Javier Blas
@JavierBlas
This piece provides a very good background about the complexities about protecting free navigation in the Red Sea (by a former U.K. warship commander) @TomSharpe134
telegraph.co.uk
I’ve commanded a warship. We can’t keep the Red Sea open without strikes on the Houthis
Tom Sharpe 21 December 2023 • 2:11pm
10–13 minutes
Three days ago, Lloyd Austin, the US Secretary of Defence, announced a naval coalition – dubbed Operation Prosperity Guardian – to defend Red Sea shipping from the recent escalation in “reckless Houthi attacks originating from Yemen”.
The Houthi attacks are working. The latest figures from maritime analysis provider MarineTraffic suggest that traffic through the Bab el Mandeb between 15 and 19 Dec is down 14 per cent from 8-12 Dec. If Prosperity Guardian is to succeed that figure needs to return to ‘normal’ for this time of year.
I should say straight away that the route to real success here, as ever, lies ashore between various governments and agencies who look at this issue across the entire region, albeit through their respective specialist lenses. The warship part of the problem that I’ll look at here fits into a much more comprehensive set of discussions and emerging plans.
So far, nineteen countries have signed up to Prosperity Guardian including the US, UK, France, Spain and Italy (these five have committed ships) plus Bahrain, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway and the Seychelles. Nine others do not want to be named for now: a clear indication of the region’s sensitivities. There are some notable absentees: India (although they might send ships), Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for example.
I thought I’d concentrate on what the Prosperity Guardian warships might be asked to do and why. On their own, they will struggle.
Of the countries providing surface combatant warships, the US are likely to have seven (with several in support), the RN has two (with four in support), France one, Spain one and Italy one. No one has formally declared their hand yet so these numbers are based on what is either in the area already or making good speed to get there. For now, let’s call it twelve surface combatants assigned to Prosperity Guardian.
In broad handfuls, there are two threats they will need to deal with. First, they need to defend against the missile and drone threat. So far, ships of the US, Royal and French navies have shot down 36 of these (with the US leading the charge by a distance with 34 kills). While this is impressive, missiles have got through causing damage and in the case of the Norwegian chemical tanker Strinda, starting a fire. How there hasn’t been a major spillage, sinking or fatalities yet is a miracle. There is also a fast attack craft threat (crewed or uncrewed) to be considered. This hasn’t been seen yet but will be familiar to any navy people who have operated in the region.
Second, the warships need to protect against piracy and hijackings of the sort attempted a few times now with success on two occasions. There is also the potential for a mine threat which is a whole different ball game if that comes into play.
The problem right at the start is that the requirements for these two tasks are quite different. The missile-and-drone task requires a line of ships up the eastern side of the Bab el Mandeb channel in clearly defined boxes. The size of these will be determined by the capabilities and range of each ship’s missiles but the aim is to provide a chain through which nothing can pass. One of the ships then acts as the area air warfare commander (AAWC). The AAWC ship coordinates the compilation of a Recognised Air Picture (RAP) across all ships and then allocates weapons accordingly when a threat is detected. This would be a perfect task for HMS Diamond because her radar is excellent but the US have the lead and they are quite mean when it comes to sharing tasks like this so it will likely be allocated to an American Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.
The piracy-and-hijacking task needs a more dynamic, mobile approach as defeating piracy as it is happening inevitably requires the warship to close at high speed and either warn off or disable the pirate boats or helicopter.
History has plenty of examples where tasking like this has been taken on. The classic convoy model of WWII can be discounted. There isn’t space and there aren’t enough ships. Operation Earnest Will of the late 80s in the Gulf was similar in terms of the threat but the number of ships that needed protecting was fewer. Operation Desert Shield in the early 90s had ships checking in at waypoints to be picked up by escorts and also saw merchant ships starting to embark their own missile defence systems, something that carried over to Operation Guardian Mariner in 2003. The anti-piracy efforts of the late noughties and early teens in the Gulf of Aden were over a larger area but more ships were available and the threat was much less sophisticated than what we have seen so far from the Houthis.
This mix of threats in a confined space isn’t unprecedented although the amount of ships that need protecting and the speed of attacking missiles may be.
My money is on a hybrid solution that sees some ships in boxes up the eastern channel and some with a roving commission to attach themselves to ships deemed to be of high importance and to intercept piracy attempts.
Aircraft will have a vital role in all of this, both in terms of contributing to the air picture but also for shooting down drones and engaging pirates. The surface warships have their own helicopters, but the US carrier Dwight D Eisenhower – Ike, now just to the south of the Bab el Mandeb in the Gulf of Aden – will bring hugely greater capability. However the US will not tie up a carrier on a task like this for the long term, so the surface warships will need to be able to do the job on their own.
In maritime terms the bottom of the Red Sea is small. But if you measure the distance from the southern to the northernmost attacks (so far) you are looking at 300 nautical miles. If you give each warship an ambitious 30 mile long box to protect, then you need ten ships for the missile/drone defence task alone. Some missiles carried by the various ships can theoretically cover much greater areas than this, but if a warship cannot detect a drone or a missile it cannot shoot at it: and a sea-skimming aircraft is below the horizon and thus unseen if it is at any great distance. There will also be ships in the task force which only have shorter-ranging missiles, so ten ships for the drone-and-missile barrier is a reasonable assumption.
Of course if you have ten ships on line you need more assigned to the force because they will need to refuel periodically, and at the current rate of missile expenditure, rearm as well. Then you add the roving ships for the piracy task and you quickly run out of ships. So you either make the boxes larger and therefore the defence more porous, or you protect a smaller area. These are the planning conundrums that staff officers in Bahrain will be wrestling with just now.
Then there’s the merchant-to-military interface, so that ships can pass through with the minimum of delay whilst still being protected. Sal Mercogliano does a good job on YouTube describing the complexities of this – there are many. So it will take a while to set this task up and then settle down – it always does. In the meantime you will continue to see some ships taking the option to reroute round the Cape of Good Hope or pause their passage whilst things become clearer.
Not enough warships, the sheer amount of traffic to protect and the complexity of the merchant-military interface are three reasons why I don’t think Prosperity Guardian will work on its own. It is entirely defensive in nature and thus ignores the other tried and tested way of ensuring the safety of ships at sea – destroying the enemy’s ability to threaten them.
That this hasn’t happened already shows just how complex the diplomatic situation across the region is right now. It is also partly because of the difficulties in striking the Houthis a) successfully and b) without escalating the conflict. This would not be the easy hit that many imagine.
Striking back requires precision. The Houthis have learned a great deal from their Iranian masters about mobility – there are no large warehouses or HQs marked “strike here”. So counter-strikes against missile and drone launchers or radar stations will need to be fast, or the target will have gone. This is possible but requires rapid intelligence-to-targeting processes: enter Ike, stage right.
Any attacks also need to be carefully paced if escalation is to be avoided. The Houthis have demonstrated this to perfection. They announced themselves with a bang on 26 October, followed by a few attacks on ships connected to Israel, then a few more on ships going to or from Israel before gradually crescendoing to the less discriminatory model seen today. The Houthis have caused maximum disruption without overstepping the mark and making a strike back unavoidable.
Allied attacks on them need to be similarly careful and the easiest way to do that is on a ‘one out, one in’ model, with launch sites/vehicles struck each time the Houthis make an attack. This can be justified on the international stage as self-defence and has the added benefit of eroding the Houthi will to fight. At the moment they are operating with impunity.
Between now and counter-strikes happening – if they do – Operation Prosperity Guardian is no better than a sticking plaster. Its entirely defensive nature does not appear to be winning over some shipping lines or navies. It is early days though, so the plan should be afforded the benefit of the doubt. However, absent a political or diplomatic solution, I believe that defensive measures will have to be combined with precise, non-escalatory counterstrikes to restore freedom of navigation in this critically important maritime chokepoint.
All of this could, of course, be overtaken by events. What effect will the anticipated (non UN-directed) operational pause in Gaza have, for example?
For now however, it is a sobering thought that a relatively minor terrorist militia group can threaten global trade in this manner. The situation should serve as a stark reminder to governments of the importance of investing properly in the measures required to prevent this from happening again. That is, in navies, to put it bluntly.
Tom Sharpe is a former Royal Navy officer. He was a specialist anti-air warfare officer, and commanded a surface combatant warship
