Starting January 12, the US and its allies have carried out several rounds of strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. However, it turned out that none of the Royal Navy’s warships can fire missiles at targets on land, forcing the UK to scramble Royal Air Force jets based 1,500 miles away to conduct the mission. Eventually, the US had to carry out most of the strikes on Houthi targets.
While American destroyers can fire Tomahawk missiles, the UK military vessels mostly used Harpoon anti-ship missiles, which were subsequently retired in 2023. As per the Telegraph, the Norwegian-made Naval Strike Missile, which is capable of hitting land targets, "has only been installed on one vessel so far as part of a trial and has yet to be fired."
The newspaper quoted a former senior defense chief who fumed over the Royal Navy lacking surface-to-surface missiles: "It’s clearly a scandal and completely unsatisfactory," he said.
The media further cited Rear Admiral Chris Parry, a former senior naval officer, who warned that the lack of proper surface-to-surface missiles had left the navy "exposed": "The real worry is that we are not going to be able to go toe-to-toe with our Chinese and Russian opposite numbers in encounter actions and we are going to see more and more of these issues," he stressed.
The UK leadership clearly miscalculated when it decided to jump on Washington's Mideast military op bandwagon, according to Matthew Gordon-Banks, an international relations consultant, former member of parliament and retired senior research fellow of the UK Defense Academy.
"British official estimates of UK naval capability tend to be rather over-stated," Gordon-Banks told Sputnik. "Not for the first time, there has been a knee-jerk reaction to provide cover for military action by the United States. If these actions have turned into a 'Yemen campaign' then we may well have made a very serious mistake which will escalate the problems rather than help."
The former MP explained that "the UK did not think through the consequences of its actions before sending a ship to the Red Sea" whereas other European NATO member states have been "more cautious and realistic." "We need to sharpen our diplomatic tools not to create a wider conflict in the region," he stressed.
When asked whether it is reasonable to expect a gradual decrease in tensions in the face of the depletion of Western forces, the British politician replied:
"The key to reducing tension in the Red Sea is moving as swiftly as possible to de-escalating the conflict in Gaza and Israel. Action by the US and UK in particular runs the high risk of making matters worse, not better. In their own way, both US and UK capability is not as strong as many think, or like to believe."