NYN | Monitoring:
The website of the US Marine Corps, the educational portal for the US Navy, published an article by site correspondent Erin Lewinson titled “What Can the Marine Corps Learn from Houthi Tactics in the Red Sea?”
The writer quoted Brian Clark, a researcher at the Hudson Institute, as saying, “It is difficult to track Yemeni forces attacking ships. From within Yemeni territory, they can identify the locations of ships, launch drones and anti-ship missiles at these ships, and then move to another location. This makes it difficult to track them, and the United States cannot stop these attacks unless it engages in highly aggressive and sustained operations in addition to continuous and comprehensive monitoring.”
Clark added, “Although the Houthis lack some of the Marine Corps’ capabilities in electronic warfare, I believe this is an example of the kind of operation that the Marine Corps is trying to carry out, and the Yemenis have done it very effectively with much less advanced capabilities than the US Navy.”
The article pointed out that “the US Navy has developed new concepts regarding the possibility of neutralizing enemy naval capabilities through trained ground forces equipped with accurate information, missiles, and sensing devices.” Lieutenant Colonel Travis Howard, a Marine Corps student at the college, who is part of the four-year “Force Design” program to develop the US Marine Corps’ capabilities to confront China’s naval forces, stated that the tactics executed by the Yemenis at sea reveal that the US Navy can do the same when engaging with an adversary like China. While it was believed that the US Navy could not carry out distributed operations within the engagement area with weapons against an adversary like China, I believe what the Yemenis have shown is that they may be able to do so because they have been able to do it against us to some extent.”
Howard believes that “the Yemenis’ operations and tactics cannot be considered an absolute confirmation to rely on and build upon in the Force Design program. However, the Yemenis’ tactics have revealed to us that a ground force equipped with sensing devices and missiles can pose significant challenges to ships.”
Captain Zack Ota, in the Marine Corps, said, “The US military will not simulate the Houthis’ mission of disrupting trade, even if it learns from their tactics.” He added, “There is another difference between the Yemenis’ operations at sea and those that the Marine Corps may conduct in a war in the Pacific Ocean, which is that the Yemenis act as an offensive force, while the Marine Corps reserves are directed towards defensive operations.”
Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, who served as the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Central Command from 1997 to 2000, expressed deep doubts about the Marine Corps’ shift towards using land forces in maritime denial operations. In the event of a conflict with China, this reveals the intentions of the United States to threaten Chinese navigation through land forces instead of using traditional naval forces.
Retired Colonel T.X. Hammes, a senior researcher at the National Defense University, stated, “One of the lessons learned from the fighting between the Yemenis and the US Navy is that warships can only defend against a small number of missiles, not a large number. Therefore, the Marine Corps forces should have more of these ships.”
The USMC website confirmed in this article that a team of Marines has been dedicated to studying combat operations in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
The article further stated that in a 2021 document outlining the reserve forces, a concept envisioning Marines being close to the enemy for reconnaissance and support of naval missions, the Corps dedicated a section to Houthi activities in the Red Sea from 2016 to 2018.
According to the document, the maritime capabilities of the forces aligned with the Sanaa government “evolved rapidly into an excellent example of how to conduct effective reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance, and maritime interdiction within a contested area.”
The article also added that “the Houthis are not the only adversary from whom the US military can learn.”
