What Red Sea Battles Have Taught The Navy About A Future China Fight
The past 15 months in the Red Sea have provided the Navy with a real-world stress test of its systems, platforms and people.
Geoff Ziezulewicz
Posted 23 Hours Ago
The Navy’s surface fleet has spent the past 15 months taking down hundreds of missiles and drones fired by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels at U.S. and allied Navies’ ships, as well as commercial vessels in and around the Red Sea. While it has become the most intense sustained combat the sea service’s warships have seen since World War II, the Navy continues to prioritize preparing for a conflict in the Pacific. This begs the question: What lessons does the Red Sea fight offer the Navy when it comes to preparing for conflict with its top pacing threat, China?
TWZ reached out to a range of active-duty and retired military officers to answer this question. They said the Red Sea was a prime stress test for a fleet preparing for war with China, even as it drained finite munitions and further exposed shortfalls in the defense industrial base.
“A lot of these lessons and everything that we are taking from the Red Sea are an incredibly valuable warm-up for us in the high-end fight,” an active-duty surface warfare officer (SWO) who spoke with TWZ on the condition of anonymity said.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/what-red-sea-battles-have-taught-the-navy-about-a-future-china-fight
