The US Navy fears a scenario in which the Houthis learn to build high-speed unmanned naval drones to attack ships in the Red Sea.
“That’s one of the most scary scenarios, to have a bomb-laden, unmanned surface vessel that can go in pretty fast speeds. And if you’re not immediately on scene, it can get ugly extremely quick,” Rear Admiral Marc Miguez, commander of US Carrier Strike Group Two, told AP in an interview.
US warships have already intercepted and destroyed “multiple” Houthi-launched naval drones, according to the commander, who pointed out that US intelligence on the militia’s capabilities in this area is spotty at best.
“[It’s] more of an unknown threat that we don’t have a lot of intel on, that could be extremely lethal – an unmanned surface vessel,” Miguez said, noting that the Houthis “have ways of obviously controlling them just like they do the (unmanned aerial vehicles), and we have very little fidelity as to all the stockpiles of what they have USV-wise.”
Carrier Strike Group Two and its lead ship, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier have been patrolling the region since November, with warships in the group deployed to intercept Houthi missiles and drones in the Red Sea, and the Eisenhower carrying fighter jets launched to bomb targets inside militia-held areas of Yemen.
The US and the UK carried out new strikes on Yemen on Saturday, with local media saying the attacks targeted the country’s western province of al-Hudaydah. The strikes followed an announcement by the Houthis that they had fired a “large number of appropriate naval missiles” at a UK-linked oil tanker – less than 24 hours after a separate attack on another British commercial vessel.
Houthi Supreme Political Council Mohammed Ali al-Houthi warned Friday at a mass rally in Sanaa that the Red Sea was “no longer a resort in which the Americans can roam and have fun in,” stating that the militia’s resistance would continue and that Yemenis would “stand firm with Gaza until victory.”