The opening weeks of the Red Sea crisis exposed a familiar but evolving dynamic: a nonstate actor weaponizing cheap, proliferated unmanned systems and anti-ship missiles to impose disproportionate risk on global sea lines of communication, and a coalition scrambling to assemble a layered defensive posture that mixes sea-based hard-kill, carrier airpower, and strikes ashore to blunt the threat. The pattern that emerged in early January is important not just for the immediate security of commercial shipping but for how maritime power, alliance politics, and technology diffusion will interact in the coming years.
Operational picture and the interceptions. In the region’s most visible engagement so far, a large Houthi salvo on the night of January 9 combined one-way attack UAVs, anti-ship cruise missiles, and an anti-ship ballistic missile headed into busy southern Red Sea lanes. U.S. and British naval forces, bolstered by carrier-based F/A-18s and multiple destroyers, reported intercepting the incoming munitions before they struck commercial traffic or coalition ships. That engagement underscored two points: first, the Houthis had moved beyond isolated UAV harassment to complex, combined salvos; second, defense at sea relied on a mix of fighter intercepts and shipboard air defences to protect transits.
How the coalition organised itself. The United States announced a multinational maritime security initiative in mid-December, Operation Prosperity Guardian, placing naval presence, intelligence sharing, and escort options under the Combined Maritime Forces and Task Force 153. The initiative was explicitly framed as a defensive collective effort to preserve freedom of navigation and to deter further strikes on merchant shipping. That framework matters because the coalition sought to avoid an open-ended land campaign in Yemen while still protecting shipping through a combination of forward-deployed naval assets, carrier aviation, and coordinated rules of engagement.
Tactical tools: layered defence and selective strike. At sea the coalition applied classic layered air defence logic adapted for the asymmetric environment. Carrier aircraft provided reach and the ability to engage threats at standoff, while surface combatants used their sensors and point and area defenses to defeat incoming drones and cruise missiles. When coalition leaders judged that mobile launchers, radars, or missile stocks ashore presented an imminent maritime threat, they also used precision strikes to seize the initiative and degrade the Houthis’ ability to surge new salvos. Those strike decisions were portrayed as narrowly tailored to remove capabilities judged to pose immediate danger to shipping.
Legal and political frame. The Security Council adopted a resolution in early January condemning Houthi attacks on commercial shipping and calling for an immediate halt. The text also took note of states’ rights under international law to defend their vessels. That diplomatic step provided political cover for defensive coalition measures and underscored the international stakes: attacks on the Red Sea are not only a maritime-security problem, they are a systemic shock to global trade networks. At the same time, the Council’s divisions and the sensitivity to escalation constrained how far states could legitimately go without further political coordination.
Strengths and limits of the counter-UAS approach. The coalition’s layered approach buys time and makes successful Houthi attacks more costly, but it is not a durable substitute for denying the adversary launch capacity. At-sea interception can prevent loss of life and damage to ships, but it is resource intensive: carrier sorties, missile interceptors, and continuous presence impose logistical burdens and political costs. Moreover, the Houthis’ use of low-cost, largely expendable systems means that attrition alone is unlikely to deter intent. Equally important, interdiction and strikes ashore carry escalation risks, and they occur in a theatre where civilian harm and fragile ceasefires in Yemen are politically salient.
What comes next for strategy and policy. Short term, the coalition needs to sustain layered protection for merchant transit while improving maritime domain awareness, data fusion, and ship self-protection advisories to reduce risk to civilian mariners. Medium term, stopping the attacks requires disrupting procurement and sustainment chains that enable Houthi salvos, a task that combines interdiction at sea, sanctions enforcement, and tighter policing of maritime transfers linked to banned shipments. Diplomacy matters: pressure on external state supporters and clearer incentives for Yemeni actors to disassociate from attacks will be necessary complements to tactical defence. Finally, allies will need to calibrate burden sharing so that deterrence does not hollow out into an open-ended security commitment by a small group of navies.
Strategically speaking, the Red Sea episode is a case study in how proliferated unmanned and missile technologies allow regional actors to impose outsized risks on global commons. The coalition response demonstrates that traditional naval advantages remain relevant but must be integrated with intelligence, sanctions, and diplomatic levers to produce sustained deterrence. If maritime powers treat interception as a permanent, low-cost solution they will discover the opposite: defense at sea can mitigate immediate harm but it does not resolve the political drivers nor stop the flow of materiel that makes repeated salvos possible. A durable outcome requires synchronization across military, law enforcement, and diplomatic lines of effort — and an explicit plan for how to de-escalate once commercial routes are secure.