In March, Germany's navy deployed an air-defense frigate to the Red Sea to help push back against the Houthi threat. But the security situation in the waterway has deteriorated so much that Defense Minister Boris Pistorius recently ordered a frigate and accompanying supply ship to avoid the Red Sea and take a much longer route around the Cape of Good Hope, adding thousands of miles onto the journey, according to Der Spiegel.
The frigate Baden-Wurttemburg and the fleet auxiliary Frankfurt-am-Main are on their way back home from a multimonth circumnavigation voyage, which took them to the Panama Canal, San Diego, Incheon, the Taiwan Strait and the Indian state of Goa. German Chancellor Olaf Sholz met the frigate in India over the weekend for a goodwill visit with the crew and give them a sendoff for their voyage home.
On the return voyage to Europe, Baden-Wurttemburg will not be making the short transit through the Red Sea. The decision may have as much to do with the vessel's defensive capabilities as it does with the Houthi threat. For short-range air defense, she carries twin RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile launchers with a total of 42 missiles; she has no long-range air defense capability. Germany could not find an allied naval escort to take her safely through the gauntlet of Houthi anti-ship missiles and bomb boats, according to Spiegel.
The Baden-Wurttemburg class is the German equivalent of the U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship: lightly armed, intended for low-intensity warfare, and troubled by development problems. Baden-Wurttemburg was delivered overweight and listing to starboard, and she was initially refused by Germany's defense procurement agency. She sailed on her first mission in 2023, four years after commissioning and 12 years after her keel was laid.
Yemen's Houthi rebels have been attacking shipping since last fall, and have employed a variety of Iranian ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones to target Western vessels. U.S. forces have repeatedly attempted to tamp down the threat by striking land-based missile storage and launch sites, but Houthi fighters - supplied with Russian intelligence and Iranian arms - continue to strike at undefended merchant ships in the Red Sea. On Monday the group claimed an attack on the Greek bulker Motaro, its first attempted missile strike in 18 days.
