36 ms·
They're free to patrol the waters in the South Red Sea though. Doesn't Egypt have a navy? To me this situation seems like it would warrant sending nearly their
by sparrc 3y ago
They're free to patrol the waters in the South Red Sea though. Doesn't Egypt have a navy? To me this situation seems like it would warrant sending nearly their entire fleet to the South Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
- LargeTomato 3y agoGood questions! Egypt doesn't have the advanced anti missile cruisers. Egypt has a massive tank force. There is already a multi national naval fleet in the Red Sea patrolling the waters. Mostly US but also UK and some others. Edit There's more :) Egypt can't counter the missiles better than the US can, but it could certainly get pulled into a larger conflict if it started deploying military assets outside it's borders. They can't really make their situation better but they can definitely make it worse.
- mikeyouse 3y agoThe danger isn't primarily from other ships that the Egyptian Navy could chase off but from land-based cruise missiles launched by the Houthis. The US Navy's most advanced weapons systems can intercept most of the missiles but not all of them, and at some considerable degree of risk to the US vessels. The only military option to stop the attacks are drone / bomber incursions into Yemen which of course Egypt has no interest in doing since it could turn into a full hot war pretty easily.
- f6v 3y ago> The only military option to stop the attacks are drone / bomber incursions into Yemen After they withstood years of war with Saudis? Those sandal-and-skirt guys are much tougher than people think.
- logicchains 3y ago[flagged]
- miguelazo 3y ago[flagged]
- logicchains 3y agoIt's not racist; the Taliban and the Houthis are Muslims, and most Muslims believe that martyrdom leads directly to heaven, since the Qur'an explicitly states so. "Those who leave their homes in the cause of Allah, and are then slain or die,- On them will Allah bestow verily a goodly Provision: Truly Allah is He Who bestows the best provision. Verily He will admit them to a place with which they shall be well pleased: for Allah is All-Knowing, Most Forbearing." - Quran 22:58–59 Many Muslims take pride in the fact, hence the popularity of the "I have bought you men who love death as much as you love life" quote from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_ibn_al-Walid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_ibn_al-Walid to the Persian governor. Plus the Houthis and the Afghanistanis aren't even the same race, since the Houthis are Arabs and the majority of Afghanistanis are not.
- cma 3y agoLike saying Christians are hard to beat because everyone will donate all life savings to a religious war effort because of the one camel/needle line.
- pazimzadeh 3y agoMeh, it's not like Islam has a monopoly on martyrdom. Religion is a multiplier for politics, not the other way around. > it's hard to defeat people who believe dying in battle is a ticket to paradise How about it's hard to defeat people in their homeland, when they are fighting guerilla-style and not fighting head-on. i.e. Vietnam.
- threeseed 3y agoYou keep talking about many/most Muslims without evidence. If it's anything like Christianity most Muslims could well be practising but not devout and fully committed to everything written in the Quran.
- 3y ago
- LargeTomato 3y agoConventional military wisdom is that you cannot win a war from the air. Case in point: Vietnam. You have to put boots on the ground to secure the area and the Saudis aren't about to do that and the American people would never support dying for a Saudi war.
- TylerE 3y agoYou don't need to a win a war here, just make life sufficiently hard that most of the fighters give up.
- logicchains 3y agoIt's Yemen, have you checked their GDP per capita recently? Life there is already hard enough that it's difficult to make it significantly worse.
- TylerE 3y agoIf harboring pirates gets your village bombed, villages will stop harboring pirates.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> harboring pirates gets your village bombed, villages will stop harboring pirates The history of area bombardment is it strengthens civilian resolve. Think: the Battle of Britain, Vietnam and America’s wars in the Middle East.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> After they withstood years of war with Saudis? Different aims. Riyadh sought to remove them from power. That’s a boots-on-the-ground operation they attempted from the air. Egypt would just need to degrade their coastal capabilities. Taking out vessels, helicopters and arms stores could do that from the air.
- sudosysgen 3y agoSaudi Arabia also attempted to stop the Houthis from bombing Saudi industry, and failed. It's difficult to bomb guided missiles, because they are typically only stored 1-4 at a time in a highly mobile and disguised manner, for example inside a truck, and are only going to be exposed as they're being fired. It's a really difficult task, unfortunately. As far as I known it's never been successfully done without a ground invasion.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> it's never been successfully done without a ground invasion Counter-battery fire is tremendously precedented and always done at standoff. You can also start hitting arms stores, port infrastructure, training and C3 facilities. The beauty of this is it’s cruelly win-win-win. The Houthis can use the bombing to strengthen their domestic image, maybe even boost recruitment. Iran can piggyback on that. And America can claim it cleared the Strait. As long as everyone stays in their lane (literally), it’s a stable conclusion.
- sudosysgen 3y agoCounter battery fire simply does not work. These missiles are not stored nor fired in central locations, there are only a couple at a time. You can fire at the launch spot all you want, there's going to be no one and nothing of value there. It's the same tactics the US itself copied for the HIMARS, and despite thousand of airstrikes Russia hasn't been able to destroy them. Training and top level command is most likely not even in Yemen. You could hit the ports, that wouldn't stop the import of these missiles - they are shipped in small boats as a kit, assembled wherever, and then kept in a cave somewhere or in a car, ready to be fired. No port or infrastructure needed. These tactics have been used since the 80s, and no solution short of a ground invasion can stop them. Israel couldn't even stop Hamas and the PIJ from firing guided rockets from Gaza - at the end of the day when the IDF bomb houses that rockets were fired from, it's just theater: they never store more than a dozen munitions, and by the time counter battery fire arrives, they've likely fired all munitions already. This is a tiny 2.4sqm strip fully blockaded, I don't see how you can stop it in Yemen.
- golergka 3y ago> The US Navy's most advanced weapons systems can intercept most of the missiles but not all of them, and at some considerable degree of risk to the US vessels. Aren't Egyptian Navy vessels much cheaper than american? They can just zerg rush and eat the damage. I don't think that Houthi have a lot of cruise missiles piled up.
- mulmen 3y ago> They can just zerg rush and eat the damage. The last time the StarCraft doctrine was used in a real war was over a century ago and it did not go well. > I don't think that Houthi have a lot of cruise missiles piled up. Are you willing to bet the lives of Egyptian sailors on that assumption? How about your own? This isn’t a video game.
- TylerE 3y ago1939 was less than 100 years ago. Didn't go well for Poland. "Blitzkrieg" means "lightning war".
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> ”Blitzkrieg" means "lightning war" Blitzkrieg was early combined-arms warfare; its modern iteration underwrites American military supremacy. Zerg rushing is an r-production analog that uses swarms of cheap, expendable units to overwhelm the enemy numerically. This is closer to the Soviet (and now Russian) doctrine of using humans to absorb ammunition. It fails against combined-arms armies because it lacks manoeuvre. It works when the enemy is production constrained, e.g. Ukraine.
- hef19898 3y agoThe Russians, and Soviets, never did this. Their doctrine of mobile combined arms warfare, that worked really well during WW2, is called deep battle. Zerg rushing works in video games.
- throwaway48r7r 3y agoThe US interceptor missiles are something like 3 million dollars each. The Houthis drones are closer to 20 thousand. Eventually they will win on economic grounds.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoWhen has America ever backed down on spending money for war?
- Scarblac 3y agoRight now, for Ukraine.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoFair. Though I would slightly defend my position that qualifies as aid instead of letting America pull the trigger.
- pi-e-sigma 3y agoIt was the same in Vietnam. It even caused the US to end US dollar gold standard
- georgeplusplus 3y agoJudging by how broken the US economy seems, I’d say that’s already here.
- pc86 3y agoWhat economy have you been looking at?
- georgeplusplus 3y agoThe economy where people cannot afford housing. The economy where consumer credit card debt just hit 5 trillion. The economy where high skill jobs like people on this forum can’t find work. If you think this is a healthy economy you’re either too rich to care, or being lied to by whatever news outlet you read.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> which of course Egypt has no interest in doing Because someone else will do it for them. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and everyone based on Djibouti have a joint interest in keeping the Bab al-Mandab strait traversable.
- resolutebat 3y agoSaudi Arabia pretty much triggered this whole mess by invading, excuse me, "intervening in" Yemen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi-led_intervention_in_the_Yemeni_civil_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi-led_intervention_in_the_...
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoIt’s difficult to blame Riyadh exclusively without taking into account Iran’s role in the Houthis’ takeover of Yemen [1]. Saudi Arabia regionalised and intensified the conflict, but they didn’t start it. (To your credit, I don’t think the Houthis would have long-range precision weapons were Riyadh out of the picture.) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_takeover_in_Yemen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_takeover_in_Yemen
- jopsen 3y ago> ...bomber incursions into Yemen which of course Egypt has no interest in doing since it could turn into a full hot war pretty easily. How would the Houthis respond? Much less, what do they have that can possibly hit Egypt. That said, bombing might not do the trick. Just create more suffering in Yemen.
- tomjakubowski 3y agoGhadr-110 has a claimed range up to 2000km, which is just about the distance from Sanaa to Cairo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghadr-110 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghadr-110 https://www.mapdevelopers.com/draw-circle-tool.php?circles=%5B%5B2000000%2C15.3538569%2C44.2058841%2C%22%23AAAAAA%22%2C%22%23000000%22%2C0.4%5D%5D https://www.mapdevelopers.com/draw-circle-tool.php?circles=%...
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago> Ghadr-110 has a claimed range up to 2000km It also seems to have a new place in history. A losing place but still. . . On November 6, 2023, a Ghadr-110 missile was launched from Yemen by the Houthis towards Israel, which was intercepted by the Arrow-2 system while it was still outside of Earth's atmosphere, in what was described as the first instance of combat in space in human history
- citrin_ru 3y ago> How would the Houthis respond? It assumed that Houthi is a proxy of Iran so the question is how Iran would respond.
- jimbob45 3y agoI thought the Houthis were no longer receiving funding from Iran with the SA-Iran deal of 2023. Did that change?
- dragonwriter 3y ago> I thought the Houthis were no longer receiving funding from Iran with the SA-Iran deal of 2023. Did that change? I think its more “Iran lied and has used less overt channels” than “that changed”.
- Terr_ 3y ago> [Egypt is] free to patrol the waters Putting patrol-boats out there may deter boarding by Somalia-style pirates, but in this case the risk comes from various missiles and bomb-drones launched from the shore [0]. Even if the the defender has a few fancy anti-missile warships, the attacker could choose the least-covered target from a constant stream of (big, slow) cargo-ships through a ~300km route. [1] [0] https://www.mei.edu/publications/houthis-red-sea-missile-and-drone-attack-drivers-and-implications https://www.mei.edu/publications/houthis-red-sea-missile-and... [1] https://www.axios.com/2023/12/20/map-houthi-shipping-vessel-attacks-red-sea https://www.axios.com/2023/12/20/map-houthi-shipping-vessel-...
- Axsuul 3y agoNot many navys can project force that far due to logistics.
- jessepasley 3y agoIsrael has a navy, and is curiously missing from 'Operation Prosperity Guardian'
- zilti 3y agoI suspect after the ground invasion in Gaza and the attacks at Lebanon, the Israeli public would be even less pleased at a "third front"
- jessepasley 3y agoGood thing there a lot of other countries willing to foot that bill.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y agoIt puzzles me that how little mention Saudi Arabia is getting here - given that they've been Yemen's war-partner against the Houthis for a while (w/ US, UK, French, etc help).
- greedo 3y agoSaudi Arabia's military is staffed largely by dilettantes. The only reason they ever fought against the Houthi's was because they're Sunni and the Houthi's are Shia. And the Houthis are really in control of all most all of Yemen, so calling them insurgents etc is misplaced. They dissolved the government and replaced it with revolutionary councils.
- r00fus 3y agoI love how Israel expects the US and other countries to do all the heavy lifting on a front that is actually vital for their economic needs while they're on a mission dropping a Hiroshima of bombs on their own territory.
- pi-e-sigma 3y ago
- maxglute 3y agoThey also can't afford to potentially embarrass themselves militarily with much more existential grand renaissance dam drama unfolding in the background.
- namaria 3y agoIt's quite painless to allocate the limited resources of others isn't it?
- scythe 3y agoThe Egyptian government is a dictatorship holding together a powder keg. The military coup of 2013 overthrew a Muslim Brotherhood government and was followed by the election of 2014 which produced the very believable and realistic result of 96% of the vote for Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (he was reëlected with 97% in 2018 and 90% in 2023). A military mobilization of Egypt would jeopardize the minimal existing political infrastructure in the country and, arguably, play into the hands of the Houthis themselves, who are no friends of regional stability.
- partiallypro 3y agoIt's fairly obvious at this point that the only way to stop it is to bomb targets in Yemen...which isn't going to be politically popular. The US is even struggling to put together a coalition to secure the water ways.