Beyond the horizon: The evolution of the Houthi autonomous naval fleet- opinion

The Houthi terror organization in Yemen recently launched another barrage of ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabia, targeting Riyadh International Airport. The attack claimed 12 lives, including a US citizen, wounded hundreds, and inflicted severe destruction upon the airport’s terminals.

The strike illustrates that the Houthi threat in the region is as lethal as ever, and its most alarming strategic shift is unfolding simultaneously at sea. The Houthis have effectively transposed their asymmetric warfare doctrine from the mountains of Yemen to the maritime domain. 

The organization’s ability to impose an effective blockade on global trade routes across the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean marks the emergence of an entirely new terror equation for the Houthis, one that threatens the economic and security stability of the entire free world.

For years, numerous intelligence agencies in the West and the Middle East have tended to depict Houthi aggression as the relatively marginal activities of an isolated mountain militia. They have been viewed as a terrestrial guerrilla force equipped with sandals, khat, and light weaponry — culturally and operationally very far removed from naval warfare.

But for the international seafaring community and modern naval warfare planners, this has proven to be one of the most severe geopolitical errors of the past decade.

The geographic history of Yemen has been intertwined for centuries with control over the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

Surprisingly, the Houthis, who belong to the Zaidi-Shia branch and control northwestern Yemen, decided to extend their mountainous warfare to the maritime arena and operate as a well-trained proxy vanguard of Iran.

The Houthis transformed into a lethal, asymmetric navy, executing, for the first time in the 21st century, an effective, violent, and paralyzing naval blockade on a critical maritime trade route.

This succeeded in wearing down the fleets of major global superpowers, creating an active threat to international trade routes, and generating a direct, multi-theater challenge to global shipping insurance, as well as to Israel’s maritime resilience, with the Eilat Port nearly paralyzed for the past three years.

Thus, the Houthis led the way for other terrorist organizations and states that have understood that threatening a shipping lane and extorting protection or « transit » fees from the free world is no less significant than a nuclear threat.

Currently, we are witnessing the daily struggle between Iran and the United States for control over the shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran is completely ignoring international maritime regulations and encouraging terrorist organizations, including the Houthis, to ignore the maritime convention.

The Houthi army comprises an estimated 400,000 fighters, with some 20,000 belonging to the organization's core and many of them specializing in naval warfare, from the coast and at sea.

The Houthis’ naval warfare in the Red Sea from 2023 represents a reshaping of the asymmetric naval warfare doctrine, combining the deployment of traditional assets: ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, and helicopters) alongside autonomous, AI-based assets, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs) across multiple theaters such as the Red Sea, the Gulf of Eilat, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean.

Despite powerful counterstrikes by the US, the Western coalition, and Israel against the Houthis, which inflicted severe damage on their leadership as well as on energy and port infrastructures in Yemen, the Houthis continue striking vessels and instilling terror.

The collection of protection fees by the Houthis has become a significant source of livelihood for the terror group at a time when Yemen is economically at rock bottom.

All of this is enabled by the influx of funds and combat material from Iran. This ensures that the Houthi arena remains alive, serving as a sort of "weapons testing laboratory" and source of inspiration.

In 2024, there was talk of clandestine protection fees paid through shell companies and Hawala networks. According to the United Nations Panel of Experts on Yemen, the Houthi rebels generated approximately $180 million per month from extortion and the collection of illegal "transit fees" from shipping companies.

On an annual basis, this amounts to a staggering $2.2 billion per year.

Reports from international maritime security and intelligence firms (such as the British firm Ambrey) and published in the media (Lloyd's List) in April 2026 revealed that the Houthis held discussions at the highest levels to institutionalize a formal mechanism for transit tolls in the Red Sea.

Recent reports on the Turkiye Today news website quoted Iranian parliament member Ali Khezrian as saying that proposals were even raised by regional actors to establish official Houthi transit tolls of up to $5 million per ship.

Though in the past, Iran trained the Houthis and provided them with weaponry and funding, the group operated within Yemen and its immediate surroundings. During the Israel-Hamas War, the Houthis significantly expanded their reach, striking the State of Israel at a distance of approximately 2,000 kilometers.

It seems there is no Israeli who has not heard of them after October 7, 2023. They acted progressively until they became an additional, independent, and surprisingly hot theater for Israel and the entire world.

In October 2023, they entered into an active campaign against Israel, utilizing ballistic fire and UAVs toward Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Eilat. 

By November, the Houthis transited to direct warfare, executing a heliborne commando raid on the Galaxy Leader. They attacked ships with commercial ties or ownership links to Israel and Western nations, as well as those unwilling to pay the transit tolls in the Red Sea.

Over the following years of the blockade, the Houthis attacked over 100 ships, and Operation Prosperity Guardian was launched against them by a US-led coalition of the UK, Canada, France, and Italy. It aimed to protect the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which constitute a vital maritime traffic artery for roughly 12% of global trade.

Israel struck the Houthis in Yemen for the first time on July 20, 2024, in Operation Long Arm, in response to a Houthi UAV strike in Tel Aviv that targeted energy infrastructure and the Port of Hodeidah. Since then, Israel has struck the Houthis in Yemen dozens of times.

The ship MSC Orion was attacked by Houthi rebels on April 26, 2024, utilizing a UAV, reportedly an Iranian model from the Shahed series. The ship was targeted deep within the Indian Ocean, at a distance of approximately 300 to 400 nautical miles from the Horn of Africa (about 600 km. from the Yemeni coast). The damage was relatively light, and the Orion continued its voyage, but the attack served as proof of the Houthis' capability to operate far from the Red Sea region.

In this sense, the Houthis rely on a forward intelligence network with several key aspects.

Iranian spy ships disguised as cargo vessels, notably the MV Behshad, operating as a floating intelligence command center.

In 2025, Iran also began using the Zagros, a modern, official signals intelligence (SIGINT) and reconnaissance Iranian Navy ship designed to expand their electronic espionage capabilities across maritime expanses. This type of ship is equipped with radars and eavesdropping systems, providing positioning data to the Houthis.

The Houthis have also begun establishing intelligence and observation networks in Somalia (in cooperation with the Al-Shabaab terror organization), Djibouti, and Eritrea.

Deploying operatives or collaborators in ports and lookout points across the Horn of Africa enables them to gather visual and electronic data on ships departing toward the Indian Ocean.

Electronic warfare and cyber systems, utilizing Automatic Identification System (AIS) data from ships and cross-referencing it with Iranian intelligence data to identify the ownership and affiliation of the ship (whether linked to Israel, the US, or the UK) before a missile is launched.

During Operation Roaring Lion, the Houthis continued to stage attacks using autonomous USVs and artificial intelligence.

According to a Congressional report from May 2026, the Houthis halted direct attacks at sea. The report claimed the cessation of attacks stemmed from US operations against them, the imposition of sanctions, and understandings. Additionally, the Houthis likely stopped attacking because Israel struck back, and they likely received directives from Iran to preserve their strength.

However, in light of the struggle in the Strait of Hormuz, it is expected that the economic importance of vessel transit through Bab el-Mandeb will rise again, and the Houthis may attack again.

Driven by deep religious perceptions and funding ties with Iran, the Houthis continue to declare their support for Iran and Gaza.

Currently, the Houthis are also occupied with a reignited war on Yemeni soil against the Saudis. 

Despite various similarities, the Houthis are still not identical to other Iranian proxies like Hezbollah or Hamas. Although loyal to Iran and the Islamic Ummah, they primarily prioritize their own interests.

They continue to train, refine forces, smuggle weapons, and even deepen their underground infrastructure in Yemen. They will return to action the moment such a move serves their interests.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which at its narrowest point is only about 26 kilometers wide, was transformed from a bustling global shipping lane into a lethal asymmetric fire trap. The congested geography of the strait forced massive commercial ships to move along narrow fixed routes, rendering them targets for the Houthi coastal missile array.

The Houthis refined their combat methods in the strait through three integrated axes of operation.

They used kamikaze UAVs and anti-ship cruise missiles flying at a very low altitude above the water surface (sea skimming), such as the El-Mandeb 2, a Houthi development of an Iranian missile, to actively evade ship radars.They employed flooding and saturation tactics, simultaneously launching swarms of low-cost assets, forcing Western warships to deplete their inventories of expensive air defense missiles.

They also undertook Smart Maritime Mining by dispersing floating naval mines within the narrow water corridors, resulting in a complete halt and paralysis of the exposed traffic routes.

The success of the Houthi blockade in Bab el-Mandeb led to global economic turmoil. Container and tanker traffic through the strait and the Suez Canal plummeted by over 70%. International shipping giants (such as Maersk and MSC) chose to bypass the African continent via the Cape of Good Hope — a move that has extended the voyage to Israel by approximately 12 sailing days and inflated shipping and insurance costs by roughly 30%.

The crisis exposed that American and British warships were forced to use advanced air defense missiles (at a cost of $2-4 million per missile) to intercept cheap UAVs costing only a few thousand dollars. This war has created an urgent need for the production of new interceptors.

The Houthi naval power does not rely on conventional warships, such as frigates or corvettes, but rather on a mix of asymmetric threats, notably anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBM) such as Asef, Tankil, and Faleq; anti-ship cruise missiles (Al-Mandab); USVs and maritime kamikaze UAVs; and smart maritime mining that can paralyze ports and commercial ships, creating the need for lengthy and complex minesweeping operations.

In the near future, the Houthi maritime arm will likely complete its transformation into a hybrid fleet possessing advanced technological capabilities that pose significant challenges to naval combatants.

The Houthis may be fighting in sandals, but they are organized, armed with advanced weaponry, trained by Iran and Hezbollah, and above all, they learn rapidly to implement advanced and creative naval combat tactics with the objective of controlling international trade routes.

The writer is a Defense and Maritime Strategy senior analyst and a member of the Institute for Maritime Policy and Strategy, as well as the Dvora Forum.