Reader ‘Robtze’ just thoroughly embarrassed me in a comment with an incredibly astute observation that I
completely missed. He observed/asked
whether the Houthis were executing the same mission the Marine Corps envisions with their
island/coastal missile shooter concept.
To address his comment, yes, this is almost exactly the
mission set. Let’s take advantage of
this remarkable similarity and examine how the coastal ‘missile sniping’
concept is working out.
Weapons. One probable difference is the weapons. While we have no definitive information on the
missiles the Houthis are using, it’s likely that they’re smaller and shorter
ranged than the missiles the Marines envision using.
Targeting. From day one, this has been one of the
unaddressed, major mysteries about the missile shooting concept. The Marines have no ability to target beyond
the horizon and, if they did, the size and scope of that effort would totally
negate the ‘hidden’ and ‘small’ characteristics of the concept (using medium to
large UAVs, for example). We see that
many of the Houthi missiles appear to be blind fired, being described by US
spokesmen as having indeterminate targets.
From this, we can infer that the targeting issue is a valid
one that is not easily solved and will, indeed, be problematic for the Marines.
Logistics. One difference is that the logistic
(resupply) issue isn't present for the Houthis since this isn't an isolated
island. They can obtain supplies
overland. Of course, even in this case,
the supply routes and methods present a vulnerability that could be targeted
and disrupted by US forces. It seems
patently obvious that this logistic vulnerability will exist many times over
for Marines on an isolated island in Chinese controlled waters.
One of the characteristics of the Houthi attacks is the
scarcity of attacking weapons. It would
have been reasonable to expect that they would launch swarms of drones or
saturation levels of missiles to try to increase the odds of getting a hit on a
Navy warship. That has not happened
which leads one to wonder if their weapon inventories are significantly
limited. If so, this would, again, raise
the logistic issue with resupply of missiles, despite being overland, being a
weakness. Again, this illustrates the
difficulty (impossibility) of the Marines getting resupplies under their
concept.
Survivability. The US and UK have finally executed a
counter-strike.
This suggests that an isolated Houthi force, with no significant air defense or counter-air capability cannot prevent the enemy from locating and destroying them. The Marines, of course, with no significant air defense or counter-air capability, believe that they’ll be able to operate undetected on tiny islands a miniscule fraction of the size of Yemen. This incident would seem to suggest that the Marine concept is heavy on wishful thinking and light on reality.
Effectiveness. The ultimate measure of the worth of anything
is in the results. The Houthis, due to
targeting difficulties and, apparently, logistic (missile inventory)
challenges, have been remarkably ineffective.
Some four dozen or more attacks have generated no sunk ships, no hits on
a warship, and only minor damage to several ships.
The Marines, of course, can expect even less success. Chinese ships merely have to remain beyond
the 12 mile or so horizon and thus achieve total safety due to the lack of
targeting. In addition, there won’t be
any Chinese merchant shipping in an active war zone so the Marines would be
shooting at warships, not commercial vessels and the Houthi experience demonstrates
that warships are, thus far, immune to damage from limited attacks by low end
weapons and drones.
Conclusion
This Houthi scenario is offering us a rare opportunity to
observe the Marine missile shooting concept in action. The Marines were quick to jump on – and badly
misinterpret – the Ukraine experience to justify their vision. Will they be as quick to jump on this
scenario which is a near perfect duplicate of their concept and is failing
badly? I suspect you know the answer.
____________________________
The US and UK launched some 72 strikes against 60 targets in 16 locations. The Pentagon described its targets as radar systems, drone storage and launch sites, missile storage and launch facilities and Houthi command and control nodes.[1]
This suggests that an isolated Houthi force, with no significant air defense or counter-air capability cannot prevent the enemy from locating and destroying them. The Marines, of course, with no significant air defense or counter-air capability, believe that they’ll be able to operate undetected on tiny islands a miniscule fraction of the size of Yemen. This incident would seem to suggest that the Marine concept is heavy on wishful thinking and light on reality.
https://redstate.com/streiff/2024/01/12/a-morning-after-look-at-the-strike-on-yemen-and-what-it-is-likely-to-mean-n2168651
One difference is that the Houthis actions are mainly serving political, rather than strictly military objectives. You don't need to sink a merchant ship to interdict a shipping lane, just make it unsafe enough for insurance premiums to shoot through the roof and the shipping industry will decrease its usage.
ReplyDeleteAs long as the Houthis show a minimum of competency and accuracy in this regard, they can achieve that objective. Even "damaging" a tanker can start a fire and "damaging" a container ship can blow up a few containers. Damaging a merchant ship without disabling it might still create an oil spill and require a large payment from the insurance company.
Correct. Our concern, however, is the Marines and they will be attempting to achieve an actual military objective. The Houthi example seems to be demonstrating that it will be difficult or impossible to achieve a significant military objective using the missile sniping concept.
DeleteWhat the Houtis an the Marines in Force Design 2030 will have in common ist that both will lack serious air defence and both are clearly isolated and thus easily picked targets. The whole Force Design is based on wishful thinking und a supposed technological, tactical, strategical and military superiority. I'm not sure, that the US will have al these advantages in case of a real crisis.
ReplyDelete"Marine Corps envisions with their island/coastal missile shooter concept."
ReplyDeleteThis concept itself is unhealthy. You can use ships to launch missiles with much higher flexibility than marines to land on an island, setup equipment, launch missiles (who will provide targets information if not Navy or Air Force).
Houthi moves on land. Hit and run is their norm. Unless you can cut off their sources of weapons (include parts to assemble them), they will continue attacking.
Send ground troop is national leaders want to avoid.
Would it be possible to attack over the horizon if you don't care about targeting any specific ship? Just lob it in the general direction of ocean traffic, and allow the weapon to lock itself onto the first large metal object that it comes across. Might not work for the marines (who you'd hope would discriminate a little in their targeting), but it might work for the Houthis, who are attacking the busying ocean commerce corridor on Earth and don't seem to care which ships they hit.
ReplyDelete"Just lob it in the general direction of ocean traffic"
DeleteYou may not be appreciating just how much area there is to "lob" into. Just the area of the Red Sea immediately adjoining the southwestern coast of Yemen is around 24,000 sq.mi. (62,000 sq.km.). A missile's tiny sensor with its soda straw field of view can scan an incredibly miniscule fraction of that. The odds on bllind-finding a target are nearly non-existent.
It's clear that the Houthis have a very limited inventory of weapons or else they would have used them to saturate and overwhelm the Navy ship defenses. So, is it wise to blind fire your very limited and precious missiles when you have near-zero chance of finding a target?
With truly indiscriminate, blind targeting you run the very real risk of hitting targets that will generate negative political and military results (hitting friendly ships or ships that will cause negative world wide reaction and hurt your political standing and fundraising).
I imagine that the Marines could get targeting data from satellites. The question would be whether they hold up during wartime against jamming and anti-satellite weapons.
ReplyDeleteNo. In a China war, space will be a major battlefield and the number of functional satellites will be greatly reduced. The surviving satellites will be focused on much higher priority tasks than the remote possibility of spotting a ship wandering past an isolated Marine unit with a few missiles to waste.
DeletePeople tend to think that satellites are hard wired directly into the firing control of platoon size units so as to enable instantaneous fire control. This is simply not the case. Satellite imagery takes time to process and disseminate the results, even with computer assistance. For fixed targets, that's fine. For moving targets, that's not workable.
We're lucky they don't have Spike missiles that would chew up our Navy there. These use fiber optic guidance so can't be jammed and have a range of many miles. Here is video of one system that should be at the top of Marine Corps procurement priorities and not just for anti-ship, but anti-everything. The operator can maneuver the missile too, so can fly in very low and pop up to hit the bridge, missiles storage or water line. Imagine 20 of these inbound.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUxjGxIfzU
The longest range Spike variant is the Spike-NLOS, as I understand it. The fiber guidance ends at a bit under 5 miles and then its radio guided after that. So, that still requires some sort of extended range targeting.
DeleteTargeting is [one of] the major problems with the Marine concept. They simply have no viable, survivable means of targeting beyond the 12 mile or so horizon. As I constantly remind people, a million mile missile is useless if your targeting is limited to line of sight.
Not only are modern commercial ships more reliable than naval vessels, but they can absorb a several hundred kilogram warhead from a ballistic missile, and continue on with their mission while also protecting their crews.
ReplyDeletehttps://x.com/CENTCOM/status/1746913313932685597?s=20
"while also protecting their crews"
DeleteTo be fair, those ships tend to have crews of 10-20 men who can easily retreat behind a protected citadel and simply wait out whatever the threat is. Trying to protect the crew of a naval vessel with hundreds of men and no safe space is a bit more challenging.
Agreed, but in general this is validation for your points about armor. There is nothing inherently deadly about modern anti ship missiles, ballistic or otherwise. And these commercial ships are so inexpensive they throw them away after 10-15 years. So armor and things like high quality welds could be very cheap using modern shipbuilding techniques and organization. Steel and air are cheap, but labor is very expensive!
DeleteI finally published my post about Navy Shipbuilding where I talk about this among other things:
https://austinvernon.site/blog/navyshipbuilding.html
Well to be fair they are really big and not loaded with ammo.
DeleteThere is armor that can give the same effect in smaller space and ship designs should store ammunition in the most secure parts of the ship instead of exposed. Don’t forget that commercial ships use cheap, widely available fuel that is not very flammable instead of expensive refined fuel that is low viscosity she very flammable. So they are a better design for handling battle damage on that point, too!
Delete