The EU naval mission Aspides (shield in Greek) in the Red Sea to protect international maritime traffic from the Houthi threat is an important novelty for defense Europe and Italy, but presents significant challenges.
In the region there was already the EU operation Atalanta, which combats Somali piracy in the Gulf of Aden, and the Agenor maritime surveillance and security mission in the Strait of Hormuz, composed of an ad hoc coalition with a strong Franco-Italian presence.
A triple leap in quality for Europe’s defense
Aspides represents a leap in quality. First of all because it responds to a significant military threat to European interests: the Houthi attacks on civilian ships transiting the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb have put lives at risk, violated the principle of freedom of navigation and damaged international trade with serious consequences for import-export and European energy supply – particularly Italian. Something that the EU cannot afford to suffer without responding.
Secondly, Aspides constitutes progress for Europe’s defense because it deploys the armed forces in the service of a foreign policy aimed at protecting European interests without contributing to an escalation in the Middle East. Intercepting Houthi attacks on ships in transit without hitting Yemeni territory embodies the desire to limit the military response to a well-defined and unjustifiable threat, without increasing already existing tensions.
Furthermore, the mission is a good example of European strategic autonomy in partnership with Anglo-Saxon and global allies. The intensification of Houthi attacks from November 2023 onwards against dozens of merchant ships, using drones, missiles and vessels, led the USA, the United Kingdom and a dozen other countries to launch Operation Prosperity Guardian as early as last December. In the EU, the desire to launch a maritime security mission in the area was already there at the time, but Spain’s veto blocked the process. The joint effort of Italy, France and Germany led to the overcoming of the veto and the launch of Aspides on February 19th. The EU mission has its own precise mandate and rules of engagement, based on UN resolution 2722/2024, and there will be an exchange of information with Prosperity Guardian to exploit synergies between the two missions.
The logistics of the Aspides mission and its main challenges
At an operational level, Aspides relies on four ships supplied by Italy, France, Germany and Belgium, and embarked aircraft such as helicopters and drones, for a total of around a thousand men and women in the field. The headquarters is in Larissa, Greece, led by Commodore Vasilios Griparis, while the embarked operational command is of the Italian Rear Admiral Stefano Costantino, aboard the destroyer Caio Duilio. Aspides’ mandate covers an extensive area from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf including the north-western part of the Indian Ocean, in which the few European assets will have to make the most of information sharing. To this end, all assets will be important, possibly including aircraft such as the Gulfstream G550 of the Italian Air Force, satellites and activities in the cyber and electromagnetic spectrum fields.
The biggest risk is a Houthi attack combining a large number of drones with a few missiles, capable in some cases of saturating the defenses of a single European ship. European forces will have to activate all weapons systems, from artillery to missiles and torpedoes, to electronic warfare, to neutralize anything the Houthis could launch by air or sea. The fact that it is a defensive mission does not mean that there is no shooting, especially if the alternative is being sunk, and this must be clarified in the rules of engagement and ensured in terms of weapons systems. Italian, French and German ships have already shot down some Houthi drones.
In the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb, given the intense commercial traffic and the simultaneous presence of several military missions, the problem of friendly fire cannot be excluded, as experienced by the Western drone almost shot down by the German Aspides frigate at the end of February. The challenge, therefore, is to ensure both timely and effective decision-making and ongoing coordination with Prosperity Guardian and all allied military activities in the area.
The scale of the Houthi attacks has already put the British Royal Navy in difficulty, which found itself short of adequate ammunition on site. Italian ships have advanced, but the navy – like others in Europe – suffers from a focus on low-intensity operations which over time has led to under-dimensioning of firepower and ammunition stocks. Should massive and repeated Houthi attacks occur, there will be the challenge of promptly supplying Aspides with adequate ammunition, deploying additional assets if necessary, and in a worst-case scenario, sustaining casualties. This requires strong political will and rapid decision-making in the capitals involved, in Brussels and, at the military level, in Larissa and by Constantine and the commanders of individual ships. Aspides does not face poorly equipped and poorly organized Somali pirates like Atalanta, but a quasi-state actor that has taken control of two-thirds of Yemeni territory, including the arsenals of the national armed forces, and enjoys the economic and political support of Iran. The mission’s mandate lasts one year but it is clear that the European military presence in the Red Sea goes well beyond 2024 and it is difficult to predict what could happen in the Middle East in that period of time.
To be a true shield, Aspides needs a European, military and political posture, clear, decisive, and ready to face the evolving situation. Only in this way can the Houthi threat be stopped, freedom of navigation in the Red Sea restored, civilian traffic in transit and national and European interests protected.