Carrier Air Wing 1 conducts flight operations from the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman on March 15, 2025, in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. (U.S. Navy)

U.S. military attacks on Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen came with more firepower and less hesitancy to strike in populated areas than under the Biden administration, military analysts said this week.

The strikes conducted over the weekend and Monday targeted larger radar, command and launcher sites in towns, said Bryan Clark, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology.

Similar actions during the previous White House were limited to isolated, rural facilities that usually were small weapons depots or minor command and sensor nodes, he said.

“Although the strikes this last weekend likely resulted in civilian casualties and damage, they also likely degraded the Houthis’ capabilities more effectively than previous strikes,” said Clark, who believes renewed U.S. efforts could prevent the Houthis from targeting shipping and resupplying their forward bases.

The Houthi militants have fired on commercial and military shipping in the Red Sea since shortly after the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023. They paused attacks following a ceasefire agreement in January but threatened to resume targeting ships if Israel didn’t lift a blockade on aid to Gaza that began earlier this month.

U.S. forces successfully struck more than 30 Houthi facilities over three days, likely killing dozens of Houthi fighters, Air Force Lt. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, director of operations for the Joint Staff, said during a Monday press briefing with top Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell.

Yemeni citizens were not expected to be among the deaths, Grynkewich said.

Grynkewich and Parnell offered few details regarding targets and weaponry, citing the need for secrecy with an ongoing operation at the time. They did say that at least one drone facility was included in strikes Saturday that killed several people.

The U.S. strikes probably included the use of joint direct attack munitions and laser-guided bombs since the attacks involved aircraft, Clark said.

In this screenshot from a Navy video, USS Gettysburg, part of the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, launches a Tomahawk cruise missile during strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen on March 15, 2025. (U.S. Navy via Facebook)

“They would likely need LGBs to achieve the precision to hit sites situated in populated areas and aircraft would need to use large JDAMs to destroy buried command bunkers and weapons magazines,” said Clark, noting that the Houthis “lack sophisticated air defenses, so aircraft could approach closely enough to use bombs.”

On Monday, President Donald Trump said Houthi retaliation would be viewed as an attack from Tehran.

“Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!” Trump wrote on the social media site X.

The Houthis have proved resilient since capturing the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in 2014 in an ongoing civil war, weathering attacks by a Saudi-led coalition and counterattacks by U.S. forces more recently.

The strikes by superior forces have thus far been unable to deter the Houthis, said Farea al-Muslimi, a research fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Program who focuses on Yemen and the wider Persian Gulf region.

“The Houthis are an extremely reckless and indifferent group,” said al-Muslimi, who added Iran was happy with Houthi actions and was unlikely to intercede against them.

Even if Iran tried, the Houthis are stubborn and unlikely to back down, he said.

Other analysts said U.S. continued strikes in Yemen are unlikely to dampen Houthi resolve.

Bombing people or groups into submission has a long record of failure, said Jan van Tol, a retired Navy captain and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. He cited U.S. actions in Vietnam, strikes against al-Qaida in the 1990s and operations against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the 1990s and early 2000s as examples.

Houthi attacks will continue “until the sponsor, the Iranian regime, is sufficiently punished, whether financially or otherwise (e.g. militarily), to cause the (Ayatollah) Khomeini to judge the costs not worth the benefits of rearming the Houthis and other proxies,” van Tol said in an email. “The regime has a remarkably consistent record of pursuing its aims relentlessly for 45-plus years now.”

Hours after the U.S. strikes in Yemen, a Houthi spokesman said the group had successfully targeted the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and its strike group. U.S. Central Command said that there have been no injuries or damage to Navy sailors or ships from Houthi actions.

An attempted Houthi attack on Saturday fell short of the group’s claims, missing the target by more than 100 miles, Grynkewich said.

CENTCOM added in a Tuesday statement that the Houthis have begun seizing World Food Program food stocks from a warehouse in the governorate of Saada near Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia.

Stars and Stripes reporter Lara Korte contributed to this report.