MV Sounion, a Greek oil tanker, was struck by small surface vessels on 21 August 2024 in the Red Sea, while en route from Iraq to Greece carrying nearly a million barrels (150,000 tons) of crude oil. Though the crew was rescued, the vessel left behind only to become a lucrative target for further attacks. Later the tanker was set ablaze on 23 August making it a potential environmental catastrophe given the ship’s massive oil with a likely spill in the Red Sea. The Washington Institute’s interactive map on attacks against ships traversing the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden shows the attack on the Greek tanker was the 100th since November 2023, which the Houthis started as a tool to pressurise Israel to end its military offensive against Palestine. The first ship that fell prey to Houthis was Bahamas-flagged car-carrier Galaxy Leader, hijacked on 19 November 2023 from the Red Sea while en route to India. According to ArcGIS StoryMaps, apart from striking merchant vessels, as of 22 August 2024, there have been nearly 109 Houthi attacks of various kinds against the men of war.
The Red Sea/ Gulf of Aden holds an immense strategic significance due to its role as a vital maritime waterway linking the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean through the Suez Canal. The World Economic Forum contends that the Red Sea/ Gulf of Aden is critical for global trade, with approximately 30% of the world’s container traffic passing through this zone, amounting to over $1 trillion in goods annually. Substantial portion of the world’s oil and gas shipments also transit through this vital maritime region.
These incidents, post-Israel’s October Offensive, have significantly impacted global shipping routes, forcing companies to either reroute vessels or incur higher insurance costs due to the increased risk in these waters. The severity of the situation has led to a drastic reduction in container shipping through the Red Sea/ Gulf of Aden, with a 90% drop in traffic by early 2024. Maersk, in its ‘Asia-Pacific Market Updates’ on 12 June 2024, notes that for the safety of ‘crew, vessels and customer cargo’, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope adds approximately 4,000 miles to the total sailing length, resulting in a 40% increase in fuel costs compared to using the Red Sea / Gulf of Aden. Ships can increase speeds to make up for the prolonged transit times, but as the WEF observes in its ‘Supply Chains and Transportation’ report of 23 February 2024, ‘the higher speeds result in increased fuel consumption and subsequent higher emissions charges, highlighting a complex trade-off between speed, cost and environmental impact.’
The ongoing attacks in the Red Sea/ Gulf of Aden, which can be called ‘spillover of the events on land’, show a remote sign of stopping at the moment, questioning the stability and security of this critical maritime choke point. Iran’s declared stance of striking Israel because of the latter’s visible hand in murdering Ismail Haniya, the Hamas supremo, has stirred further strings of a looming military conflict thereby attracting more naval presence in the Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf and the Red Sea/ Gulf of Aden, which may sustain for a considerable time to safeguard the national/ allies’ economic and strategic interests.
Preservation of shipping lines forms the backbone of a country’s national security agenda. And the disruption of maritime trade can set off a chain reaction of economic instability leading to politico-military fluidity involving wars and crises. This could seriously impact global economy if the disruption of SLOCs becomes a ‘norm’ in this region. The Russo-Ukraine conflict affected the maritime traffic in the Black Sea where ships laden with wheat grain and other food items were stranded for days resulting in the global supply chain disruptions.
On a given day in the Red Sea/ Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea there are over 20 naval warships patrolling to safeguard respective countries’ shipping lines. Consequently, the US and the UK launched ‘Ops Prosperity Guardian’ in December 2023, whereas the EU launched ‘Ops Aspis’ in February 2024, in order to restore regional stability. Besides these unified efforts, there are other independent deployers as well, notably the Chinese 46th Flotilla with 3-4 ships, South Korea, Iran with 2-3 ships, Spain, India with 2-3 ships, South Korea, Japan andFrance, etc.Despite this enormous naval presence, the Houthis continue to be redoubtable in their attacks against both the merchant and military vessels. With regards to naval presence, Djibouti has become somewhat prominent in these challenging circumstances as countries like China and India are paying particular attention to naval basing with a resultant extended operational reach of their ships.
On the question of why have Houthis been so successful in the Red Sea/ Gulf of Aden? Basically, the Houthis use ‘low-cost, high-impact’ strategies that target the operational gaps in larger, more conventional forces. For instance, they use small, fast boats and drones that are difficult to detect and counter, especially in congested maritime environments. They may not have technological superiority, their ability to ‘strike fear and cause disruption’ is significant, why, because the psychological impact of a successful attack on a ship can often outweigh the actual damage, leading to increased caution and hesitation among naval forces when it comes to applying combat power against such an enemy, who is difficult to be detected and then attacked. The Red Sea/ Gulf of Aden is a vast region and constant patrolling of these waters requires significant resources, and gaps in coverage are inevitable, which the Houthis exploit.
The Houthis have displayed a remarkable ability to ‘adapt and evolve’ their tactics in response to the countermeasures deployed by Western forces. Foreign Policy posits that among the weapons possessed by the Houthis, the notables are: 1) Sammad UAV, which can operate up to 1100 nautical miles from the base carrying 20-50 Kg of payload; 2) Asef anti-ship ballistic missile with a range of 450 km; 3) Toofan ballistic missile with a range of 850 km; and 4) several types of USVs. On USVs, we may note that the first ever successful USV attack was conducted on MV Tutor, a coal carrier, off Al Hudaydah on 12 June 2024 resulting in the sinking of the merchantman 6 days after the attack. Additionally, the Houthis operating in their home territory, have better local intelligence and can use the terrain to their advantage, launching attacks with minimal warning. One inhibiting factor resulting in constrained use of force by the naval forces could be the ‘rules of engagement,’ which limit the freedom of action of anti-Houthi forces. And in case an unrestricted use of force is made, this could potentially expand the conflict thereby erupting into a broader regional imbroglio.
History informs us that the sea and land are tied in an inseparable binary, which means that whatever happens on land will eventually affect what goes on at sea; similarly, the happenings at sea are bound to influence things that may occur at land. Israeli offensive against the Palestinians compelled Houthis to strike the global vulnerability: the shipping lines; while amassing of naval forces at sea (especially the US carrier strike groups) forced Iran to reconsider its choices of application of force against Israel. Voice of America notes that owing to the peculiar dynamics, the Red Sea/ Gulf of Aden is ‘not only a major node in global maritime trade but also a hotspot of geopolitical tensions, where the security of maritime routes directly impacts global economic stability.’Under these trying conditions, navies must remainready with a response strategy that predicates on ‘options enhancing’ across the continuum of threat by recoursing to niche technologies that can bridge surveillance and war fighting gaps effectively.
As things stand, the future of the Red Sea/ Gulf of Aden appears uncertain and chaotic. With every passing day the maritime complexity seems to be getting messier than before. Despite the US/ UK strikes against the purported Yemeni militia’s military strongholds, the Houthis power shows no signs of being weak or in recession. I believe as long as the Palestinians crisis is not resolved or the anti-Iran offensive naval dispositions are not reviewed, the region is likely to remain in the tight grips of asymmetric warfare, proxies with maritime disruption as the preferred strategy. The advent and access of unmanned systems, long range weapons and artificial intelligence to both state and non-state actors and its practical demonstration in the Red Sea/ Gulf of Aden heralds another reality: the changing character of warfare - application of low cost, high impact disruptive instruments. This also questions the long-held postulates on distinct levels of war, which appear to be fading/ blurring. A small tactical action at sea could set an extremely cost-intensive operational response with little or no chances of success, in the first place, e.g., deployment of high-end warships with hundreds of people as crewmembers and the daily running costs.
The Red Sea/ Gulf of Aden maritime complexity is compelling companies like Maersk to rethink maritime trade for making it more resilient, e.g., the Truck Bridge concept, i.e., a container ship off loading containers at western coast of Saudi Arabia (Jeddah), transporting the containers through trucks over land and loading those again in ships on the eastern coast (Saudi/ Qatar/ UAE etc.), thereby short-circuiting the turbulent zone. The situation also suggests the importance of ‘localization’ over ‘globalisation,’ which seeks local products and services rather than depending on long supply chains, which are subject to disruption by such events just like the Houthi attacks. Innovation, ingenuity, asymmetric ascendancy over a strong adversary is another lesson that we can draw from the Red Sea/ Gulf of Aden maritime complexity, where to counter a ‘clever adversary, one cannot remain glued to tools and tactics of the past.’ Therefore, it is important that maritime forces must adapt and evolve, while keeping‘collaboration’ as the principal operational focus for combating maritime threats and challenges.
Sohail A Azmie
–The writer is an Islamabad-based researcher. His areas of interest include: Maritime Security, Climate Change and Astropolitics. He can be reached at voxoceanus@outlook.com.