An IDF spokesperson on Wednesday announced that Israeli Navy missile boats are being deployed in the Red Sea, in response to three rocket attacks in recent days from the Houthi Iranian proxy militia in Yemen.
On Tuesday at 8:58 AM, Israeli fighter jets intercepted two cruise missiles and the Arrow system intercepted a surface-to-surface missile over Eilat, all three fired from Yemen.
אחרי המתקפות מתימן על אילת: ספינות טילים של חיל הים נפרסו בים סוף pic.twitter.com/ZoO2d8EScx
— almog boker (@bokeralmog) November 1, 2023
Located some 1,100 south of Israel’s southernmost city, the Houthi movement in Yemen, a predominately Zaidi Shia force, is an Iranian proxy militia that has until last week been employed mostly against Saudi Arabia.
Last week, the Israeli Air Force intercepted two drones from Yemen in the sky over the Red Sea. One of them crashed in the Egyptian resort town of Taba in the Sinai Peninsula, near Eilat, and six people were injured. A second drone crashed in Nueba, a resort that was legendary among Israeli hipsters in the 1970s, some, 40 miles south of Taba.
Two weeks ago, the Houthis in Yemen launched cruise missiles and drones at Israel, which were intercepted by an American warship, and a Saudi air defense system.
Yahya Sarieh, a spokesman for the Huthi army, announced on Tuesday that his group was behind the three launches over the past two weeks of cruise missiles and drones at Israel, and added that these launches would continue until “the Israeli aggression in Gaza ends.”
ולמי שפספס, הדובר הצבאי של המורדים החות’ים, יחיא סריע, בקולו מעדכן על הירי לעבר ישראל (ותיקון קל: שמו יחיא סריע ולא אחמד סריע) https://t.co/katPiOVT5f pic.twitter.com/NF1CxD8yjf
— roi kais • روعي كايس • רועי קייס (@kaisos1987) October 31, 2023
Many in Israel questioned why Sarieh had to scream his message when there were two perfectly good mics right in front of his face.
The Israeli Navy normally keeps patrol boats in the Red Sea, while its missile boat flotilla is based at Haifa, consisting of the 31st and 32nd missile boat squadrons and the 33rd and 36th corvette squadrons. To get to the Red Sea, the missile boats would have had to use the Suez Canal.
The Sa’ar 5 class missile corvettes were built for the Israeli Navy by Huntington Ingalls Industries in Pascagoula, Mississippi, based on Israeli designs. The considerably larger Sa’ar 6 class corvettes are four German-made missile boats ordered for the Israeli Navy in May 2015 and are deployed around Israel’s Mediterranean natural gas fields, to defend against Hezbollah and Hamas attacks.
The Sa’ar 5 boats are armed with Barak-1 and/or Barak-8 missiles, made by IAI and Rafael, and two four-cell Boeing Harpoon missile launchers. Barak 1 is a surface-to-air missile (SAM) designed to be used as a ship-borne point-defense missile system against aircraft, anti-ship missiles, and UAVs. Barak 8 is an Indo-Israeli jointly developed surface-to-air missile designed to defend against any type of airborne threat including aircraft, helicopters, anti-ship missiles, UAVs, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and combat jets.
It has been reported that a Barak 8 operated by the Azerbaijani Armed Forces intercepted an Iskander missile shot by Armenia toward Baku during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.
