How one warship thwarting a Houthi attack changed the USN
Defense News
How one warship thwarting a Houthi attack a year ago changed the Navy
By Geoff Ziezulewicz
16 October 2024
Much has changed for the sea service in the year since the destroyer Carney became the first Navy ship to take out a Houthi attack over the Red Sea on Oct. 19, 2023. (U.S. Navy)
The men and women aboard the Navy destroyer Carney could be forgiven for thinking they were headed toward a quiet cruise on Oct. 7, 2023, as the warship steamed east across the Atlantic Ocean to begin its latest deployment.
But that day heralded the start of a great upending for the U.S. Navy, after Hamas militants streamed into Israel and murdered more than 1,200 people, sparking a war that continues to threaten to engulf the Middle East to this day.
The moment that would change the Navy forever actually took place aboard the Carney 12 days later, on Oct. 19, when it became the first American warship to take out a barrage of Iran-backed Houthi rebel missiles and drones fired from Yemen.
Such intercepts have since become a harrowing, near-daily occurrence for destroyers in those waters, and the year that followed Oct. 19, 2023, has irrevocably changed the Navy for the foreseeable future, Navy leaders and outside analysts say.
On this day one year ago, starting around 4 p.m. local time, Carney took out a Houthi attack the Pentagon later said was headed for Israel, downing 15 drones and four land-attack cruise missiles over 10 hours.
While their pre-deployment training prepared them for anything, the Carney was not expecting to find itself taking on the Houthis in a near-daily battle to keep the claustrophobic Red Sea lanes open for commerce, Cmdr. Jeremy Robertson, the ship’s commanding officer for that cruise, told Navy Times this week.
“None of us really could have known what we were going to get into once Oct. 7 happened,” he said.
Since those fateful 10 hours a year ago, the Red Sea has become the arena for the longest sustained “direct and deliberate attacks at sea” that the fleet has faced since World War II, Fleet Forces Command head Adm. Daryl Caudle said in a statement to Navy Times.
“While I could not have predicted the complexity and interrelationships of all that has transpired since [Oct. 19, 2023], I am not surprised,” said Caudle, who commands the Navy East Coast-based fleet.
“The world is a very tense place right now given the vast range of power-seeking agendas between peer competitors and opportunistic regional proxies. Any small spark can have serious consequences, which is why we take every situation so seriously.”
Since Carney’s first victory, the surface fleet has subsequently honed its tactics and tuned its radars for such a fight, instances when a ship’s Combat Information Center sometimes has mere seconds to ascertain and take out a Houthi attack.
Combat lessons are being routed back to schoolhouses and training centers, giving the Navy real-time knowledge on its combat systems and how to best use them.
Skippers also report that their crews have been galvanized by such experiences, finding meaning to their seemingly endless training in the life-and-death minutes they endure in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
“This really gave our sailors the why,” Robertson said. “Why do we train so hard, why do we do all the reps and sets.”
“The stage was not too big, the lights were not too bright. They were able to draw a connection.”
These successes at sea “validate our readiness to respond, our Sailors’ warfighting spirit and the technological superiority of our exquisite combat systems,” Caudle said.
But despite the tactical successes and demonstrated proficiencies, some question how fast the Navy is burning through munitions, sometimes to take out cheap Houthi drones, and whether a drawdown of missiles could one day impact a long-feared war with China in the West Pacific.
The Houthi menace in the Middle East has also caused the Navy’s aircraft carriers to be run hard, and some have been scrambled to the region when others weren’t ready to go, further raising readiness alarms in some corners.
And while tactical battles have been won, strategic wars have not, according to James Holmes, a retired Navy gunnery officer and professor of maritime strategy at the Naval War College.
“The tacticians have done their work magnificently … and the combination of sensors, fire control and weaponry has performed as advertised against an array of threats similar to what [Iran, Russia and China] field,” Holmes told Navy Times.
“Bringing down anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles is no easy feat, but they have done it.”