Well bid administration officials should stop chasing after their Chinese communist counterparts like love struck teenagers. It's embarrassing and it's pathetic. In fact, it projects weakness to China. It encourages them to do things like buzz our aircraft or come within a few hundred yards of our ships. Encourages them to spent send spy balloons floating all across America.
All three of those things have happened, two of them in the last few days. I don't know if you've seen the video of that Chinese warship going right in front of one of our ships and we had to slow down to avoid collision. They said, yeah, you better stand up our waters is what they said the Chinese did, And what the heck is the what are they up to? What's their goal?
That in the Ukraine situation? As well? A couple of topics to discuss with the military analyst Mike Lyons served in the United States military all over the world and is now on CNN among other places. Mike, great to talk to you.
How are you hey, guy, guys, good to be with you.
Yeah, what are they trying to accomplish by constantly jabinus in the chest.
The Chinese, well people, they don't believe that the water between China and Taiwan is international. They believe it's theirs, and so they've not signed up to that treaty. So they think anytime the United States drives a destroyer with a frigate from Canada, actually two ships traveling together, so they're undeployment, they're fully stocked, that warship is fully loaded
with you know, cruise missiles, the whole thing. Yeah, they don't believe that that's their international water, and so this is their way of trying to make that point. Now, the rest of the world does things that it's international water. And what they did was, you know, they'd kind of a serpentine in front of a warship going you know, ten to fifteen knots that had to slow down, that had to alter its course. So not abiding by the rules, the of the sea and all those things that go
with it. You know, there's way of sending a message. I mean, there's no other way to put it. But it's just a really dumb thing because this is you know, how wars start and how bad things happen in that part of the world.
Well, do we keep if they do it again, do we keep slowing down or what?
What?
How do we react?
Yeah, it's a game of chicken. I don't think we're going to knock into uh, we're gonna We're not gonna hit another ship on purpose. I don't see that that would not be It'd be a catastrophe in that region given what what you know, the environmental impact alone, what happened there potentially you know, to warships thinking, yeah, I can't imagine that happening. So we're gonna just we'll monitor
watch the situation. You know, the Navy now is taking tremendous precautions in that part of the world when it comes to not hitting other ships, right from the Fitzgerald and McCain took place a couple of years ago, right, so, you know, there's people on the watch, there's people, there's radar, there's all kinds of signals that are going out there. I personally think what we're going to do is send
more ships. We're gonna we're gonna have more uh things going there and have planes and have other things that are going to support them, because what they're doing is keeping a shipping lane open, UH, supporting our allies that are there, So we're not We're not going to back down, I think at all.
So let's turn to Ukraine. Mike, uh, the attacks of intensified. Is this the begin of the counter offensive? What's your take on the situation?
Yeah, I'm no, I'm the only guy in the world saying this is not a counter offensive. I mean, I can't even figure out the definition of a counter offensive is anymore. So a counter offensive in history is the battle of the bulch on both sides. The Germans take thirty divisions and they go one direction. In the United States takes the counter offensive and goes in the other direction.
The president, let's get admits to the Wall Street Journal, But they don't even control the airspace in the forward areas. I don't know how in the world they think they're going to have any kind of successful counter offensive. Not all the Abrams tanks are there. There isn't bridging equipment that's there. There's not a sixteen insight that's going to show up at least for twelve to eighteen months. So
the messaging is kind of weird. And then on the other side, you've got the Ministry Defense now releasing this Twitter feed about keeping the plans silent. Well, you got your president talking about the account offensive it's going to start, and you have the soldiers on the ground saying to be quiet. So the messaging is way off when it
comes to what exactly is going on right there. I And then this morning you have the Russians say that they defeated Ukraine offensive Operation inton Esque, exactly where the counter offensive could take place, and then they wiped out a bunch of Ukrainian soldiers. So I'm not sure what's going on. I can tell you this, there's not a counter offensive going on based on my definition of counter offensive, which is a large number of troops with a lot
of equipment that's going to do it. An offensive operation that's going to matter. It's going to mean something that's not happening anytime in Ukraine anytime soon.
Well, Washington Post, I think it was, had a big story yesterday about how NATO has been training in all these Ukrainian troops and the latest greatest tactics we have on a lot of the best weapons that we've given them, on all that sort of stuff, and they're ready to go with a modern American like attack. You don't think so or what.
Yeah, but the equipment is not there yet. The tank crews are still in Graphenvier, they're still training. They won't see M one tanks, they won't see the Abrams tanks. They're saying for twelve weeks, you know, and again until that level of equipment shows up, that level of survivability and they're only something thirty, they need four hundred in order to make any kind of impact unless they've got
other information I don't have. So like, for example, again we've talked about this area in the south staying on the right side of of the Bnepa River. If they can navigate that, maybe they think they're going to get twenty or thirty thousand Russian soldiers to surrender, I don't know, and turn around a threat crimea. But there doesn't appear to be the material in the region in order to
conduct the counter offensive. Considering the fact that Russia has been digging in in some of those areas since twenty fourteen. The Nek, for example, that has been Russia controlled since twenty fourteen. It's not like they've just shown up there and they've been planning the defense there for the last almost eight years.
Wow, that is so interesting. So obviously, you know, the cavalry and the foot soldiers and artillery just isn't kind of cut it.
You're saying, no, no, no, it's got to be a combined arms force. He's got to control, have some assets coming from the air. You bring artillery, you bring ventry fighting vehicles, M one tanks for shock effect, have bridging equipment. There's you know, they have the home field advantage. They know where the obstacles are. That's that's why I think Russia got backed up and back moved because they didn't They didn't couldn't cross basic rivers and they couldn't navigate
basic obstacles there. But but you gotta have all that stuff in order to move quickly, which is the definition of the counter offensives, which again I don't know the definition what the Ukraine government is using for a counter offensive because they think that that's a counter offensive. What they're doing right now. It's just it's they're going to still using my favorite turn wallowin Ovcan. They're not going to move anywhere. They're not going to get off the snide one bit.
Well, so I've been thinking about it, like I remember when the Iraq War was going to start, and they were talking about shock and awe and leading up to it, there'd be a little thing here there in various places in Iraq, and the media would say was that the beginning of shokun And they'd say, no, when it starts, you'll know. And I was kind of thinking that this
giant counter offensive will be like that. When it starts, will know, But you're you're not certain that that's the way it's gonna roll out.
No, I don't know what. They don't have the baton to start it with, they don't have the they don't have the mass of weaponry to start it like that. Again, it's just not there. So unless it's something else, I don't know what it could be. There's no other way unless they're just saying it. The counter offensive is started, Okay, let's see it. But the all they do then is set themselves up for failure because they really are poking
the bear here. I'm gonna use that term right that they It just makes no sense for them to say that on any level until it's actually going to start.
Interesting military analyst and Mike Alliance, Mike, thanks so much for the perspective.
Good to talk to you great guy. Thanks for me