Why Red Sea pickets are a poor convoy template

Peer conflict would probably require convoying and the technologies and escorts needed to sustain it. Red Sea operations faced a weaker opponent, so their station-picket arrangement is a poor model for that war. Alex Clarke alleges that foreign-flagged ships supplied targeting intelligence to the Houthis while rules of engagement and fear of widening the war prevented attacks on them. He also regards some claims about Houthi success as exaggerated. A separate constraint was the shortage of sufficiently capable air-defense ships that nations were willing to deploy. With more suitable escorts, a moving convoy could have been used in place of station pickets.