In just three weeks, the United States Defense Department has used $200 million worth of munitions in Operation Rough Rider against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, U.S. officials said according to New York Times newspaper’s report.
NYT report noticed that President Trump said this week that Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen have been “decimated by the relentless strikes” that he ordered beginning on March 15.But that’s not what Pentagon and military officials are privately telling Congress and allied countries.
NYT report disclosed that in closed briefings in recent days, Pentagon officials have acknowledged that there has been only limited success in destroying the Houthis’ vast, largely underground arsenal of missiles, drones and launchers, according to congressional aides and allies.
The officials briefed on confidential damage assessments say the bombing is consistently heavier than strikes conducted by the Biden administration, and much bigger than what the Defense Department has publicly described.
But Houthi rebels, known for their resiliency, have reinforced many of their bunkers and other targeted sites, frustrating the Americans’ ability to disrupt the militia’s missile attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea, according to three congressional and allied officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.
In just three weeks, the Pentagon has used $200 million worth of munitions, in addition to the immense operational and personnel costs to deploy two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 bombers and fighter jets, as well as Patriot and THAAD air defences to the Middle East, the officials said.
The total cost could be well over $1 billion by next week, and the Pentagon might soon need to request supplemental funds from Congress, one U.S. official said.
So many precision munitions are being used, especially advanced long-range ones, that some Pentagon contingency planners are growing concerned about overall Navy stocks and implications for any situation in which the United States would have to ward off an attempted invasion of Taiwan by China.
The U.S. strikes, which Défense Secretary Pete Hegseth named Operation Rough Rider after the troops Theodore Roosevelt led in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, likely could continue for six months, officials said.
A senior Pentagon official late Thursday pushed back on the assessments described by the congressional and allied officials.
The senior official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said the airstrikes had exceeded their goal in the campaign’s initial phase, disrupting senior Houthi leaders’ ability to communicate, limiting the group’s response to a handful of ineffective counter strikes, and setting the conditions for subsequent phases, which he declined to discuss. “We’re on track,” the official said.
U.S. officials said the strikes had damaged the Houthis’ command and control structure. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement that the strikes had been “effective” in killing top Houthi leaders, whom she did not identify, and said the operation was reopening Red Sea shipping.
“Intelligence community assessments confirm that these strikes killed top Houthi leaders and destroyed several facilities the Houthis may use to produce advanced conventional weapons,” Ms. Gabbard said.
The strikes are at the center of a debacle involving Mr. Hegseth and other senior members of the Trump administration, in which those officials discussed sensitive details about the initial bombing raids in Yemen on March 15 in a group chat on a commercial messaging app. Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, created the group but accidentally added a journalist to it.
Trump administration officials say the air and naval strikes are intended to pressure the Houthis to halt attacks that have disrupted international shipping lanes in the Red Sea for more than a year.
The Biden administration carried out strikes against the Houthis, but at a smaller scale and mostly against infrastructure and military sites. Trump administration officials say the current strikes are also aimed at killing senior Houthi elements.