Joe Biden's 'Expensive' Red Sea Plan Faces Major Hurdles

President Joe Biden's plan to limit attacks on commercial shipping transiting the Red Sea is the latest rung in the Middle East's descent into a multi-front conflict pitting the U.S. and its allies against Iran's regional network.

The U.S. and a coalition of 11 other nations will protect the "critical" waterway, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said this week, under the umbrella of Operation Prosperity Guardian.

The U.S. is set to do most of the heavy lifting. Other nations—including major regional Arab partners like Egypt—have been hesitant to join. And even some who have—for example the Netherlands and Norway—have only committed a handful of personnel and no ships.

Operation Prosperity Guardian is being launched amid a steady drip of drone, missile, and naval attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea off the Yemeni coast, launched by the Iran-aligned Houthi group, which since 2014 has been at war with the Western-recognized Yemeni government, and since 2015 with a regional Western-leaning coalition led by Saudi Arabia.

The spike in Houthi activity is a response to Israel's operation in the Gaza Strip, where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are working to "eradicate" the Hamas militant group following its October 7 surprise infiltration attack.

But the Houthis have shown no indication of easing their attacks. "We have capabilities to sink your fleet, your submarines, your warships," Houthi Defense Minister Major General Mohammad Nasser Al-Atafi said this week, as quoted by the Iranian Tasnim News outlet. "The Red Sea will be your graveyard."

Biden's latest Middle East crisis might yet outlast even the war in Gaza.

"The Houthis are not going to stop until their missile and drone launchers are targeted," Sam Tangredi, the director of the U.S. Naval War College's Institute for Future Warfare Studies, told Newsweek. "They are relatively cheap weapons to fire off. And they make a statement even though they might hit nothing."

"It would take a more intensive effort to target those sites, but it would be a shorter operation and more effective."

A Pentagon official told Newsweek there have been no attacks on shipping since Austin announced the beginning of Operation Prosperity Guardian on Monday. The spokesperson declined to comment on potential plans to strike Houthi military sites inside Yemen, citing "long standing" Defense Department policy intended "to protect operational security."

Pirates of the Red Sea

Operation Prosperity Guardian is still in its early stages, and it remains unclear exactly how the coalition intends to protect commercial ships in Houthi crosshairs. U.S., French and British warships have already intercepted multiple salvoes of Houthi drones and missiles over recent weeks. The long-range air defense capabilities of such modern naval vessels will be key to ensuring the safety of shipping.

"My interpretation is that the force will provide air defense for individual ships no matter where they are transiting in the Red Sea," Tangredi said. This approach, he added, would be "cheaper for the shipping firms, more expensive for governments."

"Perhaps more economical would be a convoy system in which one destroyer would escort a small convoy of merchant ships. The merchant ships would have to wait for others to join up—perhaps just outside the Suez Canal or in the Arabian Sea—and remain in relatively close distance to the air defense of the covering destroyer (perhaps a mile in separation) plus the destroyer's electronic warfare means of defense."

The U.S. pursued a similar approach in the Persian Gulf in the "Tanker War" of the 1980s, an element of the devastating Iran-Iraq War. "Some might say ships together would create a larger target, but it also would provide a more effective defense," Tangredi said.

"The U.S. Navy's SM-2 missile can protect merchant ships at some distance, but a ballistic missile could outrange it," Tangredi added. "Against the U-boats in the world wars, we found that we lost more ships when they sailed individually than in convoy. The situation is not quite analogous, but convoys are something to consider."

Relying on the SM-2 will quickly run up a major bill for the coalition. Each missile costs around $2.5 million, which is far more expensive than the munitions being fired by the Houthis. "It is a logical and worthy initiative, but it is also a very expensive response in terms of cost versus the cost of Houthi missiles or drones," Tangredi said.

Action in the Red Sea will also eat into the capabilities of a Navy already struggling to meet the challenges of renewed great power contests, primarily with Russia and China. "We need to save our naval and military strength for the threats that can kill us, not just annoy us," Tangredi said. "That's the CCP and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin."

"The Navy has been underinvested in—we squandered our defense resources in Iraq and Afghanistan 'wars of choice.' We need to be ready for 'wars of necessity.' We are not buying enough missiles, or ships overall, to deter a cross-Taiwan Strait invasion for long. An SM-2 fired against a Houthi drone is one less expensive missile to deter [China]."

The Biden administration is reportedly drawing up plans for possible missile strikes on Houthi targets within Yemen. Michael Allen, who served as special assistant to President George W. Bush and as the senior director at the National Security Council, told Newsweek that Biden's "trigger" for strikes will be the death of any U.S. citizens in the Red Sea, military or civilian.

"If the Houthi are able to get a shot off and actually hit one of our destroyers—the missile defense fails, or something gets through—there's going to be hell to pay," Allen, who is now the managing director of the Beacon Global Strategy advisory firm, added.

Tangredi suggested that an anti-Houthi piracy operation without attacking the origin points of missiles and drones will be inherently limited.

"There is another lesson from history: the suppression of global piracy in the 1600s-1800s," he explained. "The counter-piracy forces found that one could protect convoys of ships and fight pirate ships on the high seas, but that did not end piracy overall. Piracy ended when the nations brought forces into pirate ports and destroyed the infrastructure to support piracy."

"If you want to end piracy, you must go into their ports and destroy the infrastructure that supports them," Tangredi said. "You will end up hurting those who sell them fuel, those who profit from the ransom or stolen goods, those who sell them BMWs, etc. That ends the incentives, not picking them off one-by-one at sea."

"Picking off drones or missiles one-by-one in the Red Sea is not going to end the threat," Tangredi added. "And I don't believe the Houthis will stop when the conflict in Gaza ends. If anything they might be bolder."

"It's like North Korea; they fear that if they stop firing test missiles into the Sea of Japan, everyone would forget about their demands and no longer view them as powerful. In both cases, it's all about intimidation."

Update 12/22/23, 11:10 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to include comment from the Pentagon.