Cost of US military offensive against Houthis nears $1 billion with limited impact

The total cost of the US military’s operation against the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen is nearing $1 billion in just over three weeks, even as the attacks have had limited impact on destroying the terror group’s capabilities, three people briefed on the campaign’s progress told CNN.

The total cost of the US military’s operation against the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen is nearing $1 billion in just under three weeks, even as the attacks have had limited impact on destroying the terror group’s capabilities, three people briefed on the campaign’s progress told CNN. The military offensive, which was launched on March 15, has already used hundreds of millions of dollar’s worth of munitions for strikes against the group, including JASSM long-range cruise missiles, JSOWs, which are GPS-guided glide bombs, and Tomahawk missiles, the sources said. B-2 bombers out of Diego Garcia are also being used against the Houthis, and an additional aircraft carrier as well as several fighter squadrons and air defense systems will soon be moved into the Central Command region, defense officials said this week. One of the sources said the Pentagon will likely need to request supplemental funding from Congress to continue the operation, but may not receive it — the offensive has already been criticized on both sides of the aisle, and even Vice President JD Vance said he thought the operation was “a mistake” in a Signal chat published by The Atlantic last week. The Pentagon has not publicly disclosed what impact the daily US military strikes have actually had on the Houthis. Officials from the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, US Central Command, US Indo Pacific Command, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, and the State Department told Congress in recent days that the strikes have eliminated several members of Houthi leadership and destroyed some Houthi military sites. But they acknowledged that the group has still been able to fortify their bunkers and maintain weapons stockpiles underground, much as they did during the strikes that the Biden administration carried out for over a year, the sources said. And it has been difficult to determine precisely how much the Houthis still have stockpiled, a defense official said.