[Adonis]

Long post but we have some big news out of the Yemen/Red Sea area.

Old map showing location:



First was the attack on a UAE HSV Swift boat(Link), then there were 2 cruise missiles launched from Yemen at the USS MASON (DDG-87).

HSV-2 Swift

Quote:

HSV-2 Swift is a hybrid catamaran. She was privately owned and operated by Sealift Inc., and was originally built under the JHSV program as a proof of concept. As part of this program, she was directly leased for evaluation from her builders by the United States Navy Military Sealift Command from 2003 to 2013, primarily as a mine countermeasures and sea basing test platform. Later during her official naval career she was mostly used for fleet support and humanitarian partnership missions.

As of 2015, the ship was reported to have been leased by the United Arab Emirates' National Marine Dredging Company. On 1 October 2016, the ship was attacked and seriously damaged off Yemen. Houthi rebels claimed the ship sank.[2] According to unnamed US Department of Defense officials, the damaged ship was being towed to Eritrea.[3] The fate of her crew is currently unclear.

As far as I know this is the first time that this particular occurrence of missiles being fired at a US warship along with a defensive missile launch has happened since the USS Stark incident (no defensive missile launch then) in 1987. The effectiveness of the weapons launched was recorded as a matter of course but that information will not be released open source. Having stood the watch that fires missiles onboard this class of ship I can only imagine how they felt. Bravo fucking Zulu to my brothers and sisters out there.

USS MASON
USS PONCE

USNI Report

USNI Wrote:

The crew of a guided-missile destroyer fired three missiles to defend themselves and another ship after being attacked on Sunday in the Red Sea by two presumed cruise missiles fired by Iran-backed Houthi-forces, USNI News has learned.

During the attack against USS Mason (DDG-87), the ship’s crew fired the missiles to defend the guided-missile destroyer and nearby USS Ponce (AFSB(I)-15) from two suspected cruise missiles fired from the Yemini shore, two defense officials told USNI News.

Mason launched two Standard Missile-2s (SM-2s) and a single Enhanced Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) to intercept the two missiles that were launched about 7 P.M. local time. In addition to the missiles, the ship used its Nulka anti-ship missile decoy, the sources confirmed. Mason was operating in international waters north of the strait of Bab el-Mandeb at the time of the attack.

According to a defense official on Monday, Mason “employed onboard defensive measures” against the first suspected cruise missile, “although it is unclear whether this led to the missile striking the water or whether it would have struck the water anyway.” The official did not specify that the defensive measure was a missile fired from the ship.

USNI News understands, as of Monday, the crew of the ship was uncertain if the suspected cruise missile was taken out by an SM-2 or went into the water on its own. In the Monday statement, the Pentagon said an investigation was ongoing.

The second missile launched from Yemen hit the water without being struck by a U.S. interceptor, the Petnagon said.

Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis would not confirm Mason launched missiles to USNI News on Monday. On Tuesday, Davis told reporters the missiles coming from Yemen might have been intended to strike Ponce and that the U.S. “will take action accordingly,” in response to the findings of the ongoing investigation.

While the Pentagon will not confirm details of Mason’s engagement, the use of both missiles by the U.S. is, “very significant,” Bryan Clark, a naval analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and former aide to retired former-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, told USNI News on Monday.

“It might be the first time the SM-2 used against an actual threat for which it was designed,” Clark said.
“It’s definitely the first time ESSM has been used… This is obviously a huge deal.”

The SM-2s – more than two decades old – were specifically designed to tackle Cold War cruise missile threats to a guided-missile destroyer, much like the ones Iran has presumably given to the Houthis in Yemen.

Last week a Houthi-launched cruise missile caused significant damage to the UAE-leased HSV Swift – an unarmed aluminum high-speed transport vessel used to move supplies and wounded in the region, UAE officials said. UAE is part of a Saudi Arabia led coalition that has fought against the Iran-backed Shi’a Houthis in Yemen since last year.

While U.S. sources haven’t confirmed the type of missiles, open source naval analyst and retired Navy Capt. Chris Carlson told USNI News on Monday the damage on Swift appears to be from the warhead used in a Chinese-built C-802 anti-ship missile (NATO reporting name CSS-N-8 Saccade). The C-802 is based on Cold War-era French technology.

Specifically, the damage on Swift indicates the missile had an explosively formed penetrator (EFP) warhead – a well-known feature of the C-802. An EFP expands on impact launching additional pieces of shrapnel once the missile has penetrated the outer skin of a target around its circumference.

While the guidance system is largely 1990s vintage, the C-802 carries a, “very damaging warhead,” Carlson said.

The attacks on Mason and Ponce follow an airstrike that killed more than 140 people and injured more than 500 during a funeral in Yemen. The Saudi-led bombing has prompted a review of U.S. support of the conflict fought between the collation and the Houthis since last year, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Prior to the Saudi strike, Houthi rebels have told Saudi Arabia and its allies — via Iranian state media — to stay out of Yemen, “territorial waters.”

However the Houthis, “denied firing at the USS Mason guided missile destroyer and the USS Ponce,” according to a Tuesday report from the Reuters newswire.

Davis told reporters on Tuesday, there’s no short-term anticipated change in U.S. posture in the region.

Background on weapons used, the SM-2 is the primary AAW weapon that has defended naval air dominance doctrine for 5 decades.

Quote:

The second generation of Standard missile, the Standard Missile 2, was developed for the Aegis combat system, and New Threat Upgrade program that was planned for existing Terrier and Tartar ships. The destroyer USS Mahan served as the test platform for the development of the CG/SM-2 (ER) missile program project. The principal change over the Standard missile 1 is the introduction of inertial guidance for each phase of the missile's flight except the terminal phase where semi-active homing was retained. This design change was made so that missiles could time share illumination radars and enable equipped ships to defend against saturation missile attacks.

The ESSM is an upgrade of another old missile the AIM-7 Sparrow.

Quote:

The RIM-162 Evolved SeaSparrow Missile (ESSM) is a development of the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow missile used to protect ships from attacking missiles and aircraft.[6] ESSM is designed to counter supersonic maneuvering anti-ship missiles. ESSM also has the ability to be "quad-packed" in the Mark 41 Vertical Launch System system, allowing up to four ESSMs to be carried in a single cell.

Nulka is an active decoy that is a pretty bad ass.

Quote:

Nulka is an Australian designed and developed active missile decoy built by an American/Australian collaboration. Used aboard warships of the United States Navy (USN), Royal Australian Navy (RAN), United States Coast Guard (USCG), and Royal Canadian Navy, Nulka is a rocket propelled, disposable, offboard, active decoy designed to ″seduce″ anti-ship missiles away from their targets. It has a unique design in that it hovers in mid air while seducing the incoming anti-ship missile. The hovering rocket concept was initiated in Australia by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO), and the system was designed, developed and then manufactured by AWA Defence Industries (AWADI) (now BAE Systems Australia). The word "Nulka" is of Australian Aboriginal origin and means "be quick".