Two Navy destroyers came under attack by missiles and drones launched by Houthi rebels while they were sailing through a strait located between Yemen and Djibouti on Monday, according to the Pentagon.
“During the transit, the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Stockdale and USS Spruance were attacked by at least eight one-way attack uncrewed aerial systems, five anti-ship ballistic missiles and three anti-ship cruise missiles, which were successfully engaged and defeated,” Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters Tuesday.
The attack on the ships was the latest in months of violence in the region by the Yemen rebels, who are backed by Iran and have targeted commercial shipping as well as the U.S. naval forces deployed to the region to protect the key trade route. The Navy and Air Force responded overnight with “a series of precise airstrikes,” Ryder said.
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The strikes targeted “multiple Houthi weapon storage facilities” that “housed a variety of advanced conventional weapons … to target U.S. and international military and civilian vessels navigating international waters in the Red Sea,” Ryder said.
A Navy official told Military.com that the two destroyers used missiles to thwart the incoming attack and that the Navy’s contribution to the retaliatory strike included F-35C Lightning II fighter aircraft.
U.S. Central Command hinted at the strikes this morning with a social media post that featured a variety of jets being launched off the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and engaged in “operations against Iran-backed Houthis.”
The news of the attack and retaliation comes just days after American forces in Syria were attacked by other Iranian-backed militias at the base Green Village.
Ryder said that the pair of attacks, which happened Sunday, involved one-way attack drone and indirect rocket fire.
The Houthis, through their spokesman, Yahya Saree, claimed that they also hit the Lincoln with numerous missiles and drones, but Navy and Pentagon officials said that was false.
“It was not attacked, contrary to some of the allegations … by the Houthis,” Ryder said.
A Navy official told Military.com that the Lincoln was not with the two destroyers at the time of the attack.
The attack appears to be the first time in several weeks that U.S. ships have faced incoming missiles and drones after a prolonged period of danger that began in October 2023.
The last publicly acknowledged attack occurred at the end of September when the destroyers USS Buckley and USS Cole fired a dozen interceptors as part of the U.S. response to Iranian missiles launched at Israel.
Both the Spruance and the Stockdale, along with the littoral combat ship USS Indianapolis, came under Houthi fire during that attack as well.
In May, as some of the ships involved in the historic combat operations against the Houthis that started last year began to return home, the Navy revealed that it awarded seven warships the prestigious Combat Action Ribbon for actions “under enemy fire.”
However, both U.S. Central Command and the Navy have refused to offer almost any other details about the combat operations or the more than 20 instances of combat between October 2023 and April 2024 that resulted in one of the most battle-tested groups of ships in the modern era of the Navy.
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