The French navy has been defeated by the Yemenis in the Battle of the Red Sea:
France’s Aquitaine-class FREMM frigate Alsace has turned tail from the Red Sea after running out of missiles and munitions repelling attacks from the Yemeni armed forces, according to its commander, Jerome Henry.
“We didn’t necessarily expect this level of threat. There was an uninhibited violence that was quite surprising and very significant. [The Yemenis] do not hesitate to use drones that fly at water level, to explode them on commercial ships, and to fire ballistic missiles,” Henry told French news outlet Le Figaro in an exclusive interview published on 11 April.
“We had to carry out at least half a dozen assistances following [Yemeni] strikes,” he added.
The commander of the Alsace also revealed that, after a 71-day deployment, all combat equipment was depleted.
“From the Aster missile to the 7.62 machine gun of the helicopter, including the 12.7mm, 20mm, or 76mm cannon, we dealt with three ballistic missiles and half a dozen drones,” Henry adds.
According to the French commander, the Franco–Italian Aster missile – each carrying a price tag of up to $2 million – “was pushed to its limits” by the Yemeni armed forces, as the Alsace had to use it “on targets that we did not necessarily imagine at the start.”
They cheated, they surprised us by shooting at us! The surprise on the part of the former colonial powers is almost comical, considering the way in which things that were obvious to every armchair history buff doesn’t seem to have quite penetrated the skulls of the various admirals and defense ministers of Clown World.
However, it does make what always appeared to be the strange behavior of Civil War and WWI generals a little more understandable, as apparently no military adapts easily to technological changes that necessitate new and different tactics and strategies.