I’ve read about many instances of Houthi drone attacks and missiles being successfully intercepted by US warships. I have no doubt that these ships are capable of completely neutralizing these types of attacks in a vacuum… but given the cost disparity between the drones/missiles and the defense equipment used to stop them… what’s stopping the opposition from spamming so many at once that the ships can’t keep up?
Instead of repeated, futile attacks, what would happen if the opposition stock piled all of their resources and launched them at once, in waves, one right after the other?
Surely there must be some finite limit to the amount of defensive ammunition (not sure of the right term here) the ships are able to carry at sea.
Is it just a matter of the ships being so well equipped that any force capable of exhausting their supplies is simply impractical- even if the drones are pennies on the dollar in terms of comparative cost?
In: Engineering
Most replies here are either gloating about the might of the US military-industrial complex or focusing on air-borne drones.
That’s a mistake for a couple of reasons.
First, US naval assets have been taken out by poorly armed/resourced groups before. [USS Cole bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cole_bombing) Just in general, it is very comforting to think “US military is super strong and can do anything to anyone anywhere” – the reality is often quite different and humbling.
Second, airborne drones are not the only type of unmanned assets fleets need to worry about. We’ve already seen semi-submersible drones deployed in the Black Sea by Ukraine – to notable effect against the Russian Black Sea fleet.
The actual answer here is simply a matter of resources, organization and intelligence.
US ships are not invincible on a technological level – it’s just that the people actively targeting them at the moment lack the ability to stockpile the necessary systems, to coordinate the strikes with sufficient precision, and to track their targets reliably.
All of those things are solvable problems by a determined, well resourced adversary – and I would hope that people better placed to answer your question are thinking very hard about it.
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