Houthis attack tanker & French warship in Red Sea

(Update: The Houthis on Wednesday fired two missiles at another tanker. The tanker, the Ardmore Encounter, is a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker traveling north toward the Suez Canal in the Red Sea, satellite tracking shows. The vessel had been coming from Mangalore, India, and had an armed security crew aboard it, according to data transmitted by the ship. The Ardmore Encounter was not hit.  The Houthis also sent drones, possibly aimed at the USS Carney. It seems that the Carney shot them down. -SB)

Houthi rebels using a drone hit a Norwegian tanker ship for the second time in the Red Sea on Monday, December 11.

The ship had first been hit on Sunday by a Houthi cruise missile, most likely a Quds-1, a copy of the Iranian Soumar cruise missile or the Russian Kh-55.

The first attack was reported by the UK Marine Trade Operations (UKMTO) office which reported the attack took place at 2100 UTC (or midnight local time) in the vicinity of the Bab El Mandeb strait, about 15 nautical miles west of port Mocha, Yemen.

The French FREMM frigate Languedoc destroyed two drones on Sunday that were aimed at the warship, and shot down another drone on Monday that apparently had been aimed at the Norwegian tanker.

The Languedoc also blocked a Houthi assault team trying to hijack the Norwegian ship, which explains why the warship was targeted by the Houthis. The Languedoc is working with the US Central Command in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

It is costly to shoot down cheap Houthi drones. The French frigate fired Astra 15 missiles that downed the three drones, at a cost of $2 million per missile.

The USS Carney destroyed three Houthi “land attack missiles” in October using SM-2 missiles. These cost around $2.1 million each.

There is no official information on the types of drones or the cruise missiles used in these attacks.  The best candidate for the drones is probably the Houthi “copy” of the Iranian Shahed 136 drone, the same model that was sold by Iran to Russia and used in the Ukraine war.  The Shahed costs around $20,000 per copy.

​The tanker, the MK Strinda, was carrying biofuel (probably palm oil), not fuel oil, and was headed to the Suez Canal.  Its voyage originated in Malaysia.  The crew on the Strinda was reportedly safe.  However the ship was engulfed in flames at one point.