Weapons Depletion and Carrier Rotation... Alarm Bells Ring Over Expanding Frontlines

[Anchor]

Reports indicate that the U.S. military has lost a quarter of its core drone assets in the war with Iran. Meanwhile, the pro-Iranian Houthi rebels in Yemen have announced an attack on Saudi oil facilities.

Reporting from Washington, here is correspondent Lee Hanseok.

[Reporter]

This is the U.S. military's advanced armed drone, the MQ-9 Reaper.

Known as the assassin of the sky due to its precision strike capabilities, it was intensively deployed for operations around the Strait of Hormuz. However, citing U.S. government officials, The Washington Post reported that as the war between the U.S. and Iran has prolonged, at least 45 units have been lost due to enemy fire and communication disruptions.

This exhausts a quarter of the pre-war inventory, with the damages exceeding at least 1.3 billion dollars, or roughly 1.8 trillion Korean won.

The problem goes beyond just drones.

The New York Times reported that as stockpiles of Patriot air defense missiles have dropped to a critical level of under 1,700 rounds, the U.S. is even pulling supplies deployed in Asia and Europe to cover the shortage.

Fatigue among naval forces has also reached its limit.

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, a core pillar of military operations against Iran and the maritime blockade, has failed to even dock at a port for over 200 days, setting a record for the longest consecutive deployment at sea.

As controversies over shortages of daily necessities and deteriorating mental health among crew members spread even to the U.S. Congress, the U.S. military ultimately decided to redeploy the USS George Washington from the Pacific region to relieve the Lincoln.

While the attrition of U.S. military forces is becoming tangible, the Middle Eastern frontlines are expanding further.

Yemen's pro-Iranian Houthi rebels abruptly announced that they attacked Saudi Arabia's Aramco oil refinery facilities using drones.

With the Houthi rebels, who declared the collapse of the truce, following up their Red Sea maritime blockade with strikes on Saudi mainland core energy facilities, the war—which began as a direct confrontation between the U.S. and Iran—is erupting into a major crisis shaking the entire Middle East.

(Video captured by Park Eun-ha | Video edited by Kim Ho-jin)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.