Yemen’s Houthis ratcheted up their attacks over the past month on vessels in the Red Sea corridor, as well as Israel, despite being targeted by US B-2 stealth bombers that dropped bunker buster bombs on weapons storage sites to degrade the group’s military capabilities.
Since January, the US and the UK have carried out several attacks targeting the Houthis in response to their attacks on vessels, while Israel has attacked port and energy installations in Yemen in retaliation for attacks by the Yemeni group on it.
The Houthis have carried out some 100 attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean since they started their campaign last November in solidarity with Hamas and Palestinians. They have vowed to only stop once Israel halts its war in Gaza.
The Iran-aligned group has sunk two vessels, seized another and killed several crew using ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as aerial and uncrewed boat drones. The number of attacks has varied by month and hit eight in October, below the high of high recorded midyear, according to Energy Intelligence data.
In the last week of October, the Houthis targeted the SC Montreal and Maersk Kowloon in the Arabian Sea and the Motaro in the Red Sea. Midmonth, they targeted the Megalopolis vessel in the Arabian Sea and prior to that struck Liberia-flagged tanker Olympic Spirit and the St. John in the Indian Ocean. At the start of the month, the group hit Panama-flagged tanker M/T Cordelia Moon with a drone and targeted a Malta-flagged containership, Marathopolis, in the Indian Ocean.
The attacks have disrupted the global supply chain and trade, forcing shipping companies to reroute their vessels around South Africa, which has increased transportation costs and insurance premiums.
The amount of crude oil and oil products flowing through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea decreased more than 50% in the first eight months of 2024, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
LNG and LPG carriers, vehicle carriers and container ships are among the ship types that more often deviate south of the Cape of Good Hope, whereas tankers, general cargo and dry bulk are slightly less likely to deviate, Jakob Larsen, head of maritime security at shipping organization Bimco, told Energy Intelligence.
Geopolitical Tensions
Insurance premiums could increase because of the Houthis, as well as weather-related incidents this year, he said.
“If geopolitical tensions persist and the Houthis continue their campaign, I think the industry will continue to be impacted,” Larsen said. “During the first year of the crisis, the industry has seen an increase in the ton-mile demand, and most carriers have been able to profit from this.”
If the ongoing situation normalizes, ships that meet the Houthis’ attack criteria are competitively inhibited compared to the rest, and this inequality will affect owners of ships with ties to Israel, the US and the UK, Larsen added.
Houthi attacks will continue despite US, UK and Israeli air strikes, which — while potentially degrading some of the group’s capabilities — have not permanently dented them, multiple analysts said.
“Over the almost 10 years, the Houthis have become increasingly resilient to bombardments and airstrikes from foreign forces … [and] learned to survive and regroup during the sustained airstrike campaigns by the Saudi-led coalition from 2015-22,” Dina Arakji, an analyst at Control Risks, told Energy Intelligence.
Martin Kelly, senior Middle East analyst at maritime risk consultancy EOS Risk Group, told Energy Intelligence that during the group’s war with the Saudi-led coalition they were able to return fire sometimes within a couple of hours, even after sustaining a high number of coalition airstrikes.
The Houthis were able to do this due to a network of caves and underground tunnels that are scattered across parts of Yemen controlled by the group, which allows them to hide their munitions, missile and drone launchers and radar equipment, Kelly said. The group is also nimble, as the launchers for anti-ship cruise missiles and drones are mobile and can be easily moved out of target view before a military aircraft is dispatched, he said.
“The challenge is that unless either the missiles/kinetic capability and/or the targeting capability is reduced to zero, the Houthis will be able to continue their operations,” Hans Tino Hansen, CEO of Risk Intelligence in Denmark, told Energy Intelligence.
The US B-2 attack in October on Yemen was “more a message to Iran” and actually didn’t inflict much damage on the Houthis, Kelly said.
“I think we will see the Houthis conduct attacks on an opportunistic basis over the coming weeks and months,” he said.
Explosive Submersible
Last month, the group unveiled an unmanned explosive submersible that has a torpedo-like shape and is called Al Qari'a, which analysts say resembles a recently captured US Navy Remus 600 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), that may have been cloned.
The battery-operated Remus, developed by the Oceanographic Systems Laboratory, can travel to depths of 600 meters and is considered as the most versatile member of the AUVs it produces, traveling at speeds of up to 5 knots and a range of 286 nautical miles.
The Houthis “have their own domestic capability where they can make drones and missiles so they can produce these inside Yemen and continue to attack ships,” Kelly said.
Underwater vessels are much more difficult to detect and defend against, and the Houthi submersible, if based on the Remus 600, could have a warhead of 40 kilograms that could cause vessels to lose power if they’re struck in the rear, Kelly said.
Control Risks researcher Arran Kennedy said even a rudimentary underwater, uncrewed vehicle, if deployed at scale, would “prove another major evolution in Houthi tactics,” and only an enhanced naval mission would be able to protect a commercial vessel from a dual submersible and aerial attack.
“I would not be surprised if we saw this in operation in the next one to two months,” Kelly said.