when China is forced to do a Armed reunification with Taiwan.
So, at a certain number between one and forty drones the economy stops making sense.
This is what happens here in Ukraine as well: russian drones are cheap and readily available, while interceptors are expensive af and quite scarce.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/22b-worth-of-cargo-is-now-...
the average value of goods per container ship is ~$350M per ship not including the value of the ship itself. However I think the impact to the economy from a missile hitting a ship far exceeds the value of the goods, the ship, and the cost of any missiles used to defend those goods.
It's important not to draw too many conclusions from the Ukraine war. The combatants are fighting a much different fight on both sides than what the US would do.
The problem with barrage jamming is that it's extremely locatable and your jammer just ends up getting blown up. The solution is to have many smaller jammers, but then range is decreased dramatically, and it can still be economical to just bomb them, possibly with an anti radiation munition (slapping such guidance on a drone is not expensive).
That said, the range is sufficiently small that it doesn't matter - cheap systems can just use visual odometry and inertial sensors and fly themselves the remaining 300 meters to the target. There are videos of Russian lancets operating exactly like this, flying high, locating a target, and then autonomously homing in as they get into jamming range.
The idea that neither Russia nor Ukraine tried just EW is quite ridiculous. It's well known that Russia had excellent EW, there was a report in the Texeira leaks that Ukraine could no longer use Excalibur guided shells because Russian long range jamming rendered them useless - the GPS jamming made them unable to arm, and that even US guided HIMARS missiles and JDAMs had to rely on inertial sensors for much of the trajectory with significantly reduced accuracy.
But it is the most cost-effective solution. Russia has been deploying vehicle mounted EW systems to jam drones (with some success), as well as jamming GPS. And the Ukrainians have been jamming as well. There's no wunderwaffe in any war, it's more a game of cat and mouse.
Just like APS is now becoming standard on tanks and AFVs, localized EW jammers targeting control frequencies of small drones will be the cost of having a real military. There's also been research into using APS against drones (this would require additional sensors).
And the JDAM/HIMARS jamming is a bit overrated. Even in inertial mode, JDAM has a 30m CEP, and HIMARS has a 60M CEP. Definitely not as good as with GPS, but still a serious issue for the Russians.
Excaliburs are on a much different level though. Word is, you don't need much EW at all. You merely have to give them a strong look and that's enough to drive it way off course.
Because someone else will do it for them. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and everyone based on Djibouti have a joint interest in keeping the Bab al-Mandab strait traversable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi-led_intervention_in_the_...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_takeover_in_Yemen
How would the Houthis respond?
Much less, what do they have that can possibly hit Egypt.
That said, bombing might not do the trick. Just create more suffering in Yemen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghadr-110
https://www.mapdevelopers.com/draw-circle-tool.php?circles=%...
It also seems to have a new place in history. A losing place but still. . .
On November 6, 2023, a Ghadr-110 missile was launched from Yemen by the Houthis towards Israel, which was intercepted by the Arrow-2 system while it was still outside of Earth's atmosphere, in what was described as the first instance of combat in space in human history
It assumed that Houthi is a proxy of Iran so the question is how Iran would respond.
I think its more “Iran lied and has used less overt channels” than “that changed”.
They have attack helicopters: https://pictures.reuters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2..., https://pictures.reuters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2...
They have American & Soviet fighter jets (F-5 / SU-22): https://pictures.reuters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2..., https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-H4BV3xzWWXk/TnIKIQMOAFI/A...
They have tons of cruise missiles: https://pictures.reuters.com/archive/YEMEN-SECURITY-PARADE-R..., https://pictures.reuters.com/archive/YEMEN-SECURITY-PARADE-R...
And ballistic missiles: https://pictures.reuters.com/archive/YEMEN-SECURITY-PARADE-R...
They're being supplied by Iran and whoever else hates Saudi Arabia, so they have a ton of capability to launch pretty devastating attacks on their neighbors -- hence why we have destroyers and aircraft carriers in the region. The missiles targeting merchant ships are bad -- it'd be worse if they started targeting land-based military targets in other countries.
They have, from the accounts I’ve seen (including their own propaganda videos) a single flyable F-5 constituting their entire “fast air combat capability” of those delivered to Yemen more than 40 years ago (and the F-5 was an older cheap export fighter then.)
And... I wouldn't expect it to be flyable much longer. Mobile missile launchers may be hard to find and kill on the ground, boring conventional fixed-wing jet fighters aren't, and even though they aren't the strategic target of the coalition the US has put together, US combat doctrine very heavily favors early destruction of an enemy’s air combat capability and air defenses to maximize freedom of operation.
No. They couldn't. Yemen to either is like three times the range of the SU-22 on a shortest distance path, which would take them through Saudi Arabia and close enough for mistakes of intent to Israel, either of which—as well as Egypt—has Air Forces more than capable of intercepting and destroying them if they magically gained the range to try to pull of that kind of flight.
The Houthi Air Force is useful for their civil war, and not a whole lot else.
Their air force is a joke though. A single flying F-5 (vintage 1970), and some decrepit SU-22 Fitters with no range.
Also, those aren't "attack" helicopters. They're bog standard Mi-8 transport helicopters. You can use them to attack, but they're nothing like a Hind/Hokum/Havoc or Apache helicopter.
Putting patrol-boats out there may deter boarding by Somalia-style pirates, but in this case the risk comes from various missiles and bomb-drones launched from the shore [0]. Even if the the defender has a few fancy anti-missile warships, the attacker could choose the least-covered target from a constant stream of (big, slow) cargo-ships through a ~300km route. [1]
[0] https://www.mei.edu/publications/houthis-red-sea-missile-and...
[1] https://www.axios.com/2023/12/20/map-houthi-shipping-vessel-...
And the Houthis are really in control of all most all of Yemen, so calling them insurgents etc is misplaced. They dissolved the government and replaced it with revolutionary councils.
Hypothetically, Egypt can do the same thing they did the last time Yemen fell into civil war - support the PLC.
The issue is Saudi and UAE - Egypt's primary backers - are supporting conflicting factions in the Yemeni Civil War. The Saudis are supporting the Yemeni Republican Guard (the old leadership of the Republic of Yemen) while the UAE is supporting the secessionist Southern Transitional Council which is fighting to reconstitute South Yemen.
If Egypt choses one side over they other, they are in big trouble, as the other side will start meddling in Egypt in retaliation. Egypt is already in a de facto Cold War with Turkiye and Qatar because they supported Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, and Sisi needs as much support as possible to retain power in Egypt.
I'm not arguing they should do this, but what Israel actually wants right now is to allow Gaza residents to exit into the Sinai, not a blockade.
Both Israel and Egypt denied that this was true. They both said the warnings were of a general natural "Hamas wants to attack", nothing specific.
Where did you get the info from that it was on Israel's request and not of their own accord?
So I do not expect them to do anything.
"[the] two countries almost at the brink of war with artillery guns ready to fire at Chinese tanks which were trying to storm Indian positions, a fate averted by a hotline between the two sides, reveals former Army chief Gen M.M. Naravane (Retd)" [0]
[0] - https://theprint.in/defence/nearing-breaking-point-gen-narav...
No, but their mutual dependence on the US for military procurement and defense keeps them within NATO.
China and India on the other hand began the process of a hard decoupling in 2020. Major Chinese tech companies were frozen out of the Indian market, and others were "encouraged" to sell off their operations to Indian, American, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese companies. For example, the Foxconn factory manufacturing iPhones in India was originally built for Xiaomi before they were pushed out. So was Huawei India's assets to Cisco and Vivo India's factory to Samsung. Indian tax authorities raid Chinese run companies at such a high frequency that even China has publicly complained about this [0]. This is a stunning change for a country that 4 years before was the 2nd largest FDI investor in India after the US.
> It's hard to tell what BRICS really
It's a half assed attempt at becoming a WB, ADB, or IMF competitor, but is hemmed by mutual competition between China and India. This is why the only 4 countries added in the expansion were those that had a roughly equal dependency on China and India.
> it's not a military organization so no point comparing them to NATO anyway
Agreed! I'm just dismissing a common pop fact I've noticed regurgitated on HN and Reddit. I have a hunch that the overlap between some of the more braindead subreddits and HN is quite high.
[0] - https://m.thewire.in/article/diplomacy/enforcement-directora...
What planes do the Turkish Airforce use?
What tanks, APCs, and helicopters does the Turkish Army use?
Where is most of Turkey's naval fleet manufactured?
Turkey has been working on indigenization and diversifying it's procurement by buying from Italy, Spain, and France, but it is still heavily dependent on American weapons systems.
Relations between the US and Turkiye deteriorated severely after the US began supporting the YPG (which imo was a stupid move by the Trump admin), but there is still a mutual dependency, with the US giving Turkey protection against Russia (with whom they are fighting against in a couple proxy wars like in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, etc), and the US dependent on Turkiye for Central Asia and Middle Eastern power projection.
The real world isn't a game of Civ where you are either friends or foes. In reality there exists multiple layers of grey. Furthermore, public denouncements or displays of support don't necessarily translate to positive or negative action.
A good example is Turkiye-Israel relations. Erdogan will always denounce Israel and the "Zionists", but at the end of the day, Turkey and Israel have extremely strong defense relations as both are heavily involved in Azerbaijan (Turkey because they view Azeris as brothers, and Israel because of Iran).
It's the same for US-Turkiye relations. Erdogan has to publicly appear anti-American due to his base's memories of the American supported Turkish Armed Forces violently repressing Islam until the 90s, but in actual actions, there is a mutual dependency. There's a reason why most of the younger generation of Erdogan's family attended IU Bloomington.
It's a frenemy relationship, similar to China-India in the 2012-2019 time period or Saudi and Qatar.
Aside from the S-400 purchase, which was probably done in order to build a domestic clone similar to how TAI is attempting to build the Kaan, Russia-Turkey relations are largely economic in nature. At the NatSec or defense level, they clash directly.
For example, Turkish intelligence has supported Crimean Turkish rebel groups, has supplied Ukraine with offensive UAVs for almost a decade, has shot down Russian planes (and vice versa), and directly vies with Russia in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans.
When shit hits the fan like in 2015, the US came in to mediate, though the US-Turkey relationship isn't as strong due to the Trump admin's missteps with supporting the YPG. That said, it's still a fairly strong strategic relationship, especially when compared to similar countries the US previously supported like Thailand or Malaysia, or even Greece+Cyprus and their heavy dependence on Russian weaponry (the only country in the NATO to actively buy Russian weapons until the Ukraine-Russia conflict in 2022 started).
If Incirlik was shut down, then it would absolutely be a major pivot away from the US, but the military relationship has started to recover. For example, the Turkish Air Force has been integrated under a single command with American Air Force deployments in the Middle East since 2023.