The Red Sea crisis triggered by Yemen's Houthi attacks on merchant ships passing through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait has been going on for more than a month, although the US-British coalition has launched multiple rounds of air strikes on Houthi ground targets a week ago, and the West has claimed that it has destroyed "a large number" of Houthi radars and missile launchers.
However, there has been no reduction in Houthi attacks on merchant ships. As China's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Zhang Jun said, armed attacks by Britain and the United States under the pretext of being authorized by the UN Security Council will only worsen the situation in the Middle East, but will not achieve any results.
The latest attack by the Houthis occurred last Friday, when the U.S. Command issued an announcement saying that in the afternoon of local time, the Houthis fired an anti-ship ballistic missile at the U.S. Navy's Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Carney sailing in the Gulf of Aden, which was shot down by an anti-aircraft missile fired by the USS Carney, with no personnel.
At about the same time, the British Maritime Operations Department issued an announcement saying that they had received a report that a British oil tanker, the Marin Luanda, had been hit by a missile launched by the Houthis, and that the incident was also in the Gulf of Aden. The Houthis also issued a statement afterwards saying that they had hit a British tanker with "some suitable missiles". At present, there are a large number of **and** taken by the crew of this tanker and passing ships on the Internet, indicating that the tanker was indeed hit**.
Taken together, these two incidents make people doubt the role played by the US escort. The main warships of the US military participating in the escort are several Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and the Aegis air defense system equipped with them has always been boasted of by the West.
But the Red Sea crisis of the past month has shown that the Aegis system is not unbreakable. Although it is true that the U.S. ships have shot down a large number of incoming missiles and drones, and so far they have not been damaged, several merchant ships protected by them have indeed been hit by suicide drones or missiles launched by the Houthis.
Some people will say that this may be because the US ** ship did not protect the merchant ship with all its strength, but only protected itself with all its strength, so it does not mean that the Aegis system is not good. Well, either the United States is "not good in character", or "the performance of the Aegis system is not good". The problem with this explanation is that the US ** command claimed that the attack on the USS Carney was the first attack by the Houthis directly against the US ** ship, that is to say, in the past month, the US ** ship intercepted the incoming missiles and suicide drones more than a dozen times, all to protect the merchant ship, which shows that there are indeed ** that have slipped through the net to hit the merchant ship.
You must know that the ** used by the Houthis is not a high-end product, some suicide drones are said to cost only 2,000 US dollars, and the most expensive suicide drone found is Iran's "Shahid-136", which is the kind of "small motorcycle" that Russia uses in large quantities on the battlefield in Ukraine; The missile is basically a short-range solid-fuel ballistic missile made by Iran, which uses a photoelectric infrared seeker, and the warhead cannot be separated from the missile body, which is not much different from the "Scud" of several decades ago, and is very easy to detect and shoot down. The cost of these missiles is in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Modern shipborne air defense systems are supposed to be very easy to intercept these **.
The performance of the US escort also exposed a problem, that is, the US military is not willing to risk letting the incoming ** fly closer, and then use medium and near-range air defense missiles to intercept it, and is even more unwilling to use the Phalanx close defense artillery to intercept it, but would rather launch expensive long-range missiles to shoot down these incoming ** at a distance, or even down in the sky above the territory controlled by the Houthis that has just taken off.
At present, the Houthis have released some ** of the ground wreckage of US missiles, and it is basically determined that the US ** ship launched the "Standard-2" and "Standard-6" anti-aircraft missiles. At present, the "Standard-2" air defense missile is about $2 million per round, and the "Standard-6" air defense missile is about $4.3 million per round.
It is completely uneconomical to take such expensive missiles to intercept the cheap ** of the Houthis. Some ** and think tanks in the United States have pointed out that the current escort model of the US military is completely unsustainable. This is one of the reasons why the United States is eager to carry out air strikes against the Houthis in an attempt to get them to "stop", but it has completely missed the goal.
Last Saturday, Sullivan traveled all the way to Thailand to meet with China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, and asked China to help him get the Houthis to stop attacking merchant ships in the Red Sea. Will we help? Will the Houthis listen to our talk? Time will tell.
In addition, there are also people on the Internet who say that the US "Aegis" ship has intercepted a large number of anti-ship ballistic missiles of the Houthis, proving that China's anti-ship ballistic missiles are also useless. Can our Dongfeng-21D and Dongfeng-26 and Houthi such copycat missiles be compared?
Our anti-ship ballistic missiles, with which the warhead and body are able to separate, are much faster after re-entry than short-range missiles, and are not so easy to intercept. If we use a ballistic hypersonic missile like the DF-17, the US military currently has no effective way to intercept it. So, what's so scary about Aegis? The American Aegis is outdated.
Project Sword