Why did a Brit ship attempt to go via the Red Sea anyway? The US & UK bombing has done nothing to thwart the Houthis. Actually the US is embarrassing itself by its inability to stop them and should just leave the area.
Get the Iowa and Missouri out of mothballs...fast!
We’ve actually taken out quite a lot of Houthi weaponry, and attacks were down in frequency until this last weekend, but, even if we got 90% in only a few weeks, 10% of the Houthis’ gear remaining is enough to cause quite a bit of trouble when we are talking about trying to defend a considerable area with only a few ships.
I saw a report that the Euros are sending 4 ships - what their capabilities are, I don’t know. VERY few countries have ships with the AD capabilities of our Arleigh-Burke destroyers, and those that do, don’t have many.
Whether this Brit ship was “under protection” by a nearby US or British destroyer, I somewhat doubt. But, we shall see.
I disagree about pulling out: If this goes on for a period of several more months or more, the economic blowback could be quite bad. (Bad for us mainly as fallout of really bad economic damage in Europe.) We’re just gonna have to hit the Houthis hard enough that they can’t continue, or, do a Trump / Reagan number on their Iranian sponsors.
IF someone at DOD had thought ahead about such situations, we’d be able to blanket the Houthi controlled areas of Yemen with many hundreds of, maybe even a few thousand, modest cost drones, and they wouldn’t be able to do squat.
Anything passing the Suez canal in either direction is going to approach Yemen. That is a big deal, as this is a critical global shipping lane.