Top U.S. Navy Official Expresses Concerns About Cost of Yemen Bombing

Admiral James Kilby, who is the acting Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) expressed concern about the increasing cost of continuous U.S. military operations in the Red Sea and its bombing campaign of Yemen. Something the Trump Administration has been reported to be concerned about in private.

Speaking at a conference in Maryland aboard the missile destroyer USS Carney, Kilby stated he “regrets” the high cost missiles that are used and the U.S. Navy's reliance on them. 

Kilby would go onto further state that was concerned about not having better ways to combat the ‘Houthis’ in Yemen, who are known as Ansarullah. 

In a New York Times report last week, Trump Administration officials were quoted as having said that the U.S. had already burned through over 200 million dollars worth of precision munitions in three weeks of its bombing campaign of Yemen and that the total cost of the campaign was going to exceed 1 billion dollars by the following week. 

Contributing to the rising costs are the fact that the Yemenis have shot down three MQ-9 Reaper drones in the last month, each of which cost 30 million dollars each.

Additionally, the constant drone attacks by the Yemenis on American Naval ships have the U.S. Navy using missiles that cost 2 million dollars a piece to shoot down drones that are estimated to have cost around 2,000 dollars to build. 

Admiral Kilby on Tuesday seemed to confirm these sentiments by saying "I had not been thoughtful enough to think about the UAV threat, where I think a much lesser-powered weapon would have done what we needed it to do," 

The Trump Administration has denied the same NYT reporting that the Pentagon expects the bombing to continue for at least six months, though the White House has yet to provide a timeline on how long they expect to continue the current pace of operations.