In a major escalation, the United States hit Houthi targets in Yemen this month with B-2 stealth bombers, perhaps the most sophisticated and expensive platform in the U.S. arsenal. The Air Force only has 19 such bombers and hasn’t used them in combat since 2017. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the raid demonstrated Washington’s ability to “take action against these targets when necessary, anytime, anywhere.”
It also demonstrated, once again, that the U.S. response to the Houthi threat is far costlier than any damage the Houthis could have hoped to achieve.
Houthi attacks on maritime shipping have cost the industry $2.1 billion since October 2023. But the U.S. has spent more than twice that sum—at least $4.86 billion—on its military campaign against the Houthis, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University.
Throwing nearly $5 billon at a $2 billion problem makes no sense. In principle, the U.S. government could save $3 billion simply by reimbursing the shippers instead of fighting the Houthis. Not that it should, because the costs are tiny and the industry can easily absorb them.
Container ships that divert around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the Red Sea pay roughly $1 million in extra fuel and transit expenses. But considering that the average container ship carries about $300 million of cargo, the additional cost is just 0.33 percent of the value of the goods. Overall, the estimated $2.1 billion in higher costs represents less than one-tenth of 1 percent of a global maritime shipping industry valued at $2.2 trillion in 2021.
Meanwhile, fears that Houthi violence would cause global prices to soar have proven completely unfounded. To the contrary, inflation has cooled so much that the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates by half a percent in September, with more cuts likely by the end of 2024.
Why do the Houthis bother to attack Red Sea shipping if their strikes cause so little damage? Because the attacks are cheap to mount but expensive to defend against. In other words, the cost-exchange ratio of the campaign favors the Houthis, even though the conventional balance of power strongly favors the United States.
Houthi drones cost as little as $2,000, whereas each B-2 bomber costs about $2 billion. Since B-2s also cost $163,000 per flight hour to operate, a 30-hour roundtrip mission to Yemen from Missouri where all U.S. B-2s are based would cost nearly $5 million per sortie, and that is before accounting for the cost of the bombs themselves. (Citing operational security, the Pentagon declined to specify how many B-2s were used or where they flew from.)
That lopsided cost-exchange ratio is the essence of guerilla warfare and the source of its occasional success. Weak actors like the Houthis cannot hope to defeat stronger foes like the United States in a conventional war. So they pursue irregular warfare to sap their opponent’s will, ambushing supply lines and other vulnerable spots instead of hardened military targets. Guerillas function like “innumerable gnats, which, by biting a giant in both front and in rear, ultimately exhaust him,” as Mao Zedong aptly wrote. The gnats trick the giant into self-defeating behavior—pointless flailing that only wears itself out.
Guerilla strategy is clever, but in this particular case, its practitioners are not. In reality, the Houthis are more like bees than gnats because their attacks are so bumbling. That incompetence makes U.S. overkill all the more frustrating.
Few episodes illustrate Houthi ineffectiveness better than the MV Delta Sounion saga that played out in the Red Sea this summer.
In late August, the Houthis foolishly tried—and failed—three times to sink the Greek oil tanker Sounion, which was carrying some one million barrels of crude petroleum. About 15 Houthi fighters initially assaulted the vessel with gunfire from small boats, to no effect. Two hours later, they knocked out the engine with a few unidentified projectiles, but the Sounion stayed afloat and the crew evacuated unharmed. Finally, the Houthis boarded the undefended tanker and rigged it with explosives, but the ensuing blast produced nothing more than theater. The Sounion remained intact.
At that point, it apparently dawned on the Houthis that engineering an environmental disaster four times worse than the Exxon Valdez off the coast of their own territory wasn’t the brightest idea. They encouraged EU naval forces to tow the ship to safety.
Real masterminds, those guys.
Clearly, the Houthi threat to maritime commerce is exaggerated. Yet somehow Washington can’t resist swatting at a nuisance whose greatest achievement is tricking the U.S. into wasting its own resources.
Rosemary A. Kelanic is Director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities.
