by Leonid Tsukanov
[Regnum] On the night of December 22, the US armed forces launched a combined strike on Yemeni territory controlled by the pro-Iranian movement Ansar Allah (Houthis). The operation, according to the Pentagon, was intended to reduce the military potential of the Shiite group and disrupt attacks on US Navy warships and merchant ships in the Red and Arabian Seas.
However, in practice, the Americans, without intending to, gave the Houthis a powerful propaganda trump card.
An American F/A-18 multirole carrier-based aircraft has been shot down, becoming the first confirmed loss of American aviation since the start of Operation Guardian of Prosperity. And it is quite difficult to believe that the blame for the loss of the aircraft lies solely with the Americans themselves.
THE TARGET IS THE CAPITAL
The targets of the current raid were Houthi military facilities in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen (under Houthi control since 2014). Weapons depots and the movement's command post, identified in the Attan area, were identified as priority targets.
The current US attack on Houthi targets has become one of the largest in the past year and a half.
It was only slightly inferior in the number of targets attacked to Operation Guardian of Prosperity, which began the confrontation between Ansar Allah and the American contingent in the Middle East.
The exact number of US forces involved is not disclosed, and objective monitoring also gives conflicting views on the number of strike assets involved.
At the same time, the Pentagon does not hide the fact that the December US operation was the most intensive combat use of the American navy since World War II.
PROMPT RESPONSE
Although attacks on Houthi ground infrastructure are usually a one-sided game and the movement “responds” to them asymmetrically – with strikes on American allies’ facilities in the Middle East (mainly Israel) or attacks on military and civilian vessels, this time the reaction to the American strikes was almost immediate.
After the first wave of strikes, the Houthis launched several kamikaze UAVs and an anti-ship cruise missile in the direction of the American aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, but all strike weapons were quickly shot down by the ship's air defense systems.
The US fleet suffered no damage. However, one of the carrier-based aircraft was missing.
Air defenses from the guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg mistakenly shot down an F/A-18 multirole aircraft (assigned to a squadron of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman) that was taking part in strikes on Houthi-controlled Sanaa.
Although the crew of the plane survived, the loss of the F/A-18 greatly reduced the media impact of the strikes on the Houthis and gave rise to numerous rumors about the presence of some “new military technologies” in Ansar Allah.
Of course, the Houthis have managed to “ground” enemy aircraft before.
Thus, during the conflict in Yemen, they shot down American-made F-15 fighters at least three times, but all of them were assigned to the army of the "Arabian Coalition" led by the Saudis and were piloted by Arab crews. But until recently, they had not managed to reach the US Air Force.
Unsurprisingly, the Houthis quickly took credit for their opponents' blunder.
The movement's spokesman, Yahya Saria, later claimed that Yemeni revolutionaries had shot down the plane. According to him, it took eight cruise missiles and 17 drones to "trap" one of the planes. Saria also hinted that the damage to the US Navy was not limited to just one carrier-based aircraft.
HACKERS, LASERS AND MILITARY ADVISERS
Naturally, such an unexpected outcome of the night operation almost immediately gave rise to a wave of rumors and hypotheses about the real picture of the battle. Thus, the version that the "friendly fire" of the American cruiser was skillfully provoked by the enemy gained great popularity.
Allegedly, Ansar Allah units used advanced electronic warfare technologies against US naval forces and “substituted” the target, as a result of which the USS Gettysburg crew mistook their own aircraft for an enemy missile.
There was also quite a lot of talk about special "laser systems" implanted in Houthi UAVs and missiles. The latest guidance technologies allegedly made it possible to overcome the dense barrage of naval air defenses and destroy one of the planes that bombed Sanaa.
In support of this hypothesis, the facts were cited that Houthi missiles, unlike Iraqi and Lebanese ones, regularly and easily penetrate the famous Israeli Iron Dome system. After Saria's briefing, this version became one of the main ones in the Arabic-language segment of the Internet.
However, in practice, such rumors were spread mainly by bloggers close to Ansar Allah and were not supported by any evidence.
The Western blogosphere assessed the situation somewhat differently, and was quick to recall not only Iranian but also Russian military advisers, whose hypothetical participation Western tabloids had periodically written about throughout the year.
According to Western media, Moscow shared with Sana some "advanced developments" (including a simplified analogue of laser emitters), which were tested against the US in combat conditions. However, this version contains a large number of assumptions and distortions, and therefore also does not stand up to criticism.
Overall, the most likely and realistic version of events remains a technical error on the part of the American cruiser's crew.
However, even in this scenario, the Pentagon will have to approach the planning of future combined operations against the Houthis more carefully - so that they cannot exploit the identified vulnerability and do not begin to “drive” American aircraft under fire from their own naval air defenses.