Hey, “shooting down weapons no one’s ever faced in combat before” is perfect training for US soldiers, and “a Navy commander says it’s a ‘great opportunity,’ ” (Business Insider, February 17, 2024).
Probably those on the receiving end of the Houthis’ anti-ship ballistic missiles would disagree, or anyway would not accord the same amount of weight to this plus side.
But the commander has a point. According to Business Insider’s Jake Epstein:
US Navy warships off the coast of Yemen have been battling Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles, a dangerous weapon that no military has ever faced in combat until very recently.
These weapons could be significant threats in potential future conflicts, especially one with China in the Western Pacific. But American forces are learning from their recent battles in the Middle East and gaining valuable intelligence from these engagements, Navy commanders say.
“First time a ballistic missile has been shot, either at a warship or at maritime traffic that’s next to a warship,” a carrier strike group commander told Business Insider during a visit to the Red Sea this week. “And that has yielded us a lot of information.”
The Houthis began to employ anti-ship ballistic missiles—alongside anti-ship cruise missiles and one-way attack drones—toward the end of last year, marking the first time “in history” that these weapons have been used, as US President Joe Biden has said. The use of these missiles complicates the threat environment.
The Iran-backed Houthi rebels have fired dozens of anti-ship ballistic missiles from Yemen toward international shipping lanes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, sometimes even striking commercial vessels.
StopTheChinazi.org columnist James Roth suggests that every possible improvement in US naval capacity is urgently needed given the Chinese Navy’s various and growing advantages over the US Navy.
Epstein also notes that “the Houthi rebels boast a rather sizable arsenal of anti-ship ballistic missiles, some of which are Iranian in origin, while others just contain parts from Tehran…. Long before the Houthis began attacking international shipping lanes with anti-ship ballistic missiles, these weapons had emerged as a growing concern for the US military as it looked across the Pacific to China given the country’s growing arsenal of anti-ship ballistic missiles and rising tensions.”
There may be more than a parallel with China here. China scholar Stephen Mosher has argued that just as Iran often supports terrorist groups like Hamas and the Houthis, so China often supports Iran. Others give China the benefit of the doubt. In a December 2023 piece, Newsweek referred to China’s possibly “unwitting role” in spreading “ballistic missile technology that has wound up in the hands of Houthi rebels who are attacking container ships in the Middle East.”
That’s China all right, just stumbling around accidentally causing trouble for all the countries it targets.
Also see:
StopTheChinazis.org: “China Is Stoking a New Cold War With the West” by Steven W. Mosher
“From Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to Hamas’ massacre in Israel to Beijing’s support of the brutal military junta in Myanmar, China is aggressively cultivating a new Cold War pitting the CCP—along with its surrogates and proxies—against the West.”
StopTheChinazis.org: “U.S. and China: Our Navy, Their Navy, and the Parity of Disparity” by James Roth
“At what point can we can say that China will have achieved naval superiority over the United States? Would that be based on number of ships, quality of ships, number of anti-ship munitions, numbers of sailors, naval air capabilities? All of the above?”
