Houthis use sea drones to threaten US carrier strike group

As the Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group fends off attacks in the Red Sea, Houthi rebels have added a new weapon to their arsenal — naval drones.

Houthis have launched or attempted to launch multiple explosive, uncrewed vessels since January 4 into waters off Yemen, where they could threaten US Navy and commercial vessels, adding a new surface-level threat to the attacks involving airborne drones and missiles, according to Business Insider.

Rear Adm. Marc Miguez, the commander of the Eisenhower carrier strike group, told the outlet that the sea drones were "more of an unknown threat that we don't have a lot of intel on, that could be extremely lethal."

Naval drones present one of the scariest scenarios, he said: "To have a bomb-laden, unmanned surface vessel that can go in pretty fast speeds. And if you're not immediately on scene, it can get ugly extremely quick."

US forces have encountered Houthi sea drones in commercial shipping lanes on at least three occasions, The Maritime Executive, a specialist outlet, reported.

On February 5, US forces decided that two such drones presented "an imminent threat" to shipping and took them out, US Central Command said. The US military has also regularly conducted strikes on unmanned surface vessels that the Houthis were preparing to launch.

The emergent technology of sea drones has been largely pioneered — with considerable success — by Ukraine against Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

In the past two weeks alone, Ukraine has claimed to have sunk a Russian corvette and a landing craft using only a handful of inexpensive, home-produced MAGURA V5 naval drones.

The drones are far from infallible — experts have told Business Insider that they often fail to reach their target — but the payoff if they do hit gives Ukraine an "immense asymmetric advantage," Basil Germond, an expert in international security at Lancaster University in the UK, said.

At present, Miguez told the AP, the US Navy does not have good intelligence on how many drones the Houthis have.

The rebel group has also used them in the past against Saudi coalition forces involved in Yemen's civil war, the AP reported.

The Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group has for weeks been responding to nearly constant attacks and malign activities in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, and the strike-group commander told Business Insider's Jake Epstein about how US forces had adapted their approach to target Houthi missiles and drones before they could even be launched.