Speaker 1: All Zone Media. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here
Speaker 1: a podcast about things falling apart, and also about militant resistance,
Speaker 1: which is an aspect of things falling apart. As things
Speaker 1: fall apart any country, you get people who crawl out
Speaker 1: of the woodwork to either accelerate that process or try
Speaker 1: to reverse it in their own lives, and some of
Speaker 1: those people use weapons to do that. Now, we've talked
Speaker 1: a bunch on this show about the various forms that
Speaker 1: militant resistance can take. We've chatted extensively on this network
Speaker 1: about Rojava. We've talked a fair amount James Stout and I.
Speaker 1: James is on the show today, by the way, Hello James,
Speaker 1: Hi Robert. We've talked a lot about me and mar
Speaker 1: and the gin Z Revolution, there three D printing of
Speaker 1: firearms and kind of this war that these people have
Speaker 1: been waging in the Jungles successfully in order to overthrow
Speaker 1: the military dictatorship of their country. But we haven't talked
Speaker 1: a whole lot about naval warfare. And this is because
Speaker 1: for most of history, for most of at least our
Speaker 1: recent history, naval warfare was not really a thing insurgents
Speaker 1: could engage in, right you know, you could every now
Speaker 1: and then, if a ship was docked or something, you
Speaker 1: might be able to get off a bombing, right, like
Speaker 1: what happened to us as coal. And I'm not expressing
Speaker 1: general sympathy for everybody who does a militant insurgent act,
Speaker 1: but I am talking about like the overall kind of
Speaker 1: like tactics and strategy that underline how that stuff works.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that's really changed in the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, since twenty twenty two, you can
Speaker 1: really mark it out, is that irregular non state groups
Speaker 1: can now to an extent never before possible, challenged the
Speaker 1: sea power of nations like the United States, which has
Speaker 1: an unquestioned, previously at least unquestioned level of dominance in
Speaker 1: sort of conventional naval power. And we talked about conventional
Speaker 1: naval power in the twenty first century. That means aircraft
Speaker 1: carrier groups. Right, the US has eleven of them, which,
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, is more than the rest of
Speaker 1: the world. We have a lot of fucking aircraft carriers.
Speaker 1: And previously that was believed to be you know, a
Speaker 1: guarante of book dominance on sea. And if a carrier
Speaker 1: group or two is in the area. You generally, we generally,
Speaker 1: the United States generally could count on having air supremacy.
Speaker 1: You certainly wouldn't expect it to be countered. You know,
Speaker 1: you could expect, like, for example, if we were to
Speaker 1: have a conflict over Taiwan, the Chinese navy could or
Speaker 1: the Chinese army could potentially interdict a carrier group using
Speaker 1: ground based you know, ground to see anti ship missiles
Speaker 1: or something like that. But we're increasingly in an era
Speaker 1: in which these kind of irregular non state groups have
Speaker 1: access to similar technology and have access to kind of
Speaker 1: even more bespoke technology like drone swarms that poses a
Speaker 1: unique threat to the naval dominance of the United States.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to start, you know, we've got a
Speaker 1: two part of here. We're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: the Huthi's in Yemen. We're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian navy, which does not really have much in
Speaker 1: the way of boats, but is still challenging the Russian navy.
Speaker 1: And we're going to be talking about rebels in Myanmar.
Speaker 1: We're going to start today, we'll be talking about the
Speaker 1: Huthi and to understand Huthi resistance to the United States
Speaker 1: and why a militant group has had such success challenging
Speaker 1: US naval power. You first have to understand how they
Speaker 1: got to the point that they're at right now, where
Speaker 1: they are kind of, in a lot of ways a
Speaker 1: near state actor, you know, not a world power actor,
Speaker 1: but near state actor. You know, they're probably more capable
Speaker 1: in some ways than the State of Yemen, which they
Speaker 1: are at war with. Yeah, yeah, And to get how
Speaker 1: they got to that point, you have to understand what
Speaker 1: happened with their fight against the Saudis. So, the Huthi
Speaker 1: Movement or ansar Allah, which means Supporters of God, is
Speaker 1: a Zaidi Shia Islamist movement run primarily by members of
Speaker 1: the Huthi tribe. Zadi Islam is a bit of an
Speaker 1: odd duck. You'll hear it described as, yeah, like a
Speaker 1: sh a Shia segment. It's really probably more accurate to
Speaker 1: look at it as like it's kind of in between
Speaker 1: Shia and Sunni of like the Shia kind of denominations,
Speaker 1: it's kind of closest to being Sunni. I'm not an
Speaker 1: expert on any of this, but it comes out of
Speaker 1: a guy named Zaid Iban Ali's rebellion against the Umi
Speaker 1: Yad caliphate, which did not succeed, but we still have
Speaker 1: the Zadi. What matters for our purposes today is that
Speaker 1: the Huthi as a movement came out of opposition to
Speaker 1: the Yemen's president Abi Abdullah Salah, who was corrupt as hell.
Speaker 1: He was seen as corrupt, and he was in fact
Speaker 1: corrupt as hell, and it was specifically they were accusing
Speaker 1: him of basically being bribed by the Saudis. That's where
Speaker 1: like the Huthi started the rebellion in around two thousand
Speaker 1: and three. So they began as a resistance movement to
Speaker 1: this corrupt president Salah. They adopted the slogan God is
Speaker 1: the greatest, death to America, death to Israel, and a
Speaker 1: curse upon the Jews, which is still their slogan. So
Speaker 1: they are not what you would call unproblematic again, but
Speaker 1: now that they are fighting out there, they're not hiding it,
Speaker 1: you know, dig for this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I using the triple parentheses
Speaker 2: they say the thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's you know, part of why we're talking
Speaker 1: about a regular naval warfare is that who knows what
Speaker 1: the next few years are going to include it's always
Speaker 1: a long shot, but there's not a zero percent chance
Speaker 1: that people listening to this will wind up engaged in
Speaker 1: some sort of irregular conflict. And that's it's important to
Speaker 1: understand how modern technology has changed the dimensions of how
Speaker 1: that works from like a naval perspective. So that's why
Speaker 1: we're talking about this now. Who they armed activities against
Speaker 1: the Saudis really kicked off and hit a major level
Speaker 1: after the mini civil war, which officially started in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: The new president of Yemen, who was not Salah at
Speaker 1: this point, asked for military support from the international community,
Speaker 1: which in this case meant the Saudis right. So the Saudis.
Speaker 1: It's called a coalition. There's technically some other people involved,
Speaker 1: but it's the Saudis right. And the president of Yemen
Speaker 1: calls in the Saudis when his forces are kicked out
Speaker 1: of the capital of Yemen, Sana by hoothy fighters. By
Speaker 1: the way, when the Houthi take sna Is, when they
Speaker 1: get their first cruise missiles, largely just like a bunch
Speaker 1: of scuds and stuff, so like old Soviet shit, right.
Speaker 1: Operation Decisive Storm is the name that Saudi Arabia gives
Speaker 1: to their intervention in Yemen, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: will say this is basically Saudi Arabia's Vietnam, not an
Speaker 1: inappropriate comparison to make. So the Saudis start bombing the
Speaker 1: shit out of the Huthi and then they send in
Speaker 1: ground forces, because bombing the shit out of people who
Speaker 1: are motivated never really works as well as you want
Speaker 1: it to.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, a lot of people have been bombing a
Speaker 2: lot of people. I mean, you can destroy a lot
Speaker 2: of shit, you can kill a load of civilians, and
Speaker 2: kill a shitload of civilians. Yeah, but many, many such cases.
Speaker 2: If you're if you're looking around the world right now.
Speaker 2: But yeah, one thing that doesn't tend to do is
Speaker 2: really get rid of motivated fighters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you've got an air force, everything looks like dressden.
Speaker 1: So the Saudis try that for a while. They send
Speaker 1: them ground forces, they carry out naval blockades. None of
Speaker 1: this does much but make the Houthies more determined, and
Speaker 1: they exit this conflict. I mean they're not it's not
Speaker 1: like you wouldn't say completely done, but they exit this
Speaker 1: conflict with the Saudis a lot stronger, right, a lot
Speaker 1: more organized, with a lot better weapons, right, and a
Speaker 1: lot of this, you know. So by the way, I
Speaker 1: should also state that, like now, the Houthies are on
Speaker 1: the side of former President Sala. It's a complicated conflict, right,
Speaker 1: but at the end of this all they have a
Speaker 1: shitload of Iranian weapons because Iran is a geopolitical enemy
Speaker 1: of Saudi Arabia and they see the Houthis as allies,
Speaker 1: and so they spend a lot of time this during
Speaker 1: this conflict shipping in agtms, which are wire guided missiles
Speaker 1: that are just aces and blasting holes in Saudi Arabia's tanks,
Speaker 1: which are US supplied, if I'm not mistaken as a general.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of Saudi Arabia stuff is US and like, yeah,
Speaker 2: base most of it, right, much of it. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of contractors over there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know, the Houthis they make a lot
Speaker 1: in like waves and kind of people who are following
Speaker 1: a regular conflicts during this period in the late aughts
Speaker 1: because they're so successful and taking out these tanks that
Speaker 1: had previously been pretty hard to fuck up, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of you know, now, agtms in Ukraine are like
Speaker 1: one of the dominant weapons systems that has shaped the
Speaker 1: battlefield environment. But this is kind of when people start
Speaker 1: to realize, oh, fuck, you know Syria as well, this
Speaker 1: is really going to change a lot about how armor
Speaker 1: gets used. And this is also where we start to
Speaker 1: see the first Hothi deployments of ballistic missiles, which were
Speaker 1: used sort of they initially use them, not dissimilarly to
Speaker 1: how the Germans used V two's right in World War Two.
Speaker 1: There are terror weapons and they're used in retaliation for
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia's use of a terror weapon, which is US
Speaker 1: jets and missiles. Right, So Saudi Arabia is terror bombing Yemen,
Speaker 1: and Yemen starts firing missiles back at Saudi Arabia because
Speaker 1: you know that's what you do, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to quote here from an article in
Speaker 1: the National News, quote Huthi militias and Yemen launched and
Speaker 1: this is from twenty twenty two, who the militia's and
Speaker 1: Yemen launched ballistic missiles at Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia
Speaker 1: on Monday and the latest attack on neighboring states. Two
Speaker 1: missiles were destroyed in midflight during the attempted terrorist attack
Speaker 1: on Abu Dhabi, while in Saudi Arabia one was shot
Speaker 1: down and another missile wounded two civilians in an industrial area.
Speaker 1: So that gives you an idea of like where they
Speaker 1: are a couple of years ago. And these are not
Speaker 1: super advanced cruise missiles, as you can see by that
Speaker 1: kind of like casualty rate. Right, they're not doing massive
Speaker 1: amounts of damage, but they caused terror.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's scary to know that a missile could come out
Speaker 1: of the sky and kill some of you, and it's
Speaker 1: you know, from their perspective, how else are they going
Speaker 1: to strike back. They don't have an air force in
Speaker 1: the conventional sense, but what we do see here is
Speaker 1: by being able to carry out these attacks back on
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia who's bombing them, despite not having an air
Speaker 1: force of their own. You already see how new technology
Speaker 1: and cruise missiles aren't new technology, but them being available
Speaker 1: to a non state actor is fairly new. You see
Speaker 1: how that has already changed the game in terms of
Speaker 1: like you can't really say the Saudis don't have the
Speaker 1: air supremacy. You can still say they have air supremacy
Speaker 1: because again, the Houthies don't have much in the way
Speaker 1: of airpower at this point, but they can't stop missiles
Speaker 1: from hitting their cities entirely, which is a different game
Speaker 1: than when you know that's not really a possibility. The
Speaker 1: Houthi arsenal today includes a dizzying array of different Iranian, Soviet, Syrian,
Speaker 1: and indigenously produced rockets, including the Burkhan three missiles. These
Speaker 1: are for long range strikes up to twelve hundred kilometers,
Speaker 1: and the Botter P one rockets, which have one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty two one hundred and sixty kilometer range. They
Speaker 1: also have old Soviet Frog sevens which are useful to
Speaker 1: about sixty five kilometers. None of these are accurate in
Speaker 1: cruise missile terms, you know, but they work well enough
Speaker 1: for the Houthis' purposes. The Botter Pa is indigenously produced.
Speaker 1: It's made by the Houthies. It's thought to be based
Speaker 1: on the Syrian Kaibar rocket. It is unguided, and experts
Speaker 1: will say it's closer to being functioning as just like
Speaker 1: artillery than an actual cruise missile. U and inspectors claim
Speaker 1: quote it is produced locally from steel tubing, very likely
Speaker 1: sourced from the oil industry. You hear this a lot
Speaker 1: in a regular conflict in the Middle East. When I
Speaker 1: was in Mosel covering the fighting with Isis, their mortars
Speaker 1: were made off out of tubing that was like part
Speaker 1: of construction projects. I think that traced back to the
Speaker 1: oil industry, at least some of it. Now. There are
Speaker 1: several variants of this rocket, like the Botter F and
Speaker 1: the P one. It's not really useful going through all
Speaker 1: of them. You can find some interesting studies on this,
Speaker 1: but it's not necessary to understand their capabilities. Their most
Speaker 1: accurate missile, as far as I can tell, is the
Speaker 1: OTR twenty one Totchka, which has a range of about
Speaker 1: seventy two one hundred and twenty kilometers and a four
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty kilogram payload. They only are believed to
Speaker 1: have a few dozen of these, although that's an estimate
Speaker 1: from an earlier report, and these were the ones they
Speaker 1: would use most regularly on ground targets during the Saudi
Speaker 1: intervention when they needed a precise strike. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote from an article and an analysis of their
Speaker 1: missile capability. The Houthis first fired a Tachka missile in
Speaker 1: September twenty fifteen, targeting the coalitions, that's the Saudi's Soffa
Speaker 1: military base in Marib, Yemen. The strike hit a weapons
Speaker 1: storage depot and killed sixty coalition soldiers. The Houthis fired
Speaker 1: another Toatchka on December fourteenth, twenty fifteen, targeting a coalition
Speaker 1: base south of Taia's City in Taia's Yemen. The strike
Speaker 1: reportedly killed over one hundred and twenty coalition soldiers. The
Speaker 1: most recently recorded tachka fire took place on November nineteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, landing in a desert in eastern Marab Province.
Speaker 1: The target was unclear, but was likely the Arab Coalition's
Speaker 1: all weak military camp. So those are significant casualties. These
Speaker 1: are very effective weapons that do a lot of damage.
Speaker 1: Right Yeah, Now, international experts, and especially if you read
Speaker 1: just kind of like think tank analysis of what the
Speaker 1: Houthis are doing, we generally say all of this is
Speaker 1: only possible because of aid from his Belah and Iran. Right,
Speaker 1: That's the only reason the Hoothies have these weapons. Right now,
Speaker 1: there is an arms embargo on Yemen. This has not
Speaker 1: stopped anyone from getting weapons to Yemen. It also, to
Speaker 1: be very fair here, didn't stop anyone from didn't stop
Speaker 1: us from selling arms to the Saudis even though they're
Speaker 1: bringing those arms to Yemen. Right, yeah, yeah, it possible, Yeah, don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know who you want to get angry or
Speaker 1: at here. I'm not really convinced either side is you know,
Speaker 1: better than the other. Certainly the Saudis are not better,
Speaker 1: right right? Yeah that matters. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's just a shit situation for people who
Speaker 2: are trying to get home with me to not get
Speaker 2: blown up.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, really bad situation. I think that is over
Speaker 1: selling it a bit. Obviously, Iranian aid is critical to
Speaker 1: the Hoothies and that that has gotten them a lot
Speaker 1: of their advanced weapons systems, so I don't want to
Speaker 1: undersell it. But at this point, they are making a
Speaker 1: significant chunk of these of these cruise missiles, specifically some
Speaker 1: of the less advanced ones, indigenously, So because of the
Speaker 1: state things you could, I think it is accurate to
Speaker 1: say that Iran was crucial to them getting to that state.
Speaker 1: But even without Iranian aid, there's a there's a signet
Speaker 1: probably a significant degree of time to which they could
Speaker 1: continue to produce some of these weapons because they are
Speaker 1: making them themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they make three fifty eight missiles, right, like Lloyd
Speaker 2: terrain anti aircraft. Yeah. Yes, even if Iran is not supplying,
Speaker 2: it's probably worth noting that like this is like an
Speaker 2: Iranian design or concept at least, and it allows for
Speaker 2: a lot of testing, a lot of like real world
Speaker 2: kind of verses the NATO US.
Speaker 1: Let's the Iranians. Yeah, test their weaponry. And again I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to undersell how important they are, just you
Speaker 1: get a lot of like, well, if we can just
Speaker 1: cut off Iranian trade, the hoothies will collapse, and they
Speaker 1: think that's accurate anymore. Yeah, maybe, you know, I can't
Speaker 1: say that to a point a certainty, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that that's kind of wishful thinking on behalf of
Speaker 1: some people. So these are great weapons for a non
Speaker 1: state militant group. Again, this is this stuff. If you
Speaker 1: think back ten fifteen years, the idea of a non
Speaker 1: state insurgent group having access to a cruise missile library
Speaker 1: like this, you know, not to say about like the
Speaker 1: other weapons they have, the drones and stuff they have,
Speaker 1: It would have been kind of unprecedented. That said, these
Speaker 1: are not good weapons in the modern military sense of
Speaker 1: the word. Bosh. I mean, they are not very accurate
Speaker 1: for the most part, and compared to more advanced missiles
Speaker 1: like the kind of the United States, Russia and China have,
Speaker 1: they are easy to shoot down with the kind of
Speaker 1: weapons systems aboard say, US aircraft carriers. We will discuss
Speaker 1: that more later. This is largely inconsequential to what's been
Speaker 1: happening in the Red Sea because the vast majority of
Speaker 1: naval traffic that passes by Huthi territory does not have
Speaker 1: access to say FAYLANKX, FELANX systems. Yeah, you don't have
Speaker 1: much in the way of anti missile systems on a
Speaker 1: normal containers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, you have fanti bridge antiah rhyming devices. But like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter if your missile's not super accurate, if
Speaker 2: it can't defeat these expensive systems, if you're just eating
Speaker 2: them into a narrow channel or anything that goes past.
Speaker 1: Right right right, Yeah, And the Houthis are aware of that,
Speaker 1: and this is again an intelligent strategy on their part.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes people get angry when you say that
Speaker 1: because they point out horrible things the Hoothies have done,
Speaker 1: which I don't want to deny it but we're not
Speaker 1: talking about the overall morality of this conflict. We're talking
Speaker 1: about how these tactics work, right.
Speaker 2: Right, Like the Nazis had intelligent and strategies as well.
Speaker 2: They were terrible fucking people and I'm glad they lost
Speaker 2: them are mostly dead, but like, yeah, yeah, we would
Speaker 2: be unwise to just dismiss everything that they've been No.
Speaker 1: No, And likewise, the fact that the Houthi's right now
Speaker 1: that this interdiction of the Red Sea is based on
Speaker 1: an attempt to stop the genocide in Gaza, which I
Speaker 1: don't think it's going to work, but I would like
Speaker 1: it if somehow it did. That also does not have
Speaker 1: an impact on how this is working strategically, right, you
Speaker 1: are kind of setting all of that aside to just
Speaker 1: talk about how this is functioning, you know. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: in recent years, the Houthis have expanded their stock of
Speaker 1: anti ship missile. In an article for the International Institute
Speaker 1: for Strategic Studies, a guy named Fabian hens Rights quote
Speaker 1: the parades these are Huthi military parades also featured a
Speaker 1: variety of anti ship ballistic missiles ASBMs and guided rockets
Speaker 1: employing Iranian infrared or imaging infrared seeker technology. The four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty kilometer range SEF appears to be a
Speaker 1: rebranded ASBM version of Iran's FATA three one three missile,
Speaker 1: while the Tongue Kill represents a previously unseen anti ship
Speaker 1: version of the IRGC Iranian Revolutionary Guardcore developed five hundred
Speaker 1: kilometer range SO higher. The two designs constitute the heaviest
Speaker 1: hoothy anti ship missiles, both with warheads of more than
Speaker 1: three hundred kilograms and are of Iranian origin. Three smaller ASBMs.
Speaker 1: The one hundred and forty kilometer range Fhlek, the Mayun
Speaker 1: and the bar al Amar strongly resemble Iranian design philosophy
Speaker 1: and seeker technology, but do not precisely match known Iranian systems.
Speaker 1: They could either be Iranian systems not observed before in
Speaker 1: smuggle to Yemen, or Huthy produced rockets combined using Iranian
Speaker 1: guidance skits, not unlike developments made by another Iran proxy,
Speaker 1: the Lebanese has Belah and its position guided surface to
Speaker 1: surface missile program. Finally, the Huthis have presented an S
Speaker 1: seventy five s A two surface to air missile, likely
Speaker 1: from pre war Yemeny Army stocks modified for an anti
Speaker 1: ship role using an Iranian guidance kit. So that's a
Speaker 1: that's that's a potent and it's probably more some ways
Speaker 1: more advanced than their general cruise missile stockpile arsenal for
Speaker 1: taking out ships. Now, the Huthis are still a non
Speaker 1: state force, and when people say online that like the
Speaker 1: US is fighting Yemen, not quite accurate, because the Huthis
Speaker 1: are fighting Yemen too, right, like the government if you're
Speaker 1: if you're saying the government, you're talking about the people, Well,
Speaker 1: people in Yemen are fighting each other, right, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's that is the situation. They are at war with
Speaker 1: the government of Yemen. Right, that is still the right case.
Speaker 2: We're fighting, we're shooting missiles at Yemen, but yet like
Speaker 2: as a geographical area right in the state.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the Huthis did not survive years
Speaker 1: of intense bombing by Saudi Arabia and a nation with
Speaker 1: an on paper extremely modern military. By I'm making a
Speaker 1: lot of stupid mistakes. So when they decided to attack
Speaker 1: shipping in the Red Sea after Israel launched their genocidal
Speaker 1: campaign against Gaza, they did so with a competent plan,
Speaker 1: which was to make civilian freight travel in the area
Speaker 1: too dangerous to continue. Their stated goal here is to
Speaker 1: force damage on Israel and the Western nations who support
Speaker 1: it by hitting the only thing they care about, commerce,
Speaker 1: and their actions here have done real damage to international trade,
Speaker 1: not exclusively Western international trade. I should note the latest
Speaker 1: several months have seen them capture or sink a couple
Speaker 1: of merchant vessels. They've sunk one. They've hit at least
Speaker 1: sixteen vessels with drones and missiles. I found a Bloomberg
Speaker 1: report with the telling title Houthy missiles do far more
Speaker 1: damage to trade than to actual ships, which is an
Speaker 1: interesting way to frame it. Yeah, and they're kind of
Speaker 1: trying to minimize what's going on here. While sixteen strikes
Speaker 1: is a large number for the industry to withstand, there
Speaker 1: have been even more failed attempts. Since the Houthies began
Speaker 1: their attacks, there have been more than sixty incidents of
Speaker 1: some kind in and around the world way, including everything
Speaker 1: from near misses to hijackings and harassment by armed militants
Speaker 1: and small boats. If you look at the damage that's
Speaker 1: occurred in most of these incidents, it has not been significant,
Speaker 1: says said Marcus Baker, head of the Marine and Cargo
Speaker 1: at Marsh, one of the world's top insurance brokers. So far,
Speaker 1: we haven't seen a total loss caused by a missile strike.
Speaker 1: That changed in March when the Houthi successfully sank the
Speaker 1: Ruby Mar despite more than a month of US strikes
Speaker 1: to degrade their capability. The vessel was initially wounded and
Speaker 1: drifted unmanned for almost two weeks before sinking. While it listed,
Speaker 1: A Hoothy representative promised the ship could be salvaged if
Speaker 1: aid trucks were allowed to enter Gaza. The Ruby Mar
Speaker 1: wound up sinking. Now Hoothy strikes have also hit at
Speaker 1: least one ship bound for Iran and another that was
Speaker 1: going to be delivering aid supplies to Gimmen. At least
Speaker 1: three civilian sailors have been killed thus far, and a
Speaker 1: strike on a bolt carrier named the True Confidence. Now,
Speaker 1: how you kind of interpret this as a success by
Speaker 1: the Houthy stated goals which is right to inflict enough
Speaker 1: pain on the West and on Israel economically that it
Speaker 1: forces an earlier end to what Israel is doing in Gaza. Right,
Speaker 1: if that's their goal, well, it hasn't happened yet. Right,
Speaker 1: that's one thing we can say, right, it has not yet.
Speaker 1: There's no evidence that I have seen that it has
Speaker 1: affected the tempo of Israeli operations substantially.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, it would seem it does not so
Speaker 2: different and obviously as an incentive for the United States
Speaker 2: and other international actors to like not let this tactic succeed,
Speaker 2: because you do not want a world in which I
Speaker 2: think it's not unreasonably. There's a thing called the right
Speaker 2: to protect in international law, which is probably what the
Speaker 2: youth he's a claiming they have of the acting under it,
Speaker 2: and that's not, like, on the face of it, unreasonable.
Speaker 2: But yet I think the US has this very like
Speaker 2: strong incentive to not let it become a thing that
Speaker 2: keeps happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I'm not surprised we sent a carrier group
Speaker 1: into the area. I'm also not surprised that that does
Speaker 1: not seem to be working either. Right, If you are
Speaker 1: judging how the US is acting and how the hooth
Speaker 1: are acting based on their stated goals, the Houthis have
Speaker 1: not yet accomplished their stated goal with these strikes, and
Speaker 1: the US air strikes do not seem to have stopped
Speaker 1: the Houthis from being able to interdict naval traffic in
Speaker 1: the Red Sea. Right, there's I've heard some argument that
Speaker 1: the tempo is reduced since the US got there, But
Speaker 1: it's also unclear to me, is like, well, they only
Speaker 1: have a limited amount of these missiles. Right, has the
Speaker 1: t changed because they need to marshal their ammunition effectively,
Speaker 1: or has it changed because there's been damage done to
Speaker 1: their infrastructure. I don't know that we'll ever really get
Speaker 1: a perfect answer on that, right, I know the US
Speaker 1: claims that it has. You know, we claim that our
Speaker 1: strikes have weakened them, but we always claim that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean what we're gonna say, right, Yeah, we all
Speaker 1: lived through Afghanistan. Right, you're aware of what the US
Speaker 1: says about ship like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it would look pretty bad if we were,
Speaker 2: like now, dude, maxavel for US.
Speaker 1: It's unclear how much which damaged the Hoothies have actually
Speaker 1: done to the global economy. As a consequence of all this,
Speaker 1: traffic has dropped to the Red Sea by about thirty
Speaker 1: five percent, and since the sea carries about twenty percent
Speaker 1: of global trade, that's a major hit. But it hasn't
Speaker 1: stopped trade through the Red Sea either. Again, most trade
Speaker 1: is still you know, most most of the pre war
Speaker 1: level is still occurring. Thirty five percent is a substantial drop.
Speaker 1: That is a hit, and it's hurt a lot of people. Right.
Speaker 1: It also has not wholly blocked like there's a longer
Speaker 1: route you can take around Africa to get into the
Speaker 1: Red Sea, but that makes everything more expensive too. The
Speaker 1: country hurt most is actually Egypt, because Egypt depends on
Speaker 1: the Suez Canal for about a quarter of its currency earnings,
Speaker 1: and you go through the Red Sea to get to
Speaker 1: the Suez Canal. For reasons that are obvious if you
Speaker 1: look at a map. Right, people who rightly see what's
Speaker 1: happening in Gaza as a crime against humanity are unlikely
Speaker 1: to care too much about the Egyptian economy, nor should
Speaker 1: they necessarily. But the bigger questions here are can the
Speaker 1: hooth He's actually force it into what Israel's doing? And
Speaker 1: how long can they keep this up? The answer to
Speaker 1: the first question, can the hooth He's forcing into his
Speaker 1: Raeli aggression is not yet. And the answer to the
Speaker 1: second question is how long can they keep this up?
Speaker 1: I don't know they might be able to eventually bring
Speaker 1: about international pressure through economic damage, but given the state
Speaker 1: of the US presidential election, I don't see that as
Speaker 1: particularly likely a method for changing net Yahuu's behavior. The
Speaker 1: answer to the second question is, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: how long can they keep this up? Probably forever? Right,
Speaker 1: US strikes have been lauded by the US's damaging infrastructure,
Speaker 1: but we don't know that that's true. Our air strikes
Speaker 1: in the region have been launched by the USS. D
Speaker 1: White D. Eisenhower, the head of the carrier strike Group
Speaker 1: in the Red Sea at present. And again, when you
Speaker 1: look at kind of like leftists analyzing this, because they
Speaker 1: don't often know much about the military, you'll get a
Speaker 1: mix of like people being like, ah, the houthis are
Speaker 1: going to kill a carrier because they put out a
Speaker 1: video of like a carrier in their sites and shit,
Speaker 1: and like, I don't think so, guys, doesn't seem likely.
Speaker 1: These are very well defended ships, and they are very
Speaker 1: competently led. Look I have looked into the capital of
Speaker 1: the ship, I've looked into how they have handled the
Speaker 1: considerable tempo of tax against them. I think that these
Speaker 1: guys are operationally competent as the US tends to be. Now,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean they're going to win. The US soldiers
Speaker 1: tend to be operationally competent most of the time, and
Speaker 1: we also lose a lot, right because operational competence doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if the operations you're being asked to undertake have
Speaker 1: no chance of victory. And that is more or less
Speaker 1: the situation. I think that these sailors are in right
Speaker 1: where they're pretty good at sailing around in an aircraft
Speaker 1: carrier and not getting killed. But that doesn't mean they're
Speaker 1: going to defeat the Houthies in a meaningful way right right,
Speaker 1: And the Hoothies are aware of this. They're in a
Speaker 1: holding pattern. They understand that the primary thing that is
Speaker 1: that all of strategy really hinges around stopping and denying
Speaker 1: terrain to the enemy. And all the Hoothies have to
Speaker 1: do to deny a significant amount of terrain to the
Speaker 1: entire west is keep lobbing missiles, often blindly, in this
Speaker 1: sea and it will make everything more expensive for everybody,
Speaker 1: keep them in the news, and that's a win. And
Speaker 1: it's unlikely, if not basically impossible, that using current methods,
Speaker 1: the US Navy and US you know, airpower in this area,
Speaker 1: based in this carrier group is going to be able
Speaker 1: to do anything but spend a shitload of money.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: US Navy officers in recent weeks have reported attacks by
Speaker 1: both anti ship missiles, regular cruise missiles swarms of unmanned
Speaker 1: aerial drones, which has led to a general conclusion among
Speaker 1: people who analyze this stuff that drone swarms are going
Speaker 1: to be a significant part of naval warfare in the
Speaker 1: immediate future. Right, you can overwhelm the houthies, you know.
Speaker 1: As impressive as their drone swarms are, for a nonstate
Speaker 1: actor cannot put together the kind of a swarm that
Speaker 1: a state actor, for example, could. But people are looking
Speaker 1: at how how close some hits have gotten to the
Speaker 1: carriers and being like, well, shit, if you had a
Speaker 1: lot more of these things, you could really cause some
Speaker 1: fucking problems for these boats. Right. Yeah. They've also used
Speaker 1: unmanned boats and unmanned underwater vessels. These are basically unmanned
Speaker 1: drone boats with explosives in them, right, and again, significantly
Speaker 1: more of these could potentially do some damage. This is,
Speaker 1: by any account, the most direct combat US naval forces
Speaker 1: have seen since World War Two, and one thing. I
Speaker 1: fun thing I've learned reading articles about the operation is
Speaker 1: that our jets now get kill markers for the bombs
Speaker 1: they drop.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you can be a drone ace or
Speaker 2: not a drone, a missile downing ace.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I don't know, may I guess
Speaker 1: it makes sense whatever, it just it doesn't look as impressive.
Speaker 2: I did some googling. I guess you could become an
Speaker 2: ace shooting down barrage balloons in World War One.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the stack shooting back.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they're very defense strongly defended. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: little different of V two rockets, I guess in World
Speaker 2: War Two. I did also find out that the navel
Speaker 2: some of the unmanned underwater vehicles are replacing. More's the
Speaker 2: pity the seals and dolphins that were previously in US
Speaker 2: Navy service. I don't mean seals like no, no, no,
Speaker 2: literal literal seals heartbreaking, Yeah, very sad. They live in
Speaker 2: San Diego. I often go past them.
Speaker 1: You know what.
Speaker 2: The seals don't want to do war. They well, but
Speaker 2: again added the marine mammals, the other seals very much.
Speaker 1: The dolphins might I remember from the documentary SeaQuest that
Speaker 1: they that they enjoy naval service. I think the Dolphin Quest, James,
Speaker 1: I've not I've not watched SeaQuest. I'm afraid.
Speaker 2: I'm afraid.
Speaker 1: It's It's Star Trek, the next generation Underwater, but the
Speaker 1: role of Picard is played by the sheriff from Jaws.
Speaker 1: It's actually fantastic, great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm looking looking forward to being exposed to more
Speaker 2: of this universe.
Speaker 1: Lock.
Speaker 2: I'm hoping that the dolphins join force with the Orcas
Speaker 2: and take on the super rich with that using the
Speaker 2: skills given to them by the US military in Charage.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to the economics of this conflict,
Speaker 1: and a lot of this does come down to economics, right,
Speaker 1: what the houthy are doing is an incredibly efficient, good
Speaker 1: ass deal for them. These drones, specifically, a lot of
Speaker 1: what they've done. They fired missiles, but like those are expensive,
Speaker 1: they don't have a lot of them. I think that
Speaker 1: at this point they would prefer to use those on
Speaker 1: ships that cannot defend against them. They have since some
Speaker 1: manned boats, which the US has fucking murked immediately, and
Speaker 1: they don't seem to be doing that anymore because it's
Speaker 1: dumb and the Hoothies didn't get where they did by
Speaker 1: repeatedly doing dumb shit. What they seem to have settled
Speaker 1: on is sending out drone swarms. Both of these boats,
Speaker 1: these underwater drones and of aerial drones, and these things
Speaker 1: can cost just a few thousand dollars each. Some of
Speaker 1: the biggest ones are probably only tens of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1: But the navy missiles that we use to interdict this
Speaker 1: shit and some of these they also have some dumber
Speaker 1: cruise missiles that are pretty cheap. The missiles we use
Speaker 1: to interdict this shit are two point one million dollars
Speaker 1: is shot. Right. This is all in an adition to
Speaker 1: the insane cost of keeping a carrier battle group in
Speaker 1: the field and fighting. It's not at all cheap. I
Speaker 1: found one political article that quotes a DoD official admitting
Speaker 1: the cost offset is not on our side. Now, we
Speaker 1: have some cheaper systems that can work really well on
Speaker 1: particularly drones, that can work on missiles too. We've used
Speaker 1: them and that these are air burst shells fired from
Speaker 1: the conventional guns on destroyers. These have worked really well,
Speaker 1: especially against drones and tests, but they're only effective from
Speaker 1: about ten miles or less away. In ballistic missile terms,
Speaker 1: that's extremely close. You don't want to rely on these
Speaker 1: for AICs, and it's not even all that far away
Speaker 1: in drone terms right As a result, the US has
Speaker 1: expanded research into more efficient anti drone and anti missile weapons,
Speaker 1: including what amounts to layer, laser and microwave weapons that
Speaker 1: could be fired indefinitely for the cost of electricity. Given
Speaker 1: the nature of these weapons, that's not insignificant either, but
Speaker 1: it's a lot less than two point one million is shot.
Speaker 1: As is always the case, the kind of fight the
Speaker 1: Huthies are waging right now has an expiration date right now.
Speaker 1: Any group that can put together a few million dollars
Speaker 1: to make hundreds and hundreds of explosive drones right which
Speaker 1: a number of groups are capable of, could at least
Speaker 1: exact a substantial toll on a US carrier battlegroup, make it,
Speaker 1: spend a shitload of money, potentially even do some damage.
Speaker 1: And again, even if this stuff hits an aircraft carrier,
Speaker 1: you're like very unlikely to see that thing sink. There's
Speaker 1: a story that's worth knowing that, Like when we decommissioned
Speaker 1: one of our aircraft carriers fifteen or twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: They started. They shot at a bunch like they just
Speaker 1: to see like how well it would hold up, and
Speaker 1: like they such a great sink and they couldn't sink
Speaker 1: the fucker like you can do you could kill sailors.
Speaker 1: It would be a big deal if they hit a
Speaker 1: fucking aircraft carrier and killed some sailors, even if the
Speaker 1: carrier doesn't go down, that's a huge fucking deal. I
Speaker 1: don't know that they're capable of doing that, but it's
Speaker 1: unlikely they're going to kill one, right.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, they got to stand oneted a bondiation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hard, It's hard to do, right. They're made not
Speaker 1: to sink, and they're pretty fucking big. But one can
Speaker 1: imagine kind of a future in which the war the
Speaker 1: Hoothies are waging right now is rendered kind of impossible
Speaker 1: because weapons like that are positioned permanently around, say the
Speaker 1: Red Sea, blanketing it in an offense grid that basically
Speaker 1: kill anything fired into the sea. That's something that might
Speaker 1: happen in the future if this continues, But that's also
Speaker 1: just the way war works, right. You know, the Hoothies
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen years ago wouldn't have been able to
Speaker 1: wage a war like this against the US Navy. They
Speaker 1: fought the Navy to a stand still. That's the only
Speaker 1: way to analyze this, right, and again, that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: either side is achieving their operational goals. Right, The Houthis
Speaker 1: have not ended the genocide in Gaza, and the US
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be capable of ending the Houthis. So
Speaker 1: they fought each other to a standstill in this matter.
Speaker 1: And that wouldn't have been possible twenty years ago. So right,
Speaker 1: twenty years from now, what's going on will be different.
Speaker 1: You know, the fact that the US seems to be
Speaker 1: pretty close to developing more efficient anti drone and anti
Speaker 1: missile weapons that are a lot cheaper to use doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that non state actors will not find a way
Speaker 1: around those. But that is the situation we're in right
Speaker 1: now with the Houthis, and that is the end of
Speaker 1: this episode. We're going to get back to you tomorrow
Speaker 1: for part two, where we're going to talk about irregular
Speaker 1: naval warfare in Ukraine and Myanmar. James, you got anything
Speaker 1: else to say? No, No, it didn't, I didn't think
Speaker 1: so you need to be a bad day to be
Speaker 1: a boat. I guess bad day to be a boat.
Speaker 1: Bad day to be a drone. They're really suffering in this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great day to be a military contractor,
Speaker 2: which is every Oh my god, such a good time
Speaker 2: to be a military contractor. Whether you're doing it for
Speaker 2: a run or the United States. You are, you are,
Speaker 2: you are in Clover right now, which is a massive
Speaker 2: change from the entirety of this century so far. So
Speaker 2: that's nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's nice to see the military contractors finally pick
Speaker 1: up a win.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, one for them.
Speaker 1: That's been It could happen here. We'll be back tomorrow.
Speaker 1: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.