WASHINGTON (Dispatches) — Yemeni forces have shot down seven U.S. Reaper drones in less than six weeks, a loss of aircraft worth more than $200 million in what is becoming the most dramatic cost to the Pentagon of the military aggression against the country.
According to defense officials, three of the drones were shot down in the past week — suggesting Yemen’s targeting of the unmanned aircraft flying over the country has improved. The drones were doing attack runs or conducting surveillance, and they crashed both into the water and onto land, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.
The U.S. has increased its attacks on Yemen, launching daily strikes since March 15, when President Donald Trump ordered a new, expanded campaign. He promised to use “overwhelming lethal force” until Yemeni forces cease their attacks on Israeli-linked ships along a vital maritime corridor.
The sophisticated drones, built by General Atomics, cost about $30 million each, and generally fly at altitudes of more than 40,000 feet (12,100 meters). Yemeni leaders have consistently touted the strikes in public statements. One of the defense officials said the U.S. lost Reaper drones on March 31 and on April 3, 9, 13, 18, 19 and 22.
In addition to downing the drones, Yemeni forces have been persistently firing missiles and one-way attack drones at U.S. military ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. 
The U.S. has been using an array of warships, fighter jets, bombers and drones to strike Yemen, and aircraft can now launch from two Navy carriers in the region.
The Pentagon decided in March to beef up the Navy warship presence in West Asia, ordering the USS Harry S. Truman to extend its deployment there, as the USS Carl Vinson steamed toward the area.
The Truman, along with two of the destroyers and a cruiser in its strike group, is now in the Red Sea. And the Vinson, along with two destroyers and a cruiser, is in the Gulf of Aden.
The third destroyer assigned to the Truman is in the Mediterranean Sea. And two other U.S. Navy destroyers are in the Red Sea, but aren’t part of the Truman’s group.
It has been rare in recent years for the U.S. to have two aircraft carriers in West Asia at the same time. Navy leaders have generally been opposed to the idea because it disrupts ship maintenance schedules and delays time at home for sailors strained by the unusually high combat tempo.
The strategic change comes amid rising civilian casualties from the U.S.-led campaign, according to Airwars, a UK-based monitoring group.
Airwars estimates that between 27 and 55 civilians were killed in U.S. strikes during March.  
Earlier this month, a U.S. airstrike targeted the Ras Isa port, also in Hudaydah, killing at least 80 people and wounding more than 150.
This was followed by another attack on Monday, which killed 12 people and wounded more than 30 others in Yemen’s capital Sanaa.
In retaliation, Yemeni forces have targeted mainly Israeli, U.S. and British ships passing through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in protest against Israel’s war on Gaza. They have said the attacks would stop if Israel agreed to a permanent ceasefire.
From November 2023 until this January, they targeted more than 100 vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two of them and killing four sailors. That has greatly reduced the flow of Israeli trade through the Red Sea corridor, which typically sees $1 trillion of goods move through it annually. 
On Thursday, the leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah movement said retaliatory operations carried out in solidarity with Gazans have effectively halted the movement of Israeli and US vessels near Yemen’s waters.
“The Bab al-Mandab and the Arabian Sea are closed to Israeli and American ships. That’s a fact,” Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said in a televised speech.
The U.S. was hoping to achieve air superiority over Yemen within 30 days, officials said, and degrade the country’s air defense systems enough to begin a new phase focusing on ramping up 

intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance of senior resistance leaders in order to target and kill them, the officials said.
The U.S. does not have boots on the ground in Yemen, so it relies on overhead surveillance — much of it from the MQ9s—to conduct battlefield damage assessments and track fighters.
But the consistent loss of the drones has made it more difficult for the U.S. to degrade the country’s combat capabilities. 
The intelligence community has assessed in recent days that over nearly six weeks of U.S. bombing, Yemen’s ability and intent to keep lobbing missiles at U.S. and commercial vessels in the Red Sea and at Israel is little changed, as is its command-and-control structure. 
Yemeni fighters have long proven to be extremely resilient, burying their equipment deep underground. They withstood a yearslong campaign by Saudi Arabia to eliminate them, and the Biden administration attacked them for over a year with limited impact.
The costs of the intensified aggression, meanwhile, are only rising. The operation cost the U.S. nearly $1 billion in just the first three weeks, and the U.S. has continued striking Yemen daily for over a month.
The large-scale operation has rattled some officials at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, who have complained in recent weeks about the large number of long-range weapons being expended by CENTCOM that would be critical in the event of a war with China.