Only a few days after President Joe Biden acknowledged that airstrikes were ineffective in stopping the militia group from targeting ships in the Red Sea, the United States and the United Kingdom launched an eighth wave of strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen on Monday.
Asked if the airstrikes in Yemen are working, Biden said on January 18, “Well, when you say ‘working,’ are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.”
However, defence officials contended that although the Houthis were still capable, attacks against them had “removed significant Houthi capability.”
“We definitely feel that the strikes we have taken, the strikes tonight, the January 11th strikes with the same coalition partners and a number of self-defense strikes against imminent threats that have taken place in the interim have removed significant Houthi capability,” a senior military official said during a background briefing to reporters.
“That does not mean they have no more capability but we definitely believe that has had an impact,” the official added.
Officials said the latest round of U.S.-U.K. strikes were launched from air, surface, and sub-surface platforms targeting eight locations with Houthi missiles, drones, and weapons storage areas.
American piloted planes and Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) were used in the strikes. According to the military officer, about 25–30 munitions were utilised, together with the Navy and the UK Armed Forces.
It was the first attack on an underground weapons storage facility, according to a military official.
It was unclear from officials exactly how many targets they actually hit.
Although they stated that the number of victims was “unknown,” they emphasised that they aimed to minimise collateral damage and that their targets were systems, not people.