Conventional military wisdom is that you cannot win a war from the air. Case in point: Vietnam. You have to put boots on the ground to secure the area and the Saudis aren't about to do that and the American people would never support dying for a Saudi war.

You don't need to a win a war here, just make life sufficiently hard that most of the fighters give up.

Due to their histories, the Yemenis - like the Afghan - have extensive experience using guerilla tactics against better equipped occupiers. Top it off with the mountainous terrain in the northern and eastern regions and you have a recipe for failure through attrition.

Guerilla tactics don't work against shipping lanes and no one (well, not the coalition to defend shipping, at least, certain of their neighbors might have other thoughts) wants to occupy Yemen in the first place.

Flying cheap drones with homemade explosives into commercial cargo ships sound pretty guerilla.

Why can't the west use radio jammers to make any drone non-responsive once it leaves Yemen ? Russia has been doing this on its border with great success.

I think it's just a very large area and jamming is far from fool proof.

> extensive experience using guerilla tactics against better equipped occupiers

That’s fine. Let them fight their civil war. The problem is long-range precision warfare extending past their costs. Knocking out that capability doesn’t require boots on the ground.

You underestimate how important the Palestinian cause is to the Yemeni people. I’d wager they’d be willing to “pause” the infighting for quite some time.

Also, this move is making the Houthis immensely popular: they are winning the PR war internally right now.

> this move is making the Houthis immensely popular: they are winning the PR war internally right now

As I mentioned elsewhere [1], this is fine. A stable, adversarial Yemen is better than the clusterfuck it currently is. A big part of the problem with the current situation is there is nobody to negotiate with who can credibly claim to control these armed factions.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38917581

> make life sufficiently hard that most of the fighters give up

You need to degrade their capability to fire long-range assets precisely. That’s doable. If it’s locals lobbing unguided rockets into the ocean, that’s commercially manageable. Guided missiles and helicopter landings are not.

It's Yemen, have you checked their GDP per capita recently? Life there is already hard enough that it's difficult to make it significantly worse.

If harboring pirates gets your village bombed, villages will stop harboring pirates.

> harboring pirates gets your village bombed, villages will stop harboring pirates

The history of area bombardment is it strengthens civilian resolve. Think: the Battle of Britain, Vietnam and America’s wars in the Middle East.

Aren’t there counterexamples? How would Dresden be considered?

Strategic bombing in Europe was a drastic failure. The only successful part of it was that it fundamentally wiped out the Luftwaffe. German military production increase annually in spite of the Allies putting so much effort into the bombing campaign.

Strategic bombing has only influenced one country to surrender.

And that involved nukes

There's an argument that it didn't influence Japan to surrender: instead, the declaration of war by and imminent invasion of the Soviet Union is what finally caused them to surrender.

Yeah, that's the other main argument that we'll never have a definitive answer to. Maybe in 300 years we'll have enough distance to evaluate the evidence without all the cultural biases and baggage, but I doubt it. Every time I read more info about the Manhattan Project and US nuclear policy in the 1950s, my opinion changes. And then when you read about how Truman acted AFTER the war in regards to nuclear weapons employment, I can easily understand that he was going to use nukes no matter what.

Japan's political environment during the war was incredibly complex, and trying to view their rationale and motivation through a Western lens is very dangerous. And I don't think the Soviets were anywhere close to an imminent invasion of the Home Islands. I don't think they had the appetite for doing more than grabbling the Kuriles and Sakhalin Island, instead preferring to let the US suffer the casualties.

While the Soviet declaration of war surely had some impact, the Emperor said there were three primary factors in his decision to accept the Potsdam conditions; his lack of confidence in Ketsu Go plans to defend Kyushu. The increasing devastation caused by the conventional and nuclear bombing campaigns, and finally, concern about the "domestic situation" meaning internal revolt. Later in private letters he referred to Nippon's deficiency in science, meaning a lack of nuclear weaponry. Hirohito and PM Suzuki realized that with nuclear weapons, the US didn't need to invade Japan.

Nazi Germany was already fundamentally beaten by the time of Dresden.

But it definitely didn't strengthen civilian resolve.

There wasn’t much left to strengthen.

> Aren’t there counterexamples? How would Dresden be considered?

I would say that Dresden is not a counterexample. Every year on February 13, many Dresdeners gather on the Neumarkt to commemorate the destruction of the city on the Bombennacht (night of the bombings) in 1944. The spectacle polarizes German society. Right-wing revisionists like to point to the destruction of Dresden to portray Germany as a victim of the Second World War. But for many Dresdeners, this is actually a matter that is associated with personal grief because they lost family members in the bombing. As a result, the possible political implications of this culture of remembrance fade into the background for many Dresdeners. Dresden is therefore a good example of how people move closer together after extensive bombing and how this effect can last for 80 years.

And every tough guy wants to say that because it makes them feel good, but history keeps proving them wrong.

Thats straight out of the Henry Kissinger handbook.

Tell the Palestinians.

Unfortunately, there is a small problem with this approach: Pirates have guns, villagers don't. So villagers don't get to choose whether or not they harbour pirates.

Sounds suspiciously like Israel's theory of operations for Gaza, which has little evidence for its correctness at this point.

I see you haven't been paying attention to Iraq Afghanistan Palestine Vietnam or really anywhere this tactic has been tried. Turns out bombing villages makes piracy more popular

This is an interesting statement to make, considering Yemen's recent history.

They will not out fight you, they will out wait you. Just like Afghanistan.

Since the strategic objective here will likely be to suppress them while changing the context with regard ro Israel-Palestine and their sponsors in Iran and not regime change, that works in the US's favor.

Waiting is fine, as long as they aren't fighting. Them just hiding out in a cave somewhere counts as winning here, since we only care about protecting shipping.

> After they withstood years of war with Saudis?

Different aims. Riyadh sought to remove them from power. That’s a boots-on-the-ground operation they attempted from the air.

Egypt would just need to degrade their coastal capabilities. Taking out vessels, helicopters and arms stores could do that from the air.

It would be politically suicidal for any Arab ruler to fight another Muslim/Arab country in the interest of Israel and the US, not even secular el-Sisi is free of that danger.

Saudi Arabia also attempted to stop the Houthis from bombing Saudi industry, and failed. It's difficult to bomb guided missiles, because they are typically only stored 1-4 at a time in a highly mobile and disguised manner, for example inside a truck, and are only going to be exposed as they're being fired. It's a really difficult task, unfortunately. As far as I known it's never been successfully done without a ground invasion.

> it's never been successfully done without a ground invasion

Counter-battery fire is tremendously precedented and always done at standoff. You can also start hitting arms stores, port infrastructure, training and C3 facilities.

The beauty of this is it’s cruelly win-win-win. The Houthis can use the bombing to strengthen their domestic image, maybe even boost recruitment. Iran can piggyback on that. And America can claim it cleared the Strait. As long as everyone stays in their lane (literally), it’s a stable conclusion.

Counter battery only works if you know where to fire. If your first clue is they just launched their entire storage of missiles there is nothing to do. If you are fast enough maybe you can get the now-empty launcher, but modern military practice is shoot and scout so odds are against that.

Getting information on where things are stored is hard. It needs boots/spies on the ground (satellites can only get limited information and are easily fooled). As pointed out elsewhere, modern best practice is to not have a large warehouse that is easy to find and destroy, instead you scatter this stuff around in small units.

> just launched their entire storage of missiles

If they launched their entire stockpile, it’s no longer an issue. The question was using one launch to take out a couple missiles, maybe a launcher and those operating it. Done repeatedly, this will degrade a static force. (Additional levers would need to be pulled on resupply.)

They will then ro to the next stockpile and launch again

> And America can claim it cleared the Strait.

See the thing is, if shipping companies don't trust the waters they simply won't send ships there - claims don't matter one whit.

> if shipping companies don't trust the waters they simply won't send ships there - claims don't matter one whit

What part of removing long-range precision strike capability suggests an empty claim?

Counter battery fire simply does not work. These missiles are not stored nor fired in central locations, there are only a couple at a time. You can fire at the launch spot all you want, there's going to be no one and nothing of value there. It's the same tactics the US itself copied for the HIMARS, and despite thousand of airstrikes Russia hasn't been able to destroy them.

Training and top level command is most likely not even in Yemen. You could hit the ports, that wouldn't stop the import of these missiles - they are shipped in small boats as a kit, assembled wherever, and then kept in a cave somewhere or in a car, ready to be fired. No port or infrastructure needed.

These tactics have been used since the 80s, and no solution short of a ground invasion can stop them. Israel couldn't even stop Hamas and the PIJ from firing guided rockets from Gaza - at the end of the day when the IDF bomb houses that rockets were fired from, it's just theater: they never store more than a dozen munitions, and by the time counter battery fire arrives, they've likely fired all munitions already. This is a tiny 2.4sqm strip fully blockaded, I don't see how you can stop it in Yemen.

> can fire at the launch spot all you want, there's going to be no one and nothing of value there

This is blind counter-battery. You use the shot to place loiters. That then trains your fire.

They're not going to be returning to the firing spot. There's no point doing it. It's been tried, there isn't much to do short of an invasion.

Despite much media ado about destroying the launchers, those are typically just welded pipe or wooden catapults. There's no value in them and no point in ever coming back there.

> arms stores,

Those arms stores do not exist as such, they're most probably highly dispersed and only at the limit can one call them "stores", and if gathered in one place that place is most probably located underground, where aerial bombings would have close to no effects.

Just look at how difficult it is right now for Israel to take out Hamas's weapons cashes in Gaza, and we're talking about a much concentrated operation in terms of space and most probably Israel knows a lot more about Hamas's weapons caches than the US would be able to ever know about where the Houthis store their weapons.

Counter-battery fire really only applies to gun-based artillery, since it has nearby ammo (or stored ammunition on the vehicle) and the counter-battery radar is sited to detect and calculate the ballistic trajectory instantly.

When it comes to missile (whether drone, cruise missiles, or ballistic missiles), it's much more difficult. The US had a hard time countering the SCUD missiles in 1991. And that was with a huge military, with the best ISR the world has ever seen. A 6-pack of Shaheds can be launched from a trailer that looks all the world like a normal flatbed style semi. A cruise missile can be fired and navigate a course that obfuscates its launch point. Ballistic missiles can fire, then drive away to hide in a city.

The only way to win this fight is to blockade the country from receiving shipments from Iran. Air blockade and naval blockade, combined with strikes to hit known depots etc. This is called war. Not a presence mission, not a "response," but the literal definition of war. The US has no stomach for this entanglement, and hopes that the problem goes away. It won't, but the pain level is relatively low, and the USN is getting some great practice in fighting a LIC in the littoral regions.

What I don't understand: The Houthis seem to have virtually no air defense and high-value assets like helicopters that are hard to hide. At the same time, they seem to be involved in constant fighting with someone, so those assets are presumably valuable to them outside of their use to sabotage international shipping.

So if hitting the launchers is hard, how about destroying one of those assets every time they attack shipping?

You started and then fueled a religious flamewar here. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We have to ban accounts that post like this, so please don't post like this.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

It's hard to beat people on their own land who are fighting with conviction, which of course they are if you have invaded their land.

I am not convinced the religious reason you propose is the actual differentiator but if you're an expert on the role of islam in armed conflict I am listening. Otherwise we've seen insurgencies effectively resist much stronger forces in vietnam, ukraine, and at one point the united states itself, without any particular unifying theology that I'm aware of.

I didn't say only people with strong religious convictions can resist conquest by stronger forces, I just said that it's hard to conquer people with strong religious convictions.

To say what you're saying responsibly you need to establish that their religious conviction is the reason why. Given that we see it elsewhere and across religions it seems much more likely to me that simply being invaded by a more powerful state is a strong enough source of this conviction.

Aside from that the "they're happy to die because their religion says they get virgins" is something I remember my second most racist uncle saying after sept 11. It's not even really true? It's a very narrow reading of a particular passage, that, yes, extremists have gotten a lot of mileage out of. But from my lay understanding of islam does not feature heavily in the personal religious experience of most muslims.

Again unless you have some particularly insight or expertise about the role of islam in motivating individuals in conflict I think you should reflect on where you got this idea and what you were trying to communicate by using it here.

The Qur'an explicitly states that martyrs will die in heaven, and most Muslims believe this.

"Those who leave their homes in the cause of Allah, and are then slain or die,- On them will Allah bestow verily a goodly Provision: Truly Allah is He Who bestows the best provision. Verily He will admit them to a place with which they shall be well pleased: for Allah is All-Knowing, Most Forbearing."

- Quran 22:58–59

The virgins part on the other hand is a lot more iffy. And Muslims generally believe it's not acceptable to kill a single innocent, since the Qur'an says so, so only a very small minority support suicide bombing like 9/11 (on the argument that since US citizens fund the military, they count as soldiers, not non-combatants).

Muslims themselves have claimed not fearing death to be a reason for past military success. For instance the quote "I have bought you men who love death as much as you love life" from one of the early Muslim generals https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_ibn_al-Walid . He said it to the Persians, whom the Muslim armies eventually defeated.

The issue is not whether these things are said, or even whether they are acted upon, but whether they are causally effective, and a number of war stories is insufficient to establish this.

An interesting point about Vietnam is that according to all participating parties for long stretches there was little to no support in the South for the Vietcong and everything was supported and orchestrated by the North.

https://archive.org/details/victoryinvietnam0000unse_u7j3 Victory in Vietnam : the official history of the people's army of Vietnam

Opened Soviet archives after the fall of the SU said the same.

The US basically always said that.

Quite the racist canard. The Vietnamese didn’t need to believe in “a ticket to paradise” when they humiliated the French and then the US.

It's not racist; the Taliban and the Houthis are Muslims, and most Muslims believe that martyrdom leads directly to heaven, since the Qur'an explicitly states so.

"Those who leave their homes in the cause of Allah, and are then slain or die,- On them will Allah bestow verily a goodly Provision: Truly Allah is He Who bestows the best provision. Verily He will admit them to a place with which they shall be well pleased: for Allah is All-Knowing, Most Forbearing."

- Quran 22:58–59

Many Muslims take pride in the fact, hence the popularity of the "I have bought you men who love death as much as you love life" quote from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_ibn_al-Walid to the Persian governor.

Plus the Houthis and the Afghanistanis aren't even the same race, since the Houthis are Arabs and the majority of Afghanistanis are not.

You keep talking about many/most Muslims without evidence.

If it's anything like Christianity most Muslims could well be practising but not devout and fully committed to everything written in the Quran.

Like saying Christians are hard to beat because everyone will donate all life savings to a religious war effort because of the one camel/needle line.

Meh, it's not like Islam has a monopoly on martyrdom. Religion is a multiplier for politics, not the other way around.

> it's hard to defeat people who believe dying in battle is a ticket to paradise

How about it's hard to defeat people in their homeland, when they are fighting guerilla-style and not fighting head-on. i.e. Vietnam.

Back to Twitter with you.

How could it ever be racist? Muslims aren't a race, anyone can become a Muslim.

Muslim is not a race, just FYI

This reply perfectly illustrates the mentality of SJWs: terms like "racist" are just weapons to be used against political opponents, divorced from any actual meaning of the word.

The point was that the comment was based on prejudice. It was deleted and the user reprimanded, so clearly not just an “SJW” jab (itself a ridiculous cliche to invoke in this context). Whether the comment was purely based on religious affiliation, or as commonly happens, conflated with race, doesn’t really matter.