As the title suggests, this is my point of view, and the following are all explanations, and those who like to comment just by looking at the title can comment.
In modern warfare, the weaker side tends to build underground structures in advance, using tunnel warfare instead of ground street battles to deal with the stronger side's army.
Houthi members on the ground
Let me give you two famous examples.
In the first case, Russia has been attacking the underground military base of the Mariupol steel plant for a long time. In fact, this underground base was an important anti-nuclear, biological and chemical facility during the Soviet era, covering an area of 11 square kilometers. You can even run a train inside. After Ukraine's independence, it asked NATO to help transform it into an underground military base against Russia. This underground fortified fortress caused a lot of damage to the attacking Russian army, and it took months to storm it.
Schematic diagram of the underground fortress of the Mariupol steel plant
In the second example, Hamas broke through the separation wall that Israel had built for more than a decade, attacked Israel by surprise, and kidnapped a group of hostages. Israel has quickly invaded Gaza, but it has long been helpless against the tunnels more than 500 kilometers deep 30 meters below Gaza. Since 2016, Israel has received $320 million in military aid from the United States to develop technology to destroy tunnels, but it has still not been able to deal a devastating blow to the underground tunnels in Gaza. Later, it was reported that Israel had poured large quantities of seawater into the tunnels in Gaza in an attempt to force Hamas out of the tunnels. Eventually, Israel's optimism turned to pessimism, and it was never able to fully clear and occupy all of Hamas's tunnels, and many of the kidnapped Israeli hostages have not been rescued to this day.
Part of an underground tunnel excavated by Hamas in northern Gaza
It can be said that if the militarily weaker side had started to build complex and huge underground structures a few years ago, it would have been very difficult to attack these underground structures from the ground as long as sufficient materials had been stored in advance.
This is because satellite signals cannot penetrate the ground and cannot clearly obtain a map of underground structures, so GPS positioning devices are generally useless in attacking underground tunnels. Even if a ground-penetrating bomb is used to penetrate underground tunnels, it can only play a certain destructive role, and it still cannot replace the special forces to personally enter the tunnel for mapping or combat. This is a new situation encountered in modern warfare after the escalation of tunnel warfare, and it may be the last card to save the life of the weaker side.
If the troops in the tunnels have lost the ability to attack the ground forces on their own initiative, as long as the pre-stored food, water, and ammunition are sufficient to support them for a long time or even several years, as long as the ground troops withdraw due to insufficient logistical supplies, they will be considered victorious.
Some time ago, the Houthis caused great military harassment to the merchant ships of the United States and the West through the Red Sea, and the United States and Britain and other countries had to send warships to escort them here. However, the Houthis are not afraid of US aircraft carriers and continue to carry out military strikes.
At that time, everyone was speculating whether the US-British and other multinational coalition forces would send ground troops to land in Yemen and carry out a major face-to-face attack on the Houthis. But in the end, the United States only vented its anger by bombing a small number of poor ground targets of the Houthis through the air, so as to silence those who demand revenge at home and abroad, and also save some face for itself.
It is not that the armies of the United States, Britain, and other countries do not want to land in Yemen, and the military strength of the US military is not unadvanced, and the current comprehensive combat strength of the US military is still very strong, but the US military cannot handle the complex structure of underground feeding buildings. The United States will absolutely not participate in this kind of war, and no one will encourage it, even if its father Israel personally wants it to end.
The current Houthis actually began to build underground tunnels many years ago, and it is estimated that there are already many networked and complex tunnels similar to the underground of Gaza under the vast mountainous terrain of Yemen, and the scale should be larger.
This is certainly not an unfounded assumption, but has been analyzed by Western research departments through high-definition satellite images.
Analysis of satellite imagery by the United States and the West has found that the Houthis are digging deep and building new, larger underground military installations to strengthen their protective role in the event of future conflicts.
Yemen's land area close to the Red Sea is mountainous
The Houthis already control most of Yemen, which is mountainous and mountainous. The Houthis have been using underground facilities since 2004, when the so-called Saada war broke out between the Yemeni government and rebel groups in northern Yemen. In September of the same year, Yemeni forces killed the group's first leader, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi. Allegedly, the Yemeni army found him hiding in a cave and poured gasoline into it and set it on fire, burning the Houthi to death.
The leadership of the group was then transferred to Hussein's brother, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, and the group was officially renamed the Houthis. Since then, the Houthis have made extensive use of natural caves and smaller tunnels in Yemen's rugged mountains to wage a war against then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh's government for more than six years, followed by a seven-year war against the Saudi-led coalition.
Saleh's government has built a number of large underground facilities, some of which are military installations and others that protect high-ranking government members and assets. After the fall of the Saleh regime, the Houthis discovered several such sites. Since 2010, the Houthis have been renovating Saleh-era underground facilities. Satellite imagery shows that debris is being cleared at the entrance to the tunnel, new vehicle tracks lead to the tunnel, and construction vehicles have appeared at the Al Kaffa military base, the former presidential palace and the Yemeni television building in Sana'a, as well as the military. Large piles of excavated waste soil suggest that Hafa's work may have included a major expansion of the original facility.
Abandoned soil excavated underground in 2023 near Saada
During this period, Saudi airstrikes on the exits of some Houthi underground targets were ineffective.
The Houthis reached a ceasefire agreement with the Saudi-led coalition in April 2022, after which they began more extensive underground construction work. Satellite imagery shows that the Houthis have built at least two new underground facilities.
Newly discovered underground structures in 2024 near Saada
At the end of 2022, the Houthis began building a new facility in the valley near Saada. As of February 2024, satellite imagery shows that the three tunnel entrances are wide enough to accommodate heavy vehicles and large piles of excavated waste soil at the site. Two other sites in the vicinity of Saada also showed characteristics consistent with the construction of military underground facilities, but it was not possible to determine whether they were new military bases.
Satellite map of the vicinity of Al Halfa in 2018
A 2022 map of the vicinity of Al Halfa with new underground structures
Underground construction is also underway at the former Yemeni Army Scud missile base in Jabbar Atan, Sana'a. In the second half of 2023, the Houthis began construction of a large tunnel, indicating that the construction of a large underground facility is underway.
2024 satellite map of Jabbar Atan's former Yemeni Army Scud missile base
The entrances to the Houthi secret tunnels are large enough to accommodate heavy vehicles, and these refurbished and newly constructed underground facilities are likely to be the arsenal of strategic missiles and drones that hide part of the Houthis.
During the seven-year war with the Saudi coalition, Houthi underground facilities withstood airstrikes by the Saudi coalition. Not so long ago, the operation "Poseidon Archers", a so-called long-range air attack on the Houthis by the United States, proved to have also caused much damage to the Houthis.
It turns out that the Houthi underground structures are far stronger and more complex than Hamas's Gaza tunnels, and so far the United States and the West have not obtained the true distribution map of the Houthi underground tunnels. If the U.S. military were to attack rashly, it would probably suffer huge military and human losses, and it would be impossible to completely eliminate the Houthis.
There is now a perception that the Houthis are short of food and are now requesting food aid. If the United States and the West cut off food aid to Yemen, will the Houthis starve to death and the US military will win without a fight?
It's hard, and there's hardly anything possible.
In fact, most countries in the world are net importers of food, and Yemen is also highly dependent on imported food, spending 15% of its GDP on food imports. Yemen has a small population, and its arable land can barely sustain the Yemeni people's food rations if it is grown entirely with food. However, Yemen needs to grow coffee and other products for export to earn a higher profit, which takes up a lot of arable land for growing food, resulting in a lack of food production in Yemen.
Malnutrition is rampant among the Yemeni population, with water supplies often contaminated and frequent outbreaks of infectious waterborne diseases, including cholera. More than 50% of Yemeni households are dependent on food aid, with the majority coming from other Middle East and North African countries, including Egypt, the UAE and Turkey, which have traditionally been highly dependent on Russia/Ukraine for grain exports.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has created a current international food supply shortage, which is a global problem, and Yemen is not alone. But since the Houthis began to build underground structures more than a decade ago, it is believed that a considerable amount of food and supplies have been stored in the underground structures. The food that the Houthis want should be what the Yemeni people need to eat now. For humanitarian reasons, it is impossible for the international community to cut off food aid to the Yemeni population.
Therefore, it is impossible to expect to starve the Houthis to death without food aid. Once Yemen runs out of food and a large number of refugees overflow, this is not a good thing for the whole world, including the United States and the West.
Therefore, neither can they cut off the international community's food aid to the Yemeni people, but they also dare not land in Yemen to fight a tunnel war with the Houthis, which is the real situation faced by the US-British coalition forces in the Red Sea escort.