The Who-this?

So the US has put together a task force with some of our NATO allies as well as Bahrain and Seychelles to protect shipping in the Red Sea from Houthi attacks. 

"As of Monday, details on what ships will be involved in the force were not available, a Pentagon spokesperson told USNI News Monday following the announcement.

The U.S. Navy has at least three destroyers in the vicinity of the Bab el Mandeb strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden – USS Carney (DDG-64), USS Mason (DDG-87) and USS Thomas Hudner (DDG-116) have all operated in the region. The U.K. Royal Navy guided-missile destroyer HMS Diamond (D34) and the French Navy guided-missile frigate FS Languedoc (653) have operated in the Red Sea as well."

The Houthis, whose slogan is "God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Cursed be the Jews, Victory to Islam" are obviously Big Mad about the whole Gaza thing and are almost certainly being egged on by Tehran and Moscow, who are eager to put a stick in the spokes of as many western wheels as possible.

Meanwhile, BP has announced that it will be suspending oil shipping through the Red Sea, which will do nothing good for petrol prices.

On Monday, oil giant BP became the latest company to announce it would be pausing its shipments through the Red Sea. Several shipping companies, including MSC, Maersk, Euronav and the Evergreen Group, have said they are also avoiding the Suez Canal as militants target cargo vessels.

Roughly 10 percent of all maritime oil trade goes through the Red Sea — which connects to the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal. Without access to the Red Sea route, many ships will have to take the far longer and costlier journey around Africa to reach their destinations.

So the question is whether the west is going to keep shooting down $20k RPVs from Ali's House of Discount Drones with multi-million dollar SM-2 and Sea Viper missiles, or are we going to try a strike using carrier aircraft and cruise missiles to knock out Houthi launch sites and storage facilities. Because in the latter case it would have to be a large enough strike to get them to knock it off for a bit, without being so large as to widen the shooting war(s) going on in the Middle East right now.

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