On a clear morning in early 2024, the crew of the bulk carrier Rubymar abandoned ship in the southern Red Sea after a Houthi missile tore through the hull, leaving the vessel to list, leak fertilizer into the water, and eventually sink. It was one of the most dramatic episodes in a campaign that, by mid-2026, has hit at least 26 commercial ships and forced the world’s largest shipping companies to rethink how they move goods between Asia and Europe. But the missiles and drones that grab headlines are only part of the story. At the center of the Houthi playbook is something far harder to counter: a growing swarm of small, fast attack boats that the U.S. Navy’s most advanced warships were never built to chase down one by one.
A low-tech fleet against a high-tech navy
Yemen’s Houthi rebels, formally known as Ansar Allah, launched their Red Sea campaign in November 2023, weeks after the Israel-Hamas war began. The group, which controls much of northern Yemen and has received years of military support from Iran, declared it would target ships linked to Israel or its allies until the war in Gaza ended. What followed was the most sustained assault on commercial shipping since World War II.
The tools have varied: Iranian-designed ballistic missiles, one-way attack drones, and explosive-laden unmanned surface vessels. But the manned fast-attack boats occupy a unique tactical niche. Small enough to blend in with fishing dhows and coastal traffic, fast enough to close on a merchant ship in minutes, and cheap enough to lose without strategic consequence, they exploit the one environment where a $2 billion Aegis destroyer has no decisive advantage: a crowded, shallow littoral zone teeming with civilian contacts on radar.
Defense analysts have borrowed a term from early 20th-century naval doctrine to describe the approach: a “mosquito fleet.” The concept is simple. Instead of challenging a superior navy head-on, a weaker force disperses into dozens of expendable platforms that can sting, scatter, and regenerate. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy has practiced this doctrine in the Persian Gulf for decades. The Houthis appear to have adapted it for the narrower waters around the Bab el-Mandeb strait, the 20-mile-wide chokepoint that funnels roughly 12 percent of global seaborne trade.
The U.S. response and its limits
Washington has not stood idle. In December 2023, the Pentagon announced Operation Prosperity Guardian, a multinational naval coalition tasked with protecting merchant shipping in the Red Sea. The U.S. Navy deployed additional destroyers and cruisers, and carrier strike groups rotated through the region. Aegis-equipped warships have intercepted dozens of incoming drones and missiles, often in engagements that lit up the night sky and made for dramatic footage.
The escalation went further. In October 2024, the Air Force sent B-2 Spirit stealth bombers to strike hardened underground weapons storage sites in Houthi-controlled territory, the first known combat use of the B-2 against a non-state actor. The message was clear: the Pentagon considers the Red Sea threat serious enough to deploy its most sensitive strategic assets.
Yet the math remains stubborn. A single Standard Missile-2 (SM-2) interceptor costs roughly $2.1 million. A Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) runs closer to $4.3 million. The Houthi drones and explosive boats they destroy cost tens of thousands of dollars apiece. Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, then commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, described the Houthi strikes as reckless assaults on commercial shipping and warned that the group showed no sign of relenting, even as some trade traffic began to cautiously return to the waterway.
That cost asymmetry is the core of the problem. The U.S. Navy can win every individual engagement and still find itself grinding through interceptor stockpiles faster than the defense industrial base can replenish them, while the Houthis rebuild with Iranian-supplied components and locally fabricated hulls.
What Iran provides, and what remains murky
U.S. officials and United Nations investigators have documented a pipeline of Iranian weapons flowing to the Houthis for years. UN Panel of Experts reports have identified Iranian-origin missile components, drone engines, and guidance systems recovered from Houthi attacks. U.S. Central Command has released imagery of seized arms shipments intercepted in the Arabian Sea.
What is less clear from open sources is how deeply Iran’s IRGC Navy is involved in the small-boat operations specifically. The IRGC has extensive experience with fast-attack craft and swarm tactics in the Persian Gulf, and Western intelligence agencies have long assessed that Tehran shares this expertise with its proxies. But no public evidence has confirmed direct IRGC coordination of individual Houthi boat raids, and Tehran officially denies operational control over the group’s military decisions.
The distinction matters. If the Houthis are running an autonomous campaign with Iranian hardware, the problem is primarily one of interdiction: cutting supply lines. If the IRGC is actively directing targeting and tactics, the conflict has a different escalation ceiling, one that could draw Iran more directly into a confrontation with the U.S. Navy.
The toll on global trade
For the shipping industry, the numbers tell a painful story. In the months after the Houthi campaign began, several of the world’s largest container lines, including Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, and MSC, rerouted vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding roughly 10 to 14 days and significant fuel costs to Asia-Europe voyages. Freight rate indices tracked by analysts at Xeneta and Drewry spiked sharply in early 2024. War-risk insurance premiums for Red Sea transits surged, with Lloyd’s of London syndicates quoting rates that made the route uneconomical for some operators.
By mid-2026, the picture is mixed. Some carriers have resumed Red Sea transits, particularly when naval escorts are available or when freight rates justify the risk. Others continue to avoid the corridor entirely. The Suez Canal Authority has reported reduced transit revenues compared to pre-crisis levels, a direct hit to Egypt’s economy. For consumers, the disruption has contributed to elevated shipping costs on goods moving between Asian manufacturers and European markets, though isolating the Houthi effect from other supply-chain pressures remains difficult.
The human cost is harder to quantify but no less real. Merchant sailors, many from the Philippines, India, and other developing nations, have found themselves on the front line of a conflict they did not choose. The crew of the Galaxy Leader, a car carrier seized by Houthi fighters who rappelled from a helicopter in November 2023, spent months in captivity. The three sailors killed aboard the True Confidence in March 2024 became the first confirmed fatalities of the campaign. For the roughly 1.9 million seafarers who keep global trade moving, the Red Sea has become the most dangerous stretch of water on Earth.
Why the small boats are the hardest problem
Missiles and drones, for all their danger, follow predictable physics. They launch from known coastal areas, fly on trajectories that radar can track, and can be engaged with proven air-defense systems. The small boats operate in a different domain. They emerge from fishing ports and coves along Yemen’s long coastline, mix with hundreds of legitimate vessels, and can close to attack range before a warship’s combat system can positively identify them as hostile.
Rules of engagement compound the difficulty. Opening fire on an unidentified small boat in a busy shipping lane risks killing fishermen or smugglers who pose no military threat. The Houthis understand this and exploit it, using the same waters and similar vessel profiles to mask their approach. A U.S. destroyer captain must make a split-second judgment that balances force protection against the political and legal consequences of a mistaken engagement.
Geography works in the Houthis’ favor as well. The Bab el-Mandeb strait and the southern Red Sea offer limited sea room, strong currents, and numerous islands and shoals that provide cover for small craft. A single frigate or destroyer can effectively screen a convoy through the chokepoint, but it cannot simultaneously patrol the hundreds of miles of open water to the north and south where merchant ships travel unescorted. The U.S. and its allies simply do not have enough hulls in the region to provide continuous coverage along the entire threat corridor.
What would change the calculus
Three developments could shift the trajectory of this conflict. The first is a durable cease-fire in Gaza. Houthi leaders have repeatedly tied their Red Sea campaign to the war in Palestine, and a political resolution there would at least test whether the group is willing to stand down. Skeptics note, however, that the Houthis have gained enormous prestige and leverage from the campaign and may be reluctant to surrender a tool that has elevated their standing across the Arab world.
The second is a sustained interdiction campaign against Iranian arms shipments. Cutting the supply of missile components, drone kits, and boat engines would degrade Houthi capabilities over time, though the group has demonstrated an ability to manufacture some weapons domestically and to improvise with commercially available technology.
The third is a technological adaptation by the U.S. Navy. The service has begun experimenting with unmanned surface vessels, directed-energy weapons, and cheaper interceptors that could close the cost gap. But these systems are years from fleet-wide deployment, and the Houthis are fighting with what they have today.
Until one or more of those shifts occurs, the Red Sea will remain contested. The Houthis have demonstrated that a determined, low-budget force can threaten a critical artery of global commerce and impose costs on the world’s most powerful navy. The “mosquito fleet” may not be able to sink an American destroyer, but it does not need to. It only needs to keep stinging long enough to make the status quo unbearable for everyone else.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
