The cost of Donald Trump’s bombing campaign in Yemen could reach a staggering $1 billion by next week, while having limited success in deterring the Houthi militants it is targeting.
That is the grim assessment Pentagon officials have given in closed briefings to congressional aides and allies in recent days, according to the New York Times.
Their views directly contradict the president’s claim just days ago that the Houthis had been “decimated by the relentless strikes,” which he ordered on 15 March in response to attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.
Instead, the Houthis have adapted to U.S. strikes by reinforcing their bunkers and other command posts, which has allowed them to conserve and continue to fire missiles and respond to airstrikes, the officials reportedly said in private briefings with Congress.
The group has shot down two MQ-9 Reaper drones in the last week, defense officials told Fox News, and three since Trump’s campaign began.
Houthi spokesman Nasruddin Amer said Friday that the group had carried out an attack on U.S. warships overnight in the Red Sea “with a number of cruise missiles and drones,” which suggests the group still retains significant capability.
While the Houthis are still able to launch attacks, the costs of the mission are mounting.
The Pentagon has used $200 million worth of munitions alone, officials told the Times. One U.S. official said the total cost of Trump’s campaign could reach $1 billion by next week, which would require the Pentagon to ask for more funds from Congress.
The cost comes as the Trump administration is currently making sweeping job cuts across the U.S. government in an effort to save money, in a project spearheaded by the world’s richest man and now presidential advisor, Elon Musk.
Trump’s involvement in Yemen has drawn criticism from his own supporters, who have argued that it contradicts his promises to end “endless wars” and his “America First” campaign slogan.
One thing the bombing has achieved, however, is a higher civilian body count.
Iona Craig, a representative of the Yemen Data Project, which conducts in-depth research on the war in Yemen, said Trump’s campaign had killed an estimated 28 civilians in three weeks, among them four children, along with dozens more injured.
That number is already greater than the 21 civilian deaths from the bombing campaign launched by Joe Biden’s administration, which lasted for more than a year.
“In the first week of the Trump strikes, two medical facilities were hit and three educational facilities, including a school in Saada and Al Eiman University in the capital,” Craig told The Independent.
She added that the civilian casualties were higher because of a “notable change” in the intensity of strikes and the targeting of more residential areas to go after Houthi leaders.
Airwars, a research group that monitors civilian casualties caused by airstrikes, said in a new report this week that the Trump administration is choosing targets in Yemen “that pose a more direct risk to civilians and may indicate a higher tolerance to the risk of civilian harm.”
Trump’s bombing campaign has come under greater scrutiny in recent weeks after security officials in his administration inadvertently added a journalist to a group chat in which they shared plans for the initial round of strikes.
In the chat, Michael Waltz, national security advisor to the president, said the strike had achieved its objective of killing a Houthi member.
“The first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed,” Waltz wrote.
“Excellent,” vice president JD Vance wrote in response.
Based on her research, Craig believes that the strike referred to in those messages, on a residential area of al Jaraf, in the capital Sanaa, killed nine civilians and injured at least nine others.
The U.S. conflict with the Iran-backed Houthis is part of a much wider regional war that was sparked by a surprise attack by Hamas on southern Israel on 7 October, 2023. When Israel bombarded Gaza in response, the Houthis joined the fight on the side of Hamas, firing drones and missiles towards Israel.
The group then widened its attacks to target shipping in the Red Sea, promising to end only when Israel ends its war in Gaza, which has now killed more than 50,000 people, mostly civilians.
Joe Biden, Trump’s predecessor, launched airstrikes against Yemen on January 10, 2024, “in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea.”
Those strikes failed to deter the Houthis, and the attacks only stopped when a ceasefire was brokered between Israel and Hamas in January.
The Houthis resumed their attacks when Israel imposed a blockade on food and aid entering Gaza in March, which prompted Trump to launch his own campaign to stop the group.
Announcing the strikes on 15 March, Trump said the Houthis had “waged an unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other, ships, aircraft, and drones.”
"We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective," he wrote on Truth Social, later adding that the campaign was aimed at targeting Houthi leaders and officials.
Despite claiming the strikes have been successful in killing Houthi leaders, the Trump administration has not released the names of those it has killed.
The Houthis have proved remarkably resilient to bombing campaigns in the past. The group has been on the receiving end of US-backed Saudi airstrikes for more than a decade, and yet still controls a third of the country, where most of the population lives, including the capital.
