A Fleet of Too Few: Operation Aspides, fatigue and attrition.

Since October 2023, Houthi missiles and drones have been severely disrupting global supply chains and raising the question of how much maritime presence Europe can actually afford. The EU’s Operation Aspides keeps a 1,200 nautical mile corridor open with just three frigates. Each convoy requires millions worth of anti-aircraft missiles, tanker-sized fuel loads and shift schedules that have long since reached the limits of human endurance.

How long can this arrangement of forces be maintained? What are the economic consequences if even a single large tanker is hit? And what does the current state of the magazines reveal about Europe’s willingness to secure future sea routes – from the Baltic Sea to the Strait of Malacca? Malte Ian Lauterbach reports on the situation.
It is 19 October 2023, twelve days after the Hamas-led massacre that left more than 1 200 Israelis dead and engulfed the wider Middle East in flames once more. Gaza burns, Hezbollah rockets rake northern Israel, and Washington is rushing two carrier-strike groups towards the Levant.
Sixty nautical miles north of Bab al-Mandab, the destroyer USS Carney (DDG-64) pushes into a long Red Sea swell, her LM-2500 turbines humming at speed. Carney, an Arleigh Burke Flight I destroyer, carries 96 Mk 41 launch cells, home to a mixture of air-defence and surface attack missiles, an SPY-1D(V) radar, two MH-60R helicopters and just over 280 crew. Tonight, she is the lone picket for US-led Combined Task Force 153, which has patrolled the Red Sea since April 2022.

The time is 16:16 local time and naval history will be written momentarily. Carneys specialized reconnaissance electronics – type “AN/SLQ-32(V)3” strikes. Seconds later, the Combat Information Center (CIC) classifies the contact as a “possible cruise missile uplink”. The SPY-1D(V) radar-auto-generates three tracks, moving fast at Mach 0.7. Further observations identify the tracks as Quds-type land-attack cruise missiles, heading north-northeast, a trajectory consistent with targeting Eilat or Israel’s Tamar gas platform.
The Commanding Officer orders  “General Quarters—AAW. Come right, twenty-eight knots. Fire Standard, ripple four.” As claxons ring on the deck, USS Carney heels into the wind. Four SM-2 Block IIIA air defence missiles leave the forward launcher, on 3-meter tongues of fire, arcing east. The time-of-flight of the missiles is 38 seconds. All three inbound cruise missiles disappear from the screens, as 3 out of the four multi-million-dollar missiles find their targets.
Minutes later, the claxon rings again, with the count now being 18 new targets. CIC classifies them as Samad-3 and Shahed-136 attack drones, altitude 300 ft, range band 75–90 km.
The fight runs ten hours. In the end, Carney’s final expenditure amounts to having fired 21 air defence missiles, and 280 rounds with her 5-inch forward gun. The final tally sits at four cruise missiles and fifteen drones destroyed. Her bridge later notes that the nearest merchant, MSC Toulouse, maintained 14 nautical miles of separation throughout the entire engagement. The Pentagon later calls it the most intense ship-borne air-defence action since Leyte Gulf. For the crew it is simply first contact—a prelude to a campaign that will threaten more than 100 merchant vessels, sink two, kill four seafarers and place ≈ US $3 trillion in annual trade at risk.

Phase 1: 2014 – December 2023

When Ansar Allah al Houthi (commonly the Houthis rebels) seized the capital Sana’a in September 2014, Yemen’s sea-lanes became a theatre of the Saudi Iranian proxy war. On 1 October 2016 a Chinese-made C-802 anti-ship cruise missile struck the UAE-operated catamaran HSV-2 Swift inside Bab al-Mandab.  Bab al-Mandab means “Gate of Tears” in Arabic, a fitting name for the highly contested strait. Saudi-led forces imposed a blockade on Yemen’s western ports; Houthi units sowed mines and launched swarming fast-attack craft. Escalation prompted the US and partners to create Combined Task Force 153 (CTF 153), charged with safeguarding the chokepoint that links the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, where roughly 12 % of the world trade, including 7 % of global LNG cargoes, passes through, with goods worth about US $3 trillion a year.

Phase 2: Operation Prosperity Guardian & EUNAVFOR Aspides

It quickly materialized to western navies that ad-hoc patrols were no longer enough, forcing the West to revive Cold-War convoy playbooks, as near-daily strikes forced up to 20 % of world shipping to route around the Cape of Good Hope; war-risk insurance premia rose ten-fold. By December the four largest shipping-lines—Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, MSC and CMA CGM – halted all east-bound Suez bookings, adding ≈ 25 d and a full bunker reload to an Asia–Europe round-trip. The prices for containers bound from Shanghai to Rotterdam nearly doubled in three weeks.
Later that month, Washington and London launch the aptly named Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG), a 20-nation escort effort that slots modern air-defense vessels and an ever-rotating cast of Danish, French, and Italian frigates into convoy boxes north and south of the strait, in a strategy practiced during the Cold War to protect merchant convoys from Soviet air attack. By New Year’s Day no escorted merchantman had been lost, yet coalition warships had already fired more SAMs than the US Navy used between Desert Storm and its 2018 Syria strikes.

In January the White House authorised dual-track pressure: nightly Tomahawk raids on launch sites and an urgent call for European help. Brussels answered on 8 February with EUNAVFOR Aspides – Greek for “shields.” The mandate: close escort for commercial tonnage, force protection for humanitarian aid, and, more quietly, intelligence hand-offs to US Central Command, codenamed US CENTCOM, the regional command of the US military in the Middle East and Northern Africa. France dispatches AAW-FREMM Alsace, Italy the destroyer Caio Duilio, Spain the frigate Blas de Lezo. Three hulls on a 1 200-nautical-mile beat are never enough, but they prove the concept: by March, 79 ships have transited under EU guard without loss. With the arrival of the German frigate Hessen (F-221) on February 24, 2024 and the Greek Psara on July 14, 2024, the EUNAVFOR ASPIDES task force temporarily grew to five to six ships.

On 18 February 2024, a missile strikes and sinks the Rubymar, headed to Bulgaria with a freight of 21 000 tons of fertilizer. The oil slick is over 18 miles long. Not even a month later, another missile slips through the air defence screen and hits M/V True Confidence, killing three of her crew.

On 12 June a jury-rigged uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) rammed the bulker Tutor; a follow-on cruise-missile finished her.  Twenty‑four hours of dewatering fail; the ship founders and finally sinks on 18 June. The coalition logs its second constructive loss and the first confirmed instance of a combo-shot (surface drone + missile) penetrating an escort box. 

A single day later, two Iranian‑built C-802s cruise missiles hit the Palau‑flagged M/V Verbena  amidships in the Gulf of Aden. Fires rage in hold 3; one deckhand is air‑lifted off by USS Philippine Sea. The same day, US Central Command executes air and missile strikes on coastal targeting radars, USVs and a drone relay van, temporarily blinding the Houthis kill chain. Suez traffic bottoms at ≈ 20 ships per day, the lowest since its reopening in 1975.
In July 2024, the Houthis fired an anti-ship ballistic missile derived from the Iranian Fateh-110 short-range missile. With a range of up to 80 km and a speed of more than Mach 4, the weapon broke up just short of the destroyer USS Thomas Hudner, but the message was clear. Insurers warned that just one ASBM hit on a VLCC supertanker could close the Suez Canal for months; and Egypt is already losing more than $200 million a week in tolls.

„Knife fight in a phone booth “

The pace is brutal: in the first fifteen months after Carney’s action, U.S. destroyers alone fire 120 SM-2, 80 SM-6 and 20 ESSM/SM-3 missiles – more than the Navy expended in the previous 30 years. Commander Cameron Ingram (onboard Thomas Hudner) dubs it “a knife fight in a phone booth”, i.e. close combat in a confined space. Europe’s magazines are in a worse position: sources from the French Ministry of Defense report that Paris reports “double-digit” stocks of Standard missiles in autumn, while London has to withdraw a Type 45 for reloading. “One bad night could completely empty a ship’s magazine”, Rear Adm. Gryparis radios to Brussels. MBDA and DGA announcements confirm urgent replenishment orders: France, the United Kingdom and Italy ordered 218 additional Aster-15/30 guided missiles in March 2025.

As US/UK coalition airstrikes on Yemen continue, Houthi barrages taper to fewer than four attempted launches at the Red Sea per month, one EU frigate is deployed back home for maintenance, folding the gap with a U.S. logistics oiler turned makeshift picket. In November, the final ship for this chapter of the war is a small, unflagged general‑cargo ship taking shrapnel above the beam with no injuries and light damage. Gryparis will later call it “the final hurt inflicted on a merchantman in this campaign.” After that, launches towards the shipping lanes crawl to a halt, with the Houthis focussing their fire on Israeli cities. When Houthi crews test‑fire two modified Qadr MRBMs toward the Gulf of Aden in May of 2025, Washington and London answer with six weeks of uninterrupted air strikes: almost 1 000 aim‑points—launch rails, depots, fiber trunks. Yemeni sources count 140 militia dead, the largest single‑period loss of the war.

Ceasefire – and its limits.

The continued campaign brings both sides to the negotiating table in Oman, and a ceasefire is agreed on May 6. However, the state of Israel or “entities providing it with material support” remain legitimate Houthi targets. Washington halts air strikes and deposits 150 million US dollars with the UN for Yemeni fuel imports.

In exchange Washington halts air‑strikes, pauses the terror‑group redesignation, and funnels US $150 million into a UN‑escrow for Yemeni fuel imports. The cease‑fire holds because everyone needs the pause—but it is a pause cut to Israeli dimensions. Tehran keeps its control over the shipping line; Riyadh its proximate threat; Brussels its duty roster. And the crews still cat‑nap at their consoles, one eye on the radar, one ear on the next Omani phone call. Traffic rebounds to 36–37 ships a day, still barely half the 72-plus pre-crisis norm. No missile has been aimed at a merchantman since November; no coalition SAM fired since 05 May. Yet every convoy brief ends the same way: “Assume launch until Lat/Long cleared.” (until the ship has left the AOR, editor’s note)

While the broader driver of the Red Sea campaign, Iran’s struggle with Israel and the West, continues to accelerate. While the Houthis have significantly increased their shelling of Israeli strategic and economic targets – so far largely unsuccessful – Tehran is now enriching its uranium to over 60 percent U-235 outside the 2013-2015 JCPOA framework, and indirect talks in Muscat and Doha have stalled. The IAEA’s latest quarterly report lists “growing gaps in the continuity of knowledge” at Iran’s Natanz and Fordow facilities – a diplomatic euphemism for the fact that inspectors no longer have insight into Iran’s nuclear facilities. In Tel Aviv, this data gap is interpreted as a sprint towards weapons-grade stockpiles.At the same time, the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel have kicked up their paces once more, with Hezbollah attempting to rearm beyond the Litani, despite having agreed to the contrary. Escalation seems almost inevitable. Every Israeli planning model begins with a preventive strike; every Iranian counter‑move ends with the Houthis as a renewed threat axis.

Fatigue.

At the same time, Rear Adm. Vasileios Gryparis reports Aspides, with 3 ships on station, is in dire need of  seven more frigates and two oilers to meet demand. Three escort ships on a 1 200-nautical-mile long stretch can shepherd no more than four convoys a day—two northbound, two southbound. During early stages of the war, mariners often had to wait for days for a convoy to assemble. To return to pre-war averages, the merchants however demand eight to ten daily group transits. Each convoy is protected by a “triple-layer screen”: an area-air-defence ship 15–20 nm abeam the formation, a close-in point-defence frigate riding shotgun on the high-value unit (usually an LNG carrier), and an aft picket to counter remote-controlled bomb-ladden boats. With only three ships, EUNAVFOR Aspides is compressing this entire stack into a single vessel per convoy, which often leaves dangerous blind arcs in the shallow water of the Bab al-Mandab straits.

The shortage shows up in endurance tables as well. A single french FREMM air- defence frigate burns approximately 100–120 m³ of F-76 every 24 hours of sprint-and-drift escort duty. Without dedicated fleet oilers, each frigate must peel off to Djibouti or Jeddah every six days, forcing Aspides to “gap” one leg of the escort chain or borrow a U.S. combat-logistics ship just to stay on station. Two EU-flagged AOR tankers would close that loop, letting the warships refuel under way and maintain an unbroken shield across the choke point.

Magazine depth is the second choke point. In just fifteen months the task force has expended ≈ 250 surface-to-air missiles—most of them Standard-2 or Aster rounds whose replacement cost exceeds US $1 million apiece—and almost 6 000 rounds of 76 mm/127 mm air-burst ammunition. Rear Adm. Gryparis calls this “hundreds of hard kills,” but that success has a price: a French or Italian FREMM typically sails with 24–32 SAMs on board; a single “busy night” that burns 20 interceptors leaves the forward silo half-empty and the ship one missile-salvo away from being forced off station. Reloading requires pierside craning at Djibouti or Jeddah; vertical replenishment at sea is not yet authorised for these missiles. Until magazines are topped off – a36- to 48-hour round trip – another escort must plug the gap.

But steel is only half the story; the other half is the stamina of the sailors who keep that steel alive. Fatigue is – and always has been – the largest threat to any ship at sea. Fatigue erodes reaction time and judgment, inviting accidents. In December 2024 an American F/A-18F was shot down over the Red Sea by a U.S. cruiser that mis-identified it as a drone. This error was tied by investigators to over-tasked, under-rested CIC watch-standers. Internal NATO guidelines typically aim for ≤ 80 duty hours per sailor per week, yet Red Sea logs show many surface combatants creeping past 95–100 hours.  

In aviation terms fatigue is “the Navy’s black-lung disease”, an occupational hazard akin to the dust a coal miner breathes in every day, that accumulates until it manifests as an accident curve. On deck it shows up as skipped routine tasks, shoddy workmanship, or – worst case – a miss-identification of a civilian airplane, like Iran Air Flight 655, shot down by an exhausted crew confused with the handling of the new electronics aboard USS Vincennes in 1988, with 290 civilians killed. 

The next escalation?

Key point is – with only 3 frigates on station, EUNAVFOR Aspiides cannot sustain the current pace for long. Absent the requested reinforcements, the operation will soon confront a brutal choice: either leave convoys undefended for hours at a time or run its remaining ships—and their crews—straight into mechanical and human exhaustion.

That wider strategic clock keeps ticking even while the Red Sea surface looks calm right now, which is why the coalition insists that Operation Aspides must not be allowed to wind down just because the radar scopes are quiet this week. If that isn’t the case anymore – and the probability inches upward with every new centrifuge Iran installs – the Houthis will be Tehran’s fastest, cheapest retaliatory lever. Their pattern is established: deny the Strait, spook the insurers, and bleed Western treasuries one seven-figure interceptor at a time. Without deeper magazines, rested crews, and those seven additional frigates on call, the EU will be caught earning a moment’s savings today at the cost of a far more expensive scramble tomorrow.

As of now, June 12, 18:12 Zulu, US embassies are already on high alert, all non-essential US troops are being flown out of parts of the Middle East, while Iran is now announcing that it would speed up enrichment and would consider pulling out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Lets also not betray ourselves – EUNAVFOR Aspides also served as exercise for future war in the Baltic Sea. The next fight will begin where Bab al-Mandab paused – in the cold chop between Bornholm’s cables and the oil fields of Norway – and it will start sooner than the magazines can refill if Europe pretends the Red Sea was only someone else’s rehearsal. The lessons learned from the Red Sea also apply to Europe’s northern flanks. The procedures, strategic lessons and inventory lists from Yemen should now be tested in Baltic Sea weather:

• on every Danish transformer island shadowed by an AAW picket.
• on every Norwegian platform.
• on every German LNG jetty looped into the same common operating picture that once tied Djibouti, Jeddah, and the cramped CIC of USS Carney.

Because once a drone skims a North-Sea wind hub—or a Fateh clone splashes 20 nautical miles short of Troll A – insurers will consult the same spreadsheets they opened in December 2023. Detours, surcharges and bare supermarket shelves will follow on schedule.
Europe’s best chance is to have the hulls, the crews and the legal authority in place before that wake appears on the scope – so the Strait of Copenhagen never earns a name as grim as the Gate of Tears.