Red Sea Navy Commander Details “Air-to-Air” Kills of Houthi Drone Attacks

The following piece first appeared on Warrior Maven, a Military Content Group member website.

Tracking and destroying attacking drones and cruise missiles in the Red Sea relied upon a series of interwoven sensors, space and air-based ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance), fire control systems, radar applications, manned and unmanned air platforms able to “see beyond the horizon” and, of course, both kinetic and non-kinetic interceptors and countermeasures.

Interceptors such as Standard Missiles, deck-mounted guns, Electronic warfare (EW) systems, and airborne fighter jets were all used extensively during months of maritime combat to save Navy ships, allied vessels, and commercial shipping in the region.

“We started off a little bit with shooting standard missiles at those. We quickly, very quickly changed to using kind of air -to -air missiles, you know, so that’s what we talk about. We got some air-to-air kills with sidewinder variant missiles,” Rear Adm. Javon “Hak” Hakimsadeh, former Commander of Carrier Strike Group 2 in the Red Sea, told Warrior in an interview about maritime warfare against the Houthis.

Hak explained that EW, air-to-air kills, interceptor missiles, and guns were all used in the Red Sea and that adjustments and adaptations were made during the course of ongoing combat while he and his forces were under attack. When it comes to stopping Houthi attacks, success depends upon the “speed” of detection and interception, Hak told Warrior.

“Maritime defense is the rapidity at which they have to make decisions, and the host of options they have available to select,” Hak said.

US Navy and Pentagon leaders and weapons developers are, of course, continuing to analyze months of recent combat and successful “intercepts” in the Red Sea with a mind to refining tactics, exploring new concepts of operation, implementing lessons learned, and preparing for new generations of threats.

“Hak,” as he is known by his Navy comrades, is one of the key US Navy senior leaders involved in discussions related to the Red Sea, as served in the Red Sea as the Commander of Carrier Strike Group 2. Hak pointed out that he took Command in the Red Sea during the last stretch of the Carrier Strike Group 2’s deployment and praised his predecessor Rear Adm. Marc Miguez. “Hak” was, however, heavily involved in training maritime warriors and did oversee intercepts of Houthi missiles and drones while in command.

In the Red Sea, ship-based Aegis radar proved successful in the realm of detecting threats and supporting the completion of the “kill chain” necessary to destroy incoming drones and missiles. Hak walked Warrior through the integrated threat tracking and intercept process which followed a specific progression of events enabled by advanced technologies. As attacks continued over the months of deployment in the Red Sea, Navy Commanders recognized that, in many instances, the best positioned interceptor for attacking Houthi drones came from fighter jets in the air.

“The Aegis platform picks up and classifies what that threat is. You have a Link -16 network, essentially, that gives a universal picture across the strike group, to airplanes and to the ships, and to our Air Force partners. In fact. you can designate, very clearly, with a ship’s radar system, you can designate a particular track that gets to fighter aircraft kind of a little bit more,” Hak said.

This makes sense given that fighter jets armed with air-to-air missiles could indeed be forward positioned in an optimal position to attack enemy drones at distances beyond a standard radar aperture. Networking is the key, Hak said, as fighter jets can receive threat details and use on-board sensors, weapons and fire control to engage attacking threats.

“Aegis is kind of a wide area surge, kind of a wide area picture of what’s going on. That Datalink track of the particular threat that it wants a fighter to look at will allow that fighter to kind of put a soda straw…..a fire control radar on that particular track to be able to identify it better and put a fire control solution on that,” Hak said.

During US Navy combat in the Red Sea, forces were able to use an EA-18G Growler EW aircraft for the first time to destroy Houthi drones using an AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles.

“The first was an EA -18 Growler. It’s an F -18 aircraft that’s been modified to be able to carry electronic jamming pods, but it still has the capability of launching those Sidewinder -class missiles. So in this particular case, an airplane that typically is a jammer, that typically operates in a jamming role, happened to be in the right position with the right weapon. Of course, the pilot and the electronic countermeasures officers are all trained in being able to fire that missile … .so they were able to put the Sidewinder missile into a drone and kill it,” Hak said.

Overall, the Navy is looking closely at cutting edge methods of destroying large groups of drones and cruise missiles designed to overwhelm ship defenses. Hak told Warrior one of the key lessons learned from the Red Sea is that ship-defenses need to be armed with a magazine sufficient to intercept a “group” of drones.

“Probably the biggest consideration from a war fighting perspective is, you know, the size of your magazine or magazine capacity. You know, you’ve got to be able to have enough bullets to be able to shoot those down,” Hak said. “Ideally, as a warrior, I’d want to shoot the archer before it got launched, or I would want to electronically, through some sort of non -kinetic effect, be able to kind of interfere with the command signal from the archer to that, through that particular drone. But, you know, sometimes that’s not possible. So, if they come at you, big numbers of them come at you, what you’ve got to be able to do is you’ve got to have a good -sized magazine to go after those.”