The operation comes after the sinking this week of the ship Tutor. On Saturday, the Yemeni armed forces released footage of a drone boat and its strike for the first time.
The video published by the media bureau of Yemen’s Operations Command Center showed “Tempest 1” with a warhead weighing 150 kilograms and a speed of 35 nautical miles per hour.
Boasting high speed and ability in maneuvering and stealth, the Yemeni drone boat is designed for fixed and mobile near targets.
Yemen’s military released on Wednesday the video of its attack on the Tutor. The footage showed the vessel being struck by two drone boats while sailing in the Red Sea, which resulted in its sinking.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials reportedly ordered the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, the aircraft carrier leading America’s response to Yemen’s operations, to return home after a twice-extended tour.
The captain of the ship targeted late Friday saw “explosions in the vicinity of the vessel,” the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said. A later briefing by the U.S.-overseen Joint Maritime Information Center said the vessel initially reported two explosions off its port side and a third one later.
Yemen’s military claimed the attack Saturday night. Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, a military spokesman, identified the vessel targeted as the bulk carrier Transworld Navigator.
The Yemenis have launched more than 60 operations targeting Israeli-linked vessels and fired off other missiles and drones in their campaign. They have seized one vessel and sunk two since November.
The U.S. Naval Institute’s news service reported, citing an anonymous official, that the Eisenhower would be returning home to Norfolk, Virginia, after an over eight-month deployment in combat that the Navy says is its most intense since World War II.
The Eisenhower had repeatedly been targeted by the Yemeni forces during its time in the Red Sea. Saree on Saturday night claimed another attack on the carrier.
Despite months of U.S.-led airstrikes, Yemeni forces have continued their operations, drawing from an arsenal of increasingly advanced weapons to attack Israeli, U.S. and UK vessels in and around the Red Sea.
Just this month, they sank one ship and set another ablaze. The Yemeni forces, operating on land and in the water, have launched swarms of drones at U.S. warships and deployed a remote-controlled boat packed with explosives.
The recent uptick in Yemeni operations has underscored the ability of the country’s forces to carry out major military tasks.
“Their ability to replace whatever we destroy is unimpeded and our ability to interdict materiel coming into the country negligible,” said Gerald Feierstein, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen who is now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
Yemen’s forces have learned how to modify old weapons and manufacture new ones, becoming the first army to use anti-ship ballistic missiles to strike naval targets, according to senior U.S. military commanders.
“Their capability has definitely increased” since they started their campaign, Feierstein said. “So as long as they have the incentive to continue these attacks, they’ve demonstrated they have the ability to do it.”
Yemen’s resistance movement first
emerged in the 1990s. It fought a bruising war with Saudi Arabia, which wanted to eliminate the force, but ultimately stayed in power.
Experts estimate that Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance has a fighting force of at least 20,000, including a mix of tribal forces and troops.
In November, after war broke out between Israel and Hamas, Ansarullah and its allies in Yemen announced they would begin attacking Israeli-linked ships in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Their first major salvo included confiscating a cargo vessel in the southern Red Sea and detaining its crew.
Since then, the Pentagon has recorded more than 190 attacks on either U.S. military vessels or other ships off the coast of Yemen, including nearly 100 since waves of U.S. airstrikes began in January.
The operations soon broadened to the Gulf of Aden and Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea. From there, ships transit through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean, the shortest maritime route between Europe and Asia.
The Pentagon has deployed a rotating cast of warships in the region in an effort to thwart the Yemeni operations, shooting down drones over the Red Sea and other waterways and striking missiles and radar sites in Yemen.
But they have failed to make a dent in Yemen’s military capabilities and resulted in deployment of more advanced weapons and expansion of operations by the country’s forces.
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