Ukraine and the Houthis Are Revolutionizing Naval Warfare

Navies will have to adapt to an era in which low-cost drones and missiles can take out lumbering carriers and destroyers.

By James Stavridis Fletcher Dean Emeritus, and former supreme allied commander of NATO

There are two significant maritime conflicts underway today. One is in the Red Sea, where Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists are effectively attacking merchant shipping in the dense waterways south of the Suez Canal. The other is in the confined battlespace of the Black Sea, where Ukraine — a country without an operational navy — is inflicting shocking losses on the supposedly formidable Russian Black Sea fleet.

In both cases, there are powerful lessons for the US Navy — which is directly participating in the Red Sea battle, while giving the Ukrainians an indirect assist in the Black. What will the US admirals learn from these conflicts to improve and protect our own seagoing forces?

Let’s start in the Black Sea. Just under two years ago, the powerful cruiser Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, was sunk by Ukrainians using drones for targeting and cruise missiles for the knockout blow. This was truly remarkable: Believe me, the first thing they teach you at the US Naval Academy is not to have your flagship sunk. (Or “promoted to submarine” as the amusing social-media meme had it.)

Amazingly, that was only the first example of Ukrainian innovation — coupled with Western intelligence and unmanned technology — putting Russian warships on the bottom of the Black Sea. The Ukrainians have used a combination of cruise missiles, aerial drones and small, unmanned surface vessels to sink or severely damage around 20 major warships, a third of the pre-war Russian fleet. 

In doing so, they have checked the Russians’ strategic intent of closing the Black Sea to Ukrainian merchant traffic. Russian President Vladimir Putin desperately wanted to shut the Ukrainian seacoast from Crimea all the way to the major port of Odessa on the Black Sea’s western coast. 

If the Russian Black Sea fleet had remained a true “fleet in being” — a force whose mere existence causes the enemy to alter its calculus — it would have been very difficult for Ukraine to break Moscow’s blockade. This would have meant economic strangulation for Ukraine. But by retaining its ability to export grain, fertilizer and other agrarian products, Kyiv can keep the economy alive and supply the cash to help power both the war effort and civilian enterprises. It’s also notable that the Ukrainians have mapped out the maritime battlespace effectively and thus far avoided any collateral damage to commercial ships. 

This leads us to perhaps the most important lesson of the Black Sea conflict: surface ships — destroyers, cruisers, even massive American aircraft carriers — are now very vulnerable to nimble unmanned assaults. It may not take a true capital warship to sink another: The old kids’ game of Battleship may need to remake itself and add naval drones to the mix. 

Looking ahead, we should study the Ukrainians’ successful merger of US-supplied satellite intelligence, data from the sensor suites on their own long-dwell air drones, and use of special forces — often operating in disguised fishing and commercial craft. This augurs well for coalition strategies elsewhere — for example, in confronting China’s territorial ambitions in the South China Sea. Picture the Philippine or Vietnamese navy operating a similar set of capabilities, with US support, against Chinese warships near the Spratly Islands or Mischief Reef.

Turning to the Red Sea, we have Iranian proxies conducting assaults against merchant shipping and US warships not unlike Ukraine’s attacks against Russia. The Houthis are using Iranian intelligence (much of it from from Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warships) to find, fix upon and attack commercial ships. They are using a combination of relatively low-end cruise and ballistic missiles, air and surface drones, and some patrol boats, mostly supplied by Iran. 

Thus far, the US warships are knocking aside the Houthi missile attacks fairly easily, while the terrorists have landed some punches on the merchant vessels. But in economic terms, this is a losing proposition for the Pentagon. The Navy’s air-defense missiles like the SM-2 cost well over $2 million each. Often, to be on the safe side, a destroyer will shoot two at an incoming threat. Yet the Houthis’ drones can be had for around $1,000 or so, and even those ballistic missiles cost only a fraction of what the US must spend on high-end air defenses.

So, one key lesson going ahead is that we need a more cost-effective yet capable air-defense system. Options include “close-in” weapon systems — one type uses a combination of radars and rapid-firing cannons on a rotary turret to blast incoming threats — and laser technology, which looks promising. The Pentagon needs to accelerate testing and production of such hardware and see how they work in the real world.

As in the Black Sea, we are seeing how effective lightweight and low-cost drones can be over water. So could small, cheap tactical satellites of the sort that the nascent Space Force is making a priority.

Another lesson is the effectiveness of the “kill the archer so you don’t have to defeat the arrow” strategy. That is, taking out enemy capability ashore — launchers, maintenance facilities, trailers, ammo storage — before the missiles can be fired. The US and UK started doing so a month ago. But looking ahead, this means maintaining US airpower in the Gulf region — either a carrier group, as we have right now, or land-based aircraft ready to strike the Houthis before they can launch.

Also, because no air-defense system is perfect, Navy crews need to train diligently for the inevitable: an enemy drone or ballistic missile hitting one of our warships. Preparedness for damage control can save lives and ships.

Finally, in terms of protecting the merchant fleet, we seem to have forgotten a lesson from a decade ago when we were fending off far-less-capable Somali pirates: We should start gathering them into manageable convoys under the protection of air-defense units.

Eventually, in both the Black and Red Seas, the US and its allies may have to go directly after the forces of the sponsoring nations: Russia and Iran. We are not there yet, and for now should limit to working through our Ukrainian proxies against Russia while striking the Iranian proxy, the Houthis. Eventually, both maritime conflicts will subside, and we can return to the free flow of commerce on these important waterways. But in the meantime, the US Navy is learning all it can to improve its performance in 21st-century war at sea.

(This post is republished from Bloomberg Opinion.)