See the hectic flight deck of a US warship fighting Houthis in the Red Sea

Business Insider

Constant jet launches, high tech, and tight quarters are part of daily life for US Navy members as they battle Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.

Transcript

00:00 (plane engine roaring)

00:01 On the flight deck, it is loud.

00:04 Standing next to a fighter jet taking off,

00:06 you can feel it in your whole body.

00:08 I mean, we're given helmets with goggles

00:12 and giant industrial earmuffs, and it still is loud.

00:17 It completely permeates through you.

00:19 Hi, my name is Jake Epstein.

00:21 I'm a defense reporter here at Business Insider.

00:23 I recently came back from the Middle East

00:27 where I had the chance to embark on two US Navy ships

00:31 in the Red Sea to get a sense of what's happening

00:34 on the front lines of the fight against the Houthis.

00:37 I was on one carrier, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower,

00:40 and then from there, I took a helicopter

00:43 to a destroyer, the USS Gravely.

00:46 The most nerve-wracking part for me was landing

00:48 and taking off from the aircraft carrier.

00:50 But to be with the Navy, I mean,

00:52 these are incredibly well-defended ships.

00:55 So it wasn't any concern about the Houthi threat.

00:59 But landing on an aircraft carrier

01:01 in the middle of the sea was enough

01:04 to make me a little uneasy.

01:06 I did not have a window seat coming in.

01:09 The only way I knew that we were about to land

01:12 is because the crew on the aircraft told us

01:15 to get in a brace position and that we were gonna be landing

01:17 within a couple of seconds.

01:19 The plane shakes around.

01:20 I mean, it goes from traveling at a fast speed

01:23 to zero miles per hour in two or three seconds.

01:26 And the same goes for taking off.

01:28 When we landed on the Eisenhower, it was hot.

01:32 It was a bit of a shock when the cargo door came down

01:35 and I saw that I was on an aircraft carrier

01:37 in the middle of the sea.

01:39 There were a ton of crew members on the deck.

01:42 People wearing different vests

01:43 to indicate their different jobs.

01:46 There were fighter jets moving around.

01:49 Aircraft were constantly taking off and landing

01:51 in cycles, so we'd watch it happen for a few minutes

01:55 and then they would come in and land

01:57 or they'll stay airborne a little bit longer.

01:59 While the planes are taking off and landing,

02:02 there's crew members refueling them

02:04 and performing maintenance and rearming them if needed.

02:08 So there's just a lot happening all the time.

02:11 The commander of the strike group

02:13 that the Eisenhower is a part of

02:16 said that they were launching aircraft

02:18 every hour to hour and a half.

02:20 So it is very, you know, it's very constant.

02:23 I was running on adrenaline the whole time,

02:25 not really sleeping a lot.

02:26 There was obviously places to sleep and shower

02:29 and rest for a second.

02:30 I mean, there's a shift store.

02:32 From the outside looking in,

02:34 it might seem a little bit chaotic,

02:35 but it's obviously very orderly

02:37 because everything works so seamlessly.

02:39 The Eisenhower, you know, as an aircraft carrier

02:41 is a floating city for lack of a better term.

02:44 The carrier has more than 5,000 sailors

02:47 that are basically, you know, calling it home

02:49 during the current deployment.

02:50 The Great Lees, a destroyer,

02:52 it was smaller, a couple hundred sailors.

02:55 There's a combat information center

02:56 that's inside the destroyer.

02:59 We got to take a look at that.

03:00 That is staffed all the time.

03:02 Anything, any sort of weapon or interceptor or whatever

03:06 that would leave the ship, the process starts there.

03:09 So that's where, you know, decisions are made.

03:11 That's where, you know, the threats are tracked.

03:14 That's kind of like the, you know,

03:16 the brain of where the ship is defended from.

03:18 It's dimly lit, a lot of screens, radars, digital maps.

03:23 And yeah, so it's staffed all the time.

03:26 The Houthis are basically firing drones and missiles

03:30 on a routine basis, sometimes, you know,

03:33 multiple days in a row into international shipping lanes

03:37 off of the coast of Yemen,

03:39 where US Navy ships are located,

03:42 where commercial ships are transiting.

03:44 The Houthis have said repeatedly

03:46 that their actions are directly a result

03:49 of Israel's ground invasion of Gaza.

03:53 However, you'll see US officials are pushing back on this

03:57 quite often because the ships that are under attack

04:00 and are not, you know, necessarily connected to Israel.

04:03 In early January, there was a pretty large-scale attack

04:08 by the Houthis.

04:09 Since then, there's been several rounds

04:12 of coordinated airstrikes between the US and the UK

04:16 on Houthi sites across Yemen,

04:18 targeting air defenses and weapons storage facilities

04:20 and radars and stuff like that.

04:22 The US has also been conducting preemptive strikes,

04:26 they'll say self-defense strikes, on a routine basis.

04:30 The idea is to take out Houthi drones and missiles

04:34 before they can even launch.

04:36 So the US military will say that it has identified,

04:39 you know, a drone or a missile that is loaded

04:42 or, you know, prepared to launch or ready to launch

04:45 against international shipping lanes

04:47 and poses an imminent threat.

04:49 The Houthis have still managed to get missiles

04:52 and drones in the air.

04:53 We've still seen the US Navy shoot down missiles

04:56 and drones in the air,

04:57 and we've also seen them hit commercial ships.

05:00 So while the preemptive strikes are happening

05:02 around the clock, the Houthis are still able

05:05 to get some of their threats airborne.

05:07 The anti-ship ballistic missile threat,

05:09 this is obviously a new threat that we've seen

05:12 in a conflict theater,

05:13 because this is the first time that the US Navy

05:16 has engaged with these threats.

05:18 It is learning a lot from these interceptions.

05:21 Basically, you know, gathering information

05:23 about its weapons system and learning, you know,

05:26 that the systems that, you know, have been tested

05:28 and are performing as they would hope,

05:31 because, you know, we've seen the Navy shoot them down.

05:33 So yeah, it's definitely a very serious threat

05:36 in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden,

05:38 but it's something that the US Navy

05:40 is paying close attention to,

05:42 because this could be a continuous problem down the line,

05:47 should the US ever go to war with China.

05:51 What remains to be seen, though,

05:53 is how often the Houthis are getting, you know, rearmed,

05:58 and, you know, what remains of their inventory.

06:02 So lots of unknowns as to how much of a dent

06:06 the US has put in their attacking capabilities.

06:09 From the Navy's perspective, they, you know,

06:12 you've had people say repeatedly,

06:14 "We'll be here as long as the president needs.

06:16 We'll be here as long as we need to be,"

06:18 you know, until the Houthis stop.

06:20 (helicopter whirring)

06:23 (dramatic music)

06:26 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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