The US Navy defeated a large scale attack by Iranian backed Houties in the Red Sea this weekend, the largest single attack to date. US warships shot down at least twenty eight drones in just four hours. Days earlier, the Houties fired an anti ship ballistic missile at the Envy True Confidence, a commercial bulk carrier, killing three sailors.
How's our deterrence going?
The largest attack over the weekend since this whole thing started a little more from Jennifer Griffin on Fox.
Senthcom Commander General Eric Krilla, just back from the region told Congress Iran is not second guessing backing proxies.
Iran is undeterred in support to the Huthies.
They're undeterred and their support to am Hezbala, their support to hamast So.
Iran's completely undeterred supporting the proxies. And then when I see the headline over the weekend won thousand US troops deploying to build offshore port in god, how do we not end up attacked and sucked into this thing?
To discuss that hot spot and several others, please welcome Mike Lyons, the Shocian and military analyst Mike.
It's always a pleasure. How are you.
Hey, Good morning guys. Great to be back.
I feel like I'm not hearing anybody ask this question anywhere. Maybe there's an obvious reason. I'm just an idiot, but we're sending a thousand troops to build a port and Gaza. Why wouldn't we be a target if we're a target all over the Middle East?
No, no question, They're going to be a target. And this is I'm finding it a polarizing issue with other analysts I'm speaking to, so okay, it's very political, and that's really the bottom line is because from a political perspective, the military wants to show it has this capability, and then the Army has this capability.
That's where it's coming from. Of all things.
It's not something that the Navy does. But Ak Dearborn Corps has a ship that's stationed off of Virginia and it's heading to the Middle East right now, and the Navy will support it. And there's a it's called j LOTS. It's a joint command that the Army and Navy will get together and work with and marines. About a thousand marines have been activated in order to provide the security force for it, so it will take a few months
and to get it all set up. And where military analysts I think are conflicted is it will create a big target. It could be similar to what happened in eighty three and Lebanon. It could be the coal it could be something where it'll be an easy target because it'll be wide open in the Red Sea there. But from a political perspective, it's checking a lot of boxes right now for the industry.
I'm interested in. You said it was polariz is polarizing within the military. Are you saying it's polarized the military versus the politicians or where's the polarization.
No, I think from analysts just trying to figure out whether this is a good idea or not. It's kind of a good, good example of civilian control of the military, whereas there's probably people in the military that don't think it's a good idea on any level. Just from what you said, the security and protecting other force is going to be challenging, but this is an example of the commander in chief says this is what we're going to do.
The military has the salute and obey the mission. I'm finding more and more of my colleagues and people I've talked to him, for example the West Point, feel that it's really a dangerous mission and it's putting a lot at risk. Usually these kinds of humanitarian efforts are not necessarily into combat zones, especially in one like this where it'll be well inside the range of the Houthis as we continue to degrade their capability, that's not done yet.
But also this is kind of a classic small boat Iranian attack target that they could likely go after as well as you're aiding and abtding the enemy on some level in Hamas. So there's lots of reasons you could argue that we shouldn't be doing this, but the military has to salute and get the mission done right now.
And it's easy for Americans to forget that Hezbola is at war with Israel. In effect, now it's a fairly restrained trading of artillery across the border, but I've got to imagine if they wanted to make a big splash, that would be a target for.
Them as well.
Now absolutely, and it's going to be likely in a place right by Gaza City there that Israel has closed this port, they don't have a port. Israel has not allowed Hamas to bring goods and services through this port for many years. It's been blockaded. And so that's what the United States is doing. It's almost sticking its finger in the eye of Israel as well, opening up this port and saying, you know, try to try to stop us doing this. Israel has no choice but to now
provide oversight and security for it. But it's going to be very challenging in that to try to get it's going to be like a causeway port. So let me get the visual. Put a ship out offshore about let's say half a mile that'll have a lot of capability for it to take in and receive certain ships that'll come in from Cyprus and humanitarian efforts. And then a long causeway road similar to what we saw like D Day for example, when they built those causeways, long roads
where trucks will bring supplies back and forth. And that's going to be the target. You know, you blow up that middle of that causeway, you blow up a truck in there, and think a few trucks, and you create a very easy target for a terrorist organization.
Wow, So it's going to be a manufactured road out into the harbor of the Bay of the Sea there.
Yeah, that's the plan for right now.
And that's from our perspective, the safest thing as well, because it keeps the ship and most of the supplies offshore, providing more oversight to anything that could come from an attack. And the risk is going to be that kind of noman's land between where the ship is, whether it really originatorship's dock, and then the supplies traveling on that road into Gaza. Now, they do have a port that's there, and this will help eventually help improve that capability once
this is over. And that's to say it even goes down, right, I mean, it's going to take probably sixty days in order for this to say it's up and running and completely functional.
Wow.
So I just don't understand what if there if a variety of different entities are sent drones at our barracks all around the Middle East hoping to kill a bunch of US servicemen, Obviously they're gonna be sending drones of this thing, right yeah.
I mean the air defense umbrella is they'll likely have battleship they'll destroy, they'll keep they'll keep naval presence there.
As well.
That'll be looking over the horizon air defence platforms. But this is a good example again of a swarming drone target where you get a thousand drones or do something with who these are going to do, and go after it and just one or two of them gets through. It creates, you know, pierces that veil of the security and then people start to question, you know, what's going on.
You know.
Again, so from a theoretical perspective, it does show the United States it's got this capability.
But whether we can really pull it off in the long run, it.
Remains to be seen, and it will be a tremendous risk if there is a catastrophic incident like we had in eighty three and Lebanon, or the coal being attacked, or we just drop our guard because all they got to do is get one or two through and then that's it.
UH. Military analyst Mike Clions on the line. Mike, I have a bad habit of asking questions that really ought to be answered with a book, and I'd love to read it if you ever write it. But I was reading at CNN dot com the other day that Russia is producing three times more artillery shells than the US and Europe combined.
For Ukraine, their.
Military industrial complex, if you will, is much more capable or efficient at this point. And with all due respect to Eisenhower's warning and that there's always profiteering in war and military production, blah blah blah, we Americans like to think that we won World War two because we're just great.
I mean, I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about you know, popular perception, when indeed it was the Russian sacrificing millions of troops are brave fighters, and the fact that we were the arsenal democracy, we had this mind boggling production capacity for the tools of war. Anyway, finally, a very long question comes to its end. Are you worried at our lack of ship building, artillery building, and the rest of the capacity to make the armaments of war.
In the short term.
Yes, In the long run, we've proven historically that when we want to crank up the war machine, watch out, because when that happens, it's really no match for anybody else.
But for right now, as others.
Are doing that, as the Chinese are building a six hundred chip navy, and as Russia creates more artillery ambudition. You know, we actually increased our supply line about another fifteen to twenty thousand artillery rounds a month. We're now producing about forty five thousand rounds a month. Ukraine needs one hundred thousand a month. They probably have about eight or nine month left and so they're not being replenished
at a faster rate. In addition to we've taken some out of our Pompkins stocks already in order to support this the mission there, so we've not put ourselves in any kind of war footing.
Europe is trying.
We see some European countries, especially when it comes to artillery air, trying to do that as well. But it takes time. It's dangerous. Creating artillery shells is dangerous. You're creating bombs, you're creating explosives. So in the short term, the whole planet's always been all along that our standing force has got to be able to and absorb the initial blow. But everybody's confident that we'll for crank the war machine up once that will be fine. Whether we
can do it again or not remains to assume. I haven't done it in what eighty years? Haven't done it eighty five years.
Any other thoughts on Ukraine before we let you go?
No, I think that the longer we wait to get them this a to get them this sixty billion dollars of what was American jobs, of what will help crank up the war machine in our country, it's slipping away. And without trying to sound chicken too much like chicken little, the fact that Ukraine has held on for as long as they can has been nothing short of miraculous. But when Russia decides to grind you down from a historical perspective, they will grind you down. And that's that's what they're
doing right now. They're putting them they're putting their front on the gas and that's what they're going for and we just need to wake up and see it.
CNN Military analyst Mike Liines, Mike, thanks so much for the insight.
Good to talk to you.
Thanks guys, things for me, Armstrong and Getty