The U.S. military carried out airstrikes on more than 800 targets in Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen since March 15, U.S. Central Command said this past week.
These strikes have destroyed multiple command-and-control facilities, air defense systems, advanced weapons manufacturing facilities, advanced weapons storage locations, and killed hundreds of Houthi fighters and numerous Houthi leaders,” CENTCOM spokesman Dave Eastburn said in a statement to Task & Purpose, echoing comments given to reporters at the end of the week.
Eastburn added that “[c]redible open sources report over 650 Houthi casualties to date,” although Task & Purpose could not independently verify if those killed were members of the Houthi movement. CENTCOM also said that Houthi ballistic missile launches are down 87%. dropped by 87%, and their launches of one-way attack drones are down 65%.
The numbers are a rare update on the now month-and-a-half fight around Yemen. Despite multiple posts on the social media site X showing aircraft launching from carriers and messages announcing “24/7” operations against Houthis, the U.S. military has been quiet on specifics on how many airstrikes it is carrying out. After initially confirming operations on March 15, the U.S. military has been extremely vague on the tempo of airstrikes and what impact they are having, even as some other information on the operations has come out.
One of the few incidents where information was shared was the April 18 strike on the Ras Isa port in western Yemen, which killed several dozen people.
The Yemen Data Project, which is tracking the amount of airstrikes in the conflict, reports that strikes in March were the second highest overall since the start of fighting in late 2023, behind only the number of airstrikes in February 2024.
The strikes, which picked up after two months of tentative calm, came after Houthis announced plans to restart attacks on shipping lanes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The group began such attacks in October 2023, following the Israeli war in Gaza, which in turn led to American and allied navies shooting down dozens of missiles and drones fired at commercial or military vessels. Two commercial ships have been sunk as a result. From January 2024-January 2025 the United States and allies carried out several airstrikes in Yemen separate from those intercept operations. At the end of 2024 one crewed F/A-18F Super Hornet was accidentally shot down by the U.S. Navy.
Increased pace
The Associated Press reports that Houthi forces shot down seven U.S. military MQ-9 drones between March 31-April 22, worth roughly $200 million in total. Three of those seven were all shot down within the past week. Houthis had previously claimed to have shot down 14 American drones between fall 2023 and the end of 2024, per the Atlantic Council. Neither Central Command or Houthi officials have said what has led to the high frequency of U.S. drone shootdowns in the last six weeks compared to the previous phase of the conflict.
U.S. officials did not point to how many mid-air intercepts have been done in the past six weeks. Houthi forces have made repeated claims of firing on U.S. Navy ships, and the Navy has said it shot down one-way attack drones aimed at vessels, but it’s unclear how many drones and missiles the Navy has taken out since March 15. Between October 2023-December 2024, those types of intercepts were a common, sometimes daily occurrence.
The frequency of such operations put the Navy in its biggest battle since World War II and proved to be a challenge for munitions. Houthi weapons fired are relatively cheap, whereas for months the United States has launched expensive Standard Missiles and other munitions, with each one ranging between $2 million-$27.9 million. At the end of Operation Poseidon Archer, the term for the strikes done between January 2024-January 2025, the Navy reported that it had fired roughly 400 munitions, including 120 SM-2 missiles. The Navy has said that it is pursuing cheaper alternatives to deal with the high tempo of airstrikes and intercept missions.