Cnn
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During the month which followed the launch of a major major military campaign targeting the rebel Houthi group in Yemen, the activists managed to shoot at least seven American drones of several million dollars, hindering the ability of the United States to switch to the “phase two” of the operation, several familiar US officials told CNN.
The United States hoped to achieve air superiority over Yemen within 30 days, officials said and degrade the Houthi air defense systems enough to start a new phase by focusing on the strengthening of information, recognition and monitoring of Houthi senior leaders in order to target and kill them, the officials said.
But the platforms best suited to lead this persistent effort, the MQ9 Reaper drones, continue to be slaughtered, explained the officials. In fact, the Houthis are only better targeting them, the officials said. The United States has no boots on the ground in Yemen, it therefore relies on air surveillance – a large part of the MQ9 – to carry out evaluations of damage to the battlefield and follow the terrorists.
CNN reported earlier this month that the United States had killed several Houthi officials considered as an average level, similar to “intermediate management”, rather than political leaders.
Officials said the United States had reached more than 700 targets and launched more than 300 air strikes since the start of the campaign on March 15. The strikes forced the Houthis to stay underground more and left them in a “confused state and disarrayed”, noted the officials.
But the constant loss of drones has made more difficult for the United States to determine precisely how the United States has degraded the weapons of weapons of the Houthis.
In the past six weeks, the Houthis have launched 77 unidirectional attack drones, 30 cruise missiles, 24 medium ballistic missiles and 23 air surface missiles in the American forces, in the Red Sea, or in Israel, two of the officials said.
The intelligence community has also evaluated in recent days that in almost six weeks of American bombing, the capacity and intention of the Houthis to continue to link missiles in the United States and to commercial ships in the Red Sea and in Israel is not very modified, as well as their command and control structure, according to two other people familiar with intelligence. These evaluations were largely based on the intelligence of signals, said one of the people.
Asked about the comments on slaughtered drones and if it had a negative impact on the operation, a defense manager told CNN in a statement that “we are aware of the Houthi reports that these MQ-9s had been killed. Although hostile shots are probably a probable cause, the circumstances of each incident are always the subject of an investigation. A variety of factors, including an increase in operational tempo, can increase the risk.
Dave Eastburn, spokesperson for the American central command, said that CNN’s details on the American operation were limited due to operational security. He said, however, that strikes “destroyed several command and control installations, air defense systems, advanced weapon manufacturing facilities, advanced weapon storage places and have killed hundreds of Houthi fighters and many Houthi leaders.”
“Credible open sources report more than 650 Houthi victims to date,” said Eastburn. “In addition, Houthi ballistic missile launches dropped by 87% while the attacks on their one -way drones have decreased by 65% since the start of these operations.”
The administration promises to continue the campaign until the Houthis can no longer attack navigation in the Red Sea. In a letter to the president of the Chamber, Mike Johnson last month, President Donald Trump said that operations would continue “until the threat of the Houthis for American forces and navigation rights and the Red Redfish and the adjacent waters have attenuated”.
But the Houthis have long proven to be extremely resistant, buried their equipment deeply underground and continuing to receive supplies from Iran. They resisted a campaign of several years by Saudi Arabia to eliminate them, and the Biden administration attacked them for more than a year with a limited impact.
Despite the internal assessments that raised questions about the efficiency of the campaign, the Trump administration has repeatedly said that it had succeeded so far. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called him “devastating efficiency” in March. Trump posted on X in March that the Houthis “were decimated” and that their capacities “are quickly destroyed”.
While Eastburn provided additional data Thursday concerning the impact of American strikes, the American central command was largely silent on the impact, however, even if it regularly shares photos and videos on its X account of missiles pulling warships or American planes preparing to launch aircraft carriers in the Red Sea. The Pentagon also did not address the claims of the Houthis that the air strikes have killed dozens of civilians.
In a rare update, Centcom said last week that he had destroyed a port in Yemen that the Houthis used to import oil and fuel their attacks. But the impact of this on Houthis operations is also unclear.
One of the American officials who spoke to CNN left the door open to a continuous campaign to support American partners in the Gulf Region against Houthis, similar to the way the United States operates in Africa.
The costs of the campaign, on the other hand, only increase. The operation cost nearly a billion dollars in the United States in the first three weeks, and the United States continued Houthi targets daily for more than a month.
The large-scale operation has also shaken certain officials of the US Indo-Pacific Command, of which CNN has complained in the last weeks of the large number of long-term weapons spent by Centcom which would be essential in the event of war with China.
“We must maintain a high state of indications and warning so that we can recover these forces if there is a crisis with a greater requirement than there are in the Centcom (area of responsibility),” said the command of the US Indo-Pacific command, after the whole commander of the Patriot Air Defense Battalion has been moved from the central central Pacific.
“And I owe to the secretary and constant president a constant vigilance on this subject,” he added, “and a constant consciousness of the capacity of this force – which is assigned to Indopacom, Carl Vinson Strike Group and a patriotic battalion – if he must be returned to the Indopacom theater for a higher primary threat.”
