{"id":9514,"date":"2025-03-07T06:59:45","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T19:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/?p=9514"},"modified":"2025-03-07T06:59:45","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T19:59:45","slug":"shooting-down-houthi-drones-is-expensive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/shooting-down-houthi-drones-is-expensive\/","title":{"rendered":"Shooting down Houthi drones is expensive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Task &amp; Purpose magazine : The U.S. Navy has used more missiles for air defense since combat operations in the Red Sea began in October 2023 than the service used in all the years since Operation Desert Storm in the 1990s, said retired Navy Cmdr. Bryan Clark, of the Hudson Institute. Over that 15-month-period, which ran from Oct. 19, 2023 to Jan. 19, 2025, the Navy saw the most combat at sea since World War II, Clark told Task &amp; Purpose. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of amazing how the Navy has held up with no losses, but the cost has been pretty enormous,\u201d Clark said. \u201cThe estimates are the Navy has used up $1 billion-plus worth of interceptors to shoot down these drone and missile threats.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For now, the conflict appears to be on pause, possibly due to the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that was announced on Jan. 19. But the Navy will need years to replenish its supply of missiles, and that puts the service in a bad position if the United States and China went to war today, Clark said. \u201cI think most estimates are within a few days of combat, if there was an invasion of Taiwan, that the U.S. \u2014 the Navy in particular \u2014 would run out of weapons,\u201d Clark said. \u201cThat\u2019s the problem: The weapons we\u2019ve designed are too difficult to build for the industrial base, because they\u2019re too specialized; they have too much of a bespoke a supply chain, and they\u2019re manufactured by hand, at low-rate productions.\u201d \u2018We had never done anything like this before\u2019.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Too close for missiles, switching to guns :\u00a0<\/strong>The Navy also revealed in January that it had fired 160 rounds from ships\u2019 five-inch main guns as part of combat operations in the Red Sea. Those main gun rounds have been used to destroy Houthi drones, Clark said.\u00a0\u201cThey have been using guns to shoot down drones lately, especially the Hypervelocity Projectile,\u201d Clark said. \u201cThe Navy built all those Hypervelocity Projectiles originally as part of the rail gun program. I think they\u2019ve used about 50 for air defense.\u201d\u00a0Hypervelocity Projectiles are designed to hit the target, while other 5-inch rounds explode near the target, showering it with shrapnel, he said.\u00a0Not only are the 5-inch rounds less expensive than missiles, but the Houthi drones often fly too low or too close to the ship to be hit with missiles, Clark said.\u00a0\u201cWhat often happens is these really small drones get close enough to where the missile can\u2019t really engage in time, because the missile has a minimum range, also,\u201d Clark said.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_9516\" style=\"width: 1001px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9516\" class=\" wp-image-9516\" src=\"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/US-Cruiser-USS-Lake-Erie-launches-a-Standard-missile-SM-3-in-May-2013-US-Navy-photo-300x168.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"991\" height=\"555\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/US-Cruiser-USS-Lake-Erie-launches-a-Standard-missile-SM-3-in-May-2013-US-Navy-photo-300x168.png 300w, https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/US-Cruiser-USS-Lake-Erie-launches-a-Standard-missile-SM-3-in-May-2013-US-Navy-photo-1024x573.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/US-Cruiser-USS-Lake-Erie-launches-a-Standard-missile-SM-3-in-May-2013-US-Navy-photo-768x429.png 768w, https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/US-Cruiser-USS-Lake-Erie-launches-a-Standard-missile-SM-3-in-May-2013-US-Navy-photo-1536x859.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/US-Cruiser-USS-Lake-Erie-launches-a-Standard-missile-SM-3-in-May-2013-US-Navy-photo-2048x1145.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 991px) 100vw, 991px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-9516\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">USN cruiser USS Lake Erie launches an SM-3 in May 2013 &#8211; US Navy photo<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Task &amp; Purpose magazine : The U.S. Navy has used more missiles for air defense since combat operations in the Red Sea began in October 2023 than the service used [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1821,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,46,36,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","category-news","category-s1-ships","category-war-operations","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1821"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9517,"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9514\/revisions\/9517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.navalofficer.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}