James Holmes
What is the Trump administration’s strategy in the Red Sea, and will operations against Houthi militants prove decisive? The White House has certainly stepped up the air and missile campaign. U.S. Navy warships and carrier fighter/attack jets are pummeling key sites in Yemen with help from Air Force fighters—and, on occasion, bombers—and they are doing so more or less constantly. They are playing offense. Hammering away from aloft marks a departure from the more defensive posture favored by the Biden administration, under which Navy task forces defended themselves while striving to shield mercantile shipping from Houthi missiles and drones. But under the previous presidency, only intermittently did U.S. and coalition forces go on offense, sending warplanes and cruise missiles downrange to smite shore targets. The current strategy views a good offense as the best defense of the sea lanes.
Shock and Awe 2.0
Call the Trump approach Shock and Awe 2.0.
That’s a tribute to Shock and Awe 1.0, the Bush administration’s concept for air warfare against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq back in 2003. The logic propelling the Trump and Bush approaches is much the same. Air forces tend to disperse their efforts in space in order to strike a multitude of military and industrial targets. The scattershot approach divides up the firepower available to hit any one target—blunting the matériel and human impact of aerial raids. Moreover, there is often an intermittent, come-and-go rhythm to air campaigns. Aircraft cannot remain constantly overhead, since they run out of fuel and ordnance. Lulls in bombardment permit an antagonist time to adapt and recover from damage while muffling the psychological shock that comes from being under an aerial barrage.
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