Also, I thought there were indeed some airstrikes, because I recall watching in the news some report about the United States confirming the death of some Yemeni rebels who were part of the militia strategically blocking the traffic in the red sea.
That was the small boats that were attacked as I mentioned above. Which brings us to the retaliation today.
According to official statements by the Armed Forces of Yemen, this was the first stage of the revenge for the fallen troops (the boats I mentioned). This was a large scale attack using "many" drones, ballistic and cruise missile against an "American" ship. There is no mention of the count, type or the target's name.
I want to cover this from an economical point of view.
These numbers are unreliable but that is what we have: 18 drones + 2 anti-ship cruise missiles + 1 anti-ship ballistic missile were launched by Yemenis forces against the supporters of Genocide in Gaza ie. US and UK that had at least 1 aircraft carrier (USS Eisenhower) + 4 US destroyers + 1 UK destroyer (HMS Diamond) + a dozen fighter jets.
There is no reliable information about the damage caused to these targets so we'll skip that.
However, these ships are using ridiculously expensive ammunition to counter super cheap attacks.
For example according to UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps, HMS Diamond used its "sea viper missiles" which are Aster missile family each worth between £1-£2 million.
It is even worse on US side. US destroyers are using "precision air defense munitions" including SM series that cost between $2 to $4.8 million.
It is common to launch at least 2 missiles per projectile specially when protecting high valued targets. 3 projectile * 2 defensive missiles * $2 mil average =
$12 million.
That's the minimum cost of defending against a single and a medium scale attack while assuming the drones were shot down without launching anti-aircraft missiles!
That's not even the worst part!!!
The worst part is that US Navy (don't have data on UK navy) doesn't have nearly enough SMs and they can't even produce enough of it in time. To know how depleted USN ammunitions are you can take a look at the Biden administration's budget request.
https://www.secnav.navy.mil/fmc/fmb/Documents/24pres/WPN_Book.pdf#page=161He could only afford to ask for
125 SM-6 this year and that is only enough to put a handful of these missiles on board of a fraction of US navy vassals.
Now back to my previous post and my speculation about US attacking Yemen.
Not only it is impossible economically but also US doesn't even have enough ammunition to defend itself (at best
8 missile per ship) against Yemenis who would by then be defending their homes against a foreign invader and can legitimately sink all US ships. All it takes is to launch 9 missiles per ship that can defend against 8
It gets even worse when you consider how US navy has been exhausting its already low ammunitions to shoot down projectiles targeting the terrorist positions inside occupied Palestine over the past 3 months...