The stakes have been raised with the emergence of cruise missiles and their ability to go far beyond merely bloodying a vessel.
Days after the U.S. conducted a second round of strikes against Houthi militants and an affiliated radar site, the Houthis responded by launching an anti-ship cruise missile toward the USS Laboon (DDG-58). Thankfully, the Laboon was able to intercept the missile with all hands reported safe. The stakes have been raised with the emergence of cruise missiles and their ability to go far beyond merely bloodying a vessel — they are proven ship-killers that must be treated with due severity.
On Jan. 14 at approximately 4:45 p.m. (Sanaa time), an anti-ship cruise missile was fired from Iranian-backed Houthi militant areas of Yemen toward USS Laboon (DDG 58), which was operating in the Southern Red Sea. The missile was shot down in vicinity of the coast of Hudaydah by… pic.twitter.com/jftZHQhA2e
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) January 15, 2024
Since shortly after Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel, the Houthis have been incrementally adding to the complexity of their attacks on international shipping and U.S. Navy assets, and there’s reason to believe these attacks function as a laboratory for Iran and China to refine their anti-U.S.-forces missile tactics by proxy — or maybe it’s just happenstance that the Houthis employ the two countries’ weapons systems while the Chinese navy observes nearby — similar to their past shadowing of naval war games between U.S. allies (RIMPAC) off the Hawaiian coast.
A January 11 post from the International Institute for Strategic Studies explains:
In 2019, the US Navy’s USS Forest Sherman (DDG-98) guided missile destroyer intercepted a vessel in the Arabian Sea smuggling Iranian-made arms to Yemen, including a version of the Chinese C-802 (YJ-82/CH-SS-N-6 Saccade) anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM). Iran began producing the 120 kilometre-range C-802 domestically as the Nour in the 1990s and developed it into the 200 km-range Ghader and the 300 km-range Ghadir. While it is uncertain which versions the Houthis received, the group claimed their C-802s (named Al-Mandab 2) had a range of 300 km, suggesting a potential transfer of the Ghadir.
In parades in 2022 and 2023, the Houthis unveiled additional ASCMs, including what appeared to be two anti-ship versions of the Iranian Quds/351 LACM. One version is allegedly equipped with a radar-homing seeker (Sayyad), and the other has an electro-optical/infrared seeker (Quds Z-0). Based on the range of the original Quds and on Houthi statements, both systems could have a range of at least 800 km.
The Houthi attacks began by targeting defenseless shipping vessels using UAVs such as the Iranian Shahed 136, then escalated to ballistic missiles (arcing and preprogrammed with limited pursuit ability). Once the concept was confirmed on the dummy hulls of international trading vessels, a UAV swarm pursued but was countered by the USS Carney. Next, a combination of UAV and ballistic missiles against what the Houthis thought to be an Israel-connected Swan Atlantic, and ultimately a three-piece — ballistic and cruise missiles combined with UAVs were directed toward and handled by U.S. coalition military vessels.
What makes the cruise missiles especially deadly is their ability to skim the water (like an especially cagey kamikaze pilot), rendering them much more difficult to detect than the parabolic flight path of a ballistic missile. The Ukrainians have proven the efficacy of even a couple anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs) against Russia’s navy:
The Ukrainian missile attack that sank the Russian Navy Slava-class cruiser Moskva should revive discussion regarding the tradeoffs for antiship missiles.
The cruiser was struck by two Neptune antiship cruise missiles (ASCMs) with 330-pound warheads. Photographs show she had a significant fire in the forward superstructure; media reports state that she suffered a secondary explosion from a magazine or one of her own large missiles. After some hours, she sank while under tow.
We’ve watched the Houthis work their way through the scientific process while the Biden administration has sat on its hands. The job isn’t done with a couple of communicated strikes — China’s and Iran’s missilery R&D lab needs shutting down.
Since I doubt this will be the last attack, here’s everything you ever wanted to know about anti-ship cruise missiles:
