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2024-01-28 Britain
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British warships lack firepower to attack Houthi land targets
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[Yahoo] Britain’s warships cannot attack Houthi targets on land because they lack the firepower, in a situation described by former defence chiefs as a “scandal”.
None of the Royal Navy’s destroyers or frigates have the ability to fire missiles at targets on land, leaving the US to carry out the majority of strikes on Houthi targets with support from RAF planes based 1,500 miles away.
A British defence source said HMS Diamond, the destroyer stationed in the Red Sea, had not joined retaliatory strikes on Houthi targets because it did not have “the capability to fire to land targets”. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it had instead been “directly involved in successfully destroying Houthi drones targeting shipping in the Red Sea”.
This weekend, a British-linked container ship caught fire after becoming the latest vessel targeted by Houthi rebels.
One former rear admiral suggested that Britain’s inability to strike the Iran-backed Houthi movement’s bases from warships highlighted how the Navy would be unable to “go toe to toe” with Chinese and Russian warships.
Currently, the only weapons on destroyers that can fire at other ships or land are artillery guns at the front of each vessel. While US destroyers can fire Tomahawk guided missiles at land targets, the UK’s only options for such strikes are deploying planes or submarines, five of which were reported to be unavailable at one point in the autumn.
Tobias Ellwood, the former chairman of the Commons defence committee, warned that the situation was unsustainable and urged Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary, to conduct an urgent review. “We can’t continue to do this with a surface fleet that’s too small and cannot fire on land at range,” Mr Ellwood said.
Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, now the head of the Armed Forces, was among navy chiefs warning of a need to “speed up our acquisition processes” for weapons including “land attack missile systems” five years ago, when he was First Sea Lord.
During the first few months of Boris Johnson’s premiership, Sir Tony publicly advocated replacing Harpoon anti-ship missiles with a weapon that could be used to attack land targets.
However, the Harpoon was retired from the Navy last year and its temporary replacement, the Norwegian-made Naval Strike Missile, which can hit land targets, has only been installed on one vessel so far as part of a trial and has yet to be fired. Eventually, it will be rolled out to 11 frigates and destroyers before a new cruise missile system is expected to be introduced in 2028. 
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Posted by Skidmark 2024-01-28 00:29||
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File under: Houthis
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Posted by Ululating Platypus 2024-01-28 16:41||
2024-01-28 16:41||
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