President Trump said this week that Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen have been “decimated by the relentless strikes” that he ordered beginning on March 15.
But that’s not what Pentagon and military officials are privately telling Congress and allied countries.
In closed briefings in recent days, Pentagon officials have acknowledged that there has been only limited success in destroying the Houthis’ vast, largely underground arsenal of missiles, drones and launchers, according to congressional aides and allies.
The officials briefed on confidential damage assessments say the bombing is consistently heavier than strikes conducted by the Biden administration, and much bigger than what the Defense Department has publicly described.
But Houthi fighters, known for their resiliency, have reinforced many of their bunkers and other targeted sites, frustrating the Americans’ ability to disrupt the militia’s missile attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea, according to three congressional and allied officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.
In just three weeks, the Pentagon has used $200 million worth of munitions, in addition to the immense operational and personnel costs to deploy two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 bombers and fighter jets, as well as Patriot and THAAD air defenses to the Middle East, the officials said.
The total cost could be well over $1 billion by next week, and the Pentagon might soon need to request supplemental funds from Congress, one U.S. official said.
So many precision munitions are being used, especially advanced long-range ones, that some Pentagon contingency planners are growing concerned about overall Navy stocks and implications for any situation in which the United States would have to ward off an attempted invasion of Taiwan by China.
The U.S. strikes, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named Operation Rough Rider after the troops Theodore Roosevelt led in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, likely could continue for six months, officials said.
A senior Pentagon official late Thursday pushed back on the assessments described by the congressional and allied officials.
The senior official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said the airstrikes had exceeded their goal in the campaign’s initial phase, disrupting senior Houthi leaders’ ability to communicate, limiting the group’s response to a handful of ineffective counter strikes, and setting the conditions for subsequent phases, which he declined to discuss. “We’re on track,” the official said.
U.S. officials said the strikes had damaged the Houthis’ command and control structure. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement that the strikes had been “effective” in killing top Houthi leaders, whom she did not identify, and said the operation was reopening Red Sea shipping.
“Intelligence community assessments confirm that these strikes killed top Houthi leaders and destroyed several facilities the Houthis may use to produce advanced conventional weapons,” Ms. Gabbard said.
The strikes are at the center of a debacle involving Mr. Hegseth and other senior members of the Trump administration, in which those officials discussed sensitive details about the initial bombing raids in Yemen on March 15 in a group chat on a commercial messaging app. Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, created the group but accidentally added a journalist to it.
Trump administration officials say the air and naval strikes are intended to pressure the Houthis to halt attacks that have disrupted international shipping lanes in the Red Sea for more than a year.
The Biden administration carried out strikes against the Houthis, but at a smaller scale and mostly against infrastructure and military sites. Trump administration officials say the current strikes are also aimed at killing senior Houthi officials.
“Everybody should recognize we are doing the world a great favor going after these guys, because this can’t continue,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters last week.
The Trump administration has not said why it thinks its campaign against the group will succeed after the Biden administration’s yearlong effort largely failed to deter the Houthi attacks, which have also targeted Israel.
“The administration must also explain to Congress and the American people its expected path forward given the failure of previous such efforts,” Senators Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, and Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, wrote in a letter to Mr. Trump this week.
The Pentagon has not provided details about the attacks since March 17, when it said more than 30 Houthi targets had been hit on the first day.
A spokesman for the military’s Central Command said on March 24 that the strikes had “destroyed command-and-controlled facilities, air defense systems, weapons manufacturing facilities and advanced weapons storage locations.”
A senior Defense Department official said on Thursday in response to questions from The New York Times: “We have already begun seeing the effects of the heavy strikes against the Houthis. For instance, ballistic missile attacks from the Houthis against Israel are down in the last week.”
The Houthis, the senior official said, “are becoming more and more reactive as the U.S. airstrikes degrade their capability and capacity.”
The senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, denied that Pentagon briefers had told congressional and allied officials that the strikes could last six months, saying that length of time “has NEVER been discussed.”
Central Command posts images on social media of jets conducting missions against the Houthis, but it has repeatedly refused to disclose how many targets have been struck so far or to identify the several Houthi commanders, including a top missile expert, it says it has killed.
Videos posted on social media by Central Command show the kinds of longer-range weapons Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets have unleashed on Yemen. They include AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapons — a GPS-guided glide bomb — and air-launched cruise missiles.
The glide bombs, which carry 200 pounds of explosives apiece, can be launched more than 70 nautical miles from their targets. The cruise missiles deployed by Navy warplanes can fly more than twice as far.
They are among the longest-range aerial weapons Navy warplanes have available to use in this kind of operation, and have been used alongside Tomahawk cruise missiles fired by accompanying warships.
The use of such long-range weapons is in direct response to the threat posed by the Houthis’ air-defense weapons, which have shot down several U.S. military drones in the area. U.S. commanders involved in Asia-Pacific planning see them as critical for any potential conflict with China.
The United States began the new offensive on March 15 in parts of northern Yemen controlled by the Houthis. Navy attack planes from the Truman and Air Force fighter jets, flying from bases in the Middle East, have conducted strikes against Houthi targets each day since, U.S. and Yemeni officials said.
The initial strikes were the opening salvo in what senior American officials said was a new offensive against the militants and a message to Iran as Mr. Trump seeks a nuclear deal with its government.
The Pentagon has moved Patriot and THAAD air defense systems to a few Arab nations that are worried about escalation by the Houthis in the region. The United Arab Emirates is giving logistical and advisory support to the U.S. military in its campaign in Yemen, a U.S. official said.
Saudi Arabia led the Emirates and other nations in a campaign of airstrikes against the Houthis for more than six years, but stopped after failing to achieve any goals. The Saudi-led coalition killed many Yemeni civilians with U.S.-supplied munitions.
Unlike President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Trump has delegated the authority to strike targets to regional and local commanders, allowing them to attack Houthi sites more quickly and efficiently, commanders say.
Houthi officials say the strikes have hit residential areas and buildings in the heart of Yemen’s capital, Sana, resulting in more than 60 civilian casualties.
According to a report released on Thursday by Airwars, a British organization that assesses claims of civilian harm in conflicts, a woman and four children were reported killed in one of the strikes on March 15.
Many of the attacks took place in populated areas, which the report says suggests “that the Trump administration is choosing targets that pose a more direct risk to civilians and may indicate a higher tolerance to the risk of civilian harm.”
A U.S. official said on Thursday that the Pentagon investigates all claims of civilian casualties, adding that the military goes to great lengths to reduce the risks.
On the first day of the new offensive, Mr. Trump said on social media that the Houthis “have waged an unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other, ships, aircraft, and drones.”
Mr. Trump said this week that U.S. strikes would continue until the Houthis “are no longer a threat to Freedom of Navigation.” He warned “the real pain is yet to come” if they did not stop.
On March 15, Mr. Trump also singled out Iran’s rulers.
“To Iran: Support for the Houthi terrorists must end IMMEDIATELY!” he wrote. “Do NOT threaten the American People, their President, who has received one of the largest mandates in Presidential History, or Worldwide shipping lanes. If you do, BEWARE, because America will hold you fully accountable.”
U.S. intelligence agencies have struggled to identify and locate Houthi weapons systems, which are produced in subterranean factories and smuggled in from Iran. In late 2024, the Biden administration devoted more surveillance aircraft to gather information about Houthi targets. Trump officials inherited that intelligence, and Israel also supplied target information, the U.S. officials said.
Saeed Al-Batati contributed reporting from Al Mukulla, Yemen, and Julian E. Barnes from Washington.
