A captain of an American Navy War Ship said that the conflict of the Red Sea was a 'knife fight in a telephone booth'. China would be much more challenging.

• The conflict of America with the Houthis gave the American navy a taste of high-tempo air defense operations.

• The Navy uses the conflict to inform the planning for future maritime wars, such as a collision with China.

• A captain of the warship said that a fight in the Pacific would be very different from the Red Sea struggle.

The tiring shooting of the American navy with the Houthis supported by Iran has given American military planners a clearer picture of the complexity of high-tempo air defense operations.

The conflict in the Red Sea, now in the second month of a ceasefire, has been a heavy pressure on the navy, which emphasizes warship teams and tapping critical ammunition. Although this fight has been a challenge, Leaders in the Service believe that it is just a taste of what a future war against China, which has much more advanced missiles than the Yemeni rebels, would look.

And it's not just the rockets. It is rather a range of factors that would make a China confrontation considerably more difficult, but the navy learns to make key lessons from the Red Sea that could apply to a future fight.

“In many ways, the Red Sea is – it is a knife fight in a telephone booth,” CDR. Cameron Ingram, the commander of the USS Thomas Hudner, told Business Insider aboard the Arleigh Burke-Class Destroyer during a recent on the road in the English channel.

“The geography is extremely tight and that geography that turns that off the territory controlled by China would be very, very challenging,” he said.

“That would be a much more long-distance fight,” said Ingram. “Their long-term monitoring and tracking are also much more advanced. Their intelligence community is much more advanced. And so there are many more complexities and challenges that would make it very difficult in a China fight.”

Since October 2023, the Houthis have launched hundreds of missiles and drones in Israel and international shipping strips off the coast of Yemen, especially in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Navy War ships and planes that work in the region have shot many of the Houthi weapons, from drones to anti-ship rackets, in self-defense and defending Israel and merchant ships. Thomas Hudner is one of America's ships with confirmed murders.

These intercepts-sums use missiles for millions of dollars to remove drones worth only thousands of dollars in American stocks tense and have expressed concern about readiness for possible future armed conflicts. In the case of China, which is described as the 'pacing threat' of America, the capacity of the Navy air defense is a priority; A potential conflict between the two would probably mainly unfold at sea.

China maintains a formidable arsenal of anti-ship weapons, including ballistic and cruise missiles, which are much more capable than what the Houthis have used, making it absolutely necessary that the Navy has enough interception rockets on hand; However, it has already spent hundreds of these fights of the rebels.

Ingram said that a Chinese war would be challenging and complex for the navy because of the advanced weapons of Beijing, surveillance and long -distance tracking, and intelligence operations.

“That environment will have to be fought at a different level,” he explained, adding that at long distances it would be looking for a longer distances than what the navy in the Red Sea has experienced.

Learned lessons

The Navy has learned a lot about air defense of the Red Sea conflict and tested by unprecedented commitments against dangerous threats such as ballistic rockets against ship.

Ingram spoke strongly about the AEGIS combat system, which uses computers and radars to help warships follow goals and to intercept. He said it “probably exploited better than most of us expected, in terms of the success rate of commitments.”

The conflict in the Red Sea has also informed the Navy about its magazine capacity, re -loading options and ammunition inventory. The SEA service has changed its shooting policy and reconsidered the amount of the Ordnance War ships to be spent on attempts to neutralize a threat.

A large focus area tries to reduce the cost ratio for air defense missions. The use of a standard $ 2.1 million rocket to intercept a drone of $ 20,000 is not on the right side of that curve, but Ingram claims that it can be worth protecting a $ 2 billion and hundreds of lives. However, the challenge is sustainability.

The US and its NATO bondmen have shown in the Red Sea that they can use cheaper alternatives to air defense to defeat the Houthi threats. American fighter jets, for example, used guided rockets. Ingram said the navy works to bring the cost difference between threat and interceptor “a bit closer to parity.”

Ingram added that more attention is being focused on the five-inch cover guns of warships, which have a much deeper magazine capacity than the rocket tubes of a torpedo hunter and have served as viable air defense agents in the Red Sea.

“If I can stay longer in the fight by shooting five-inch rounds, especially on a drone, I might have to do that and keep my weapon systems with a higher capacity for larger threats,” he said.

Aarwaling is another consideration. American warships must travel to a friendly port with the necessary necessities to get more rockets that take valuable time and keep off-station for longer periods. This can be a major problem in a conflict with a high temperature. The Navy, however, wants to close the gap with its reloading-in-sea options.

Ingram has credited the Red Sea fight as a blurring success story of the air defense that could influence the Calculus of China and military planning. At the home front, the conflict has given the Navy more confidence in its weapon systems and the development of its tactics, techniques and procedures accelerated.

Ingram said it is difficult to predict what the future will look like, “but I think there are many things that everyone should consider based on what the Red Sea has been in the last 18-plus months.”

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