US Report: This is how the Red Sea battle revealed the flaws of the US Navy
American officers revealed shortcomings and weaknesses suffered by the US Navy in terms of capabilities, methods, and tools in light of the confrontations against the Yemenis in the Red Sea, explaining that these challenges reflect the scale of the difficulties the US may face in any future conflict with China.
Follow-ups – Al-Khabar Al-Yemeni:
In a report published by the American website “The War Zone,” current and retired officers in the US Navy stated that the operations in the Red Sea constituted a major stress test for the US fleet, amid the depletion of limited ammunition, which revealed further shortcomings in the defense industrial base.
According to the report, analysts acknowledged that China represents a more complex adversary compared to the Yemenis, and any potential war with Beijing would be more severe and complicated.
In this context, Jean van Tol, a retired warship commander and researcher at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, stated that the management of missile expenditure during wars is a crucial lesson that can be drawn from the operations in the Red Sea and applied to scenarios of confronting China.
He explained that the US Navy was forced to use expensive surface-to-air missiles, which take a long time to produce, against low-cost Yemeni drones, noting that ammunition consumption will accelerate more rapidly in any conflict with China, due to the significant development in the capabilities of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, which increases the depletion of the US stockpile of guided missiles.
The report pointed out that China has a more diverse and capable anti-ship missile arsenal than the one used by the Yemenis, including short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, aimed at strengthening its control over regional requirements and excluding competitors from wide areas during conflicts.
It added that if Beijing decided to invade Taiwan, it would rely on a wide mix of ammunition to prevent the US naval forces from entering the East and South China Seas, as part of its overall strategy to deny access to the region.
In this context, retired Marine Colonel Mark Cancian, the senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that military history is full of examples of weapon systems that appeared ready on paper but failed when used in battle, citing the defective torpedoes (Mk 14) used by the US Navy during World War II as an example.
The report also quoted retired officer Bradley Martin, an expert in surface warfare, that one of the lessons learned from the confrontations in the Red Sea is the realization of the great risks that aircraft carriers are exposed to when within the range of the enemy’s weapons.
He pointed to these risks being clearly manifested in the incident last month, when the cruiser “USS Gettysburg” accidentally shot down an “F/A-18 Super Hornet” while repelling a Houthi attack on the “USS Harry S. Truman.”
The report concluded by noting that despite the strategic value of the lessons learned from the Red Sea, US military readiness is facing continuous depletion, raising serious questions about the naval forces’ preparedness to confront an adversary the size of China.