Clearly a Threat. Mike Lyons Talks to Armstrong & Getty

Military Analyst Mike Lyons joins Armstrong & Getty to discuss China's latest incursion into Taiwan's airspace.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
From the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio at the George Washington
Broadcast Center. Armstrong and Show Jetty Armstrong and Jetti show
an aerial show of force from the Chinese military, the
largest incursion ever inside Taiwan's air defense zone fifty six
planes nearly one fifty flights since Chinese National Day Friday.

(00:25):
China use Taiwan as a breakaway profits and Chinese President
Chi Jianping has pledged to bring the island under Chinese
Communist Party control. He said time and time again, we're
going to resolve this issue with Taiwan. If it has
to be by force, it will be by force. And
we're not going to pass this problem once in the
next generation. Yeah, So, China has been flying a warplanes

(00:46):
in the Taiwan's air defense space in the last couple
of days. As you heard, there over a hundred military
aircraft have flown near Taiwan. That's between Friday and Sunday,
including eighty fighter jets, four bombers, five anti subplanes, and
four early warning aircraft. That seems fairly provocative. The question
is what is China up to. We have a number

(01:06):
of questions and Mike Lions military analysts joins US. Mike
served with various military organizations both the United States and
Europe throughout his career. Mike, welcome, how are you guys.
So great to be back with you. Thank you. Yeah,
it's always a pleasure. So I just have a very
basic question. What's an air defense space. I assume that's
different than their national airspace, right, it's twelve miles outside

(01:27):
the border of where the land hits. And so each
country has an area through international law that says they
own space twelve miles outside where the land starts. And
so when you get outside, you know, inside of that,
you're allowed to defend your land space. Um, and so
missile systems have got at least go to that place.

(01:47):
And so now once the Chinese violate that, there in
theory violating the sovereignty of that country in this state, Taiwan.
So it's very much like putting your finger an inch
from somebody's nose. You haven't touched them, but the incursion
is absolutely intentional, right, And this is different than the
kind of the classic Cold War ones where Russia would
do this to the United States. They would you know,
kind of come out just to the edge of our

(02:10):
of our that space there, and we would see it
was designed to see how fast we would have learned
and to deploy aircraft to respond. So we looked at
that as just them testing us to see how we
would respond. Here this is different because you know, when
you send a hundred and fifty planes into this area,
you're not you can't respond. There's there's you can only
do so much. This is about. This is a threat.

(02:31):
There's no question about that. This is clearly a threat
to to Taiwan and the Chinese states in response to
our naval exercises that are taking place in Oakland now.
And that's a couple of you know, island zones up
to the north. But again, what's happening here is something
we just really haven't seen the Chinese doing a long time. Okay,
So I just want to make sure I understand this.
So it sounds it seems to me. It sounds to
me like so they got it. They had enough badass

(02:56):
aircraft flying close enough to Taiwan that if they have
wanted to do something, they have done it and it
would have been too late for any US or anybody
to stop it. Oh, no question. I mean that we
don't have that kind of capability on the island itself.
I mean, Taiwan has some basic air defense platforms, surface
to air missile systems, but nothing that can take out
what they put over there. I mean, if those the

(03:17):
H six bombers, for example, they're nuclear capable, you know,
they open their their doors drop bombs on Taiwan, it's uh,
it's over. I mean there's in this, you know, and
the Chinese are going to do things like use a
nuclear tach nuke first. You know, they're going to use
their hypersonic missile systems or cruise missile systems. Um. What
we've what we're learning from the Chinese is that they've
learned from us from Desert Storm that in order to

(03:38):
win these wars, you have to, you know, punch hard
first the first time, make it so bloody that the
enemy doesn't want to respond. Here, I'm just so surprised.
It's so quick. It's happening so fast. Um. In that,
you know, the Chinese of traditionally played the long game.
We we expect them. For example, they want to have
this let's say blue water world class navy by you know,
that's still twenty years from now. They're working towards that

(04:01):
takes basically a generation to do that. They have the technology,
they have the equipment. Um, to me, it looks like
they're speeding up that timeline and this is one good
example of it. So what are they after by doing
something disagregious? What's next? Well, it's all about protecting power
in the South China, see, and how they anticipate this
would go. Um, how they want to be the penultimate

(04:21):
power there in that part of the world. Um, they're
you know, claiming the responsibility of the United States, Australia, Japan,
South Korea, if you know, that's kind of the Allies
system right now that's going to have to push back
against the Chinese. Talking to another analysts over the weekend,
then we were saying, okay, so let's working this out.
What does the war with China look like? You guys
and I have talked about that and where it would

(04:43):
take place, and we're coming to realize that it likely
takes place very similar to what we saw in the
Second World War and this island hopping campaign as the
Chinese look to gain and hold certain of these islands
that are close to Taiwan. UM. But eventually they would
try to unfortunately use kind of amphibious operation to take
over the island itself. Now, they'd likely destroy it. There'd

(05:04):
be a lot of death and destruction. Um, And I
think the Chinese are threatening our allies on ourselves, saying,
don't even think up doing anything because the price you're
gonna pay will be an aircraft carrier. We're gonna sink
aircraft Carry're gonna sink two aircraft carriers. In fact, if
you've got two there in the region right now, we've
got a couple of there in the US. I think
the Vincent's there and the role Reagan's there right now,
a couple of destroyers protecting it as well. Um, they're

(05:25):
gonna go right after that, and they're not going to hesitate.
It's I don't know how likely it is, but if
they wanted to, Um, they could change the balance of
power on the planet, like in a day, right. I mean,
they attacked Taiwan, if we don't react, and Japan says, well,
the United States didn't come to their defense, so I
guess work on out of luck. And then just a

(05:47):
whole bunch of people decide, Okay, the United States is
not the policeman of the world. Are gonna fix everything everywhere.
So we need to figure out how to deal with China,
and things would change like really really fast, wouldn't they Right,
And just look at so look at Afghanistan taught our
allies that when we don't put America first, when we
decide that, you know what, we're not going to really
defend you, guys are out of here. Look what happens.
And and versus if you're an ally of the Chinese,

(06:10):
you know they like the fact that they put China
first because that means they know they're always going to
back them up. Well, that's that's what's happening right now, Like,
that's that's what this test is to them because they
absolutely can. And again, this is a country that would
use a low level nuclear capable weapon in the beginning
of the fight. It would escalate immediately right to that.
Now does it get to, you know, intercontinental blistic missiles.

(06:31):
I'm not sure we would do that, we would trade
city for city or anything like that. But but they're
gonna do whatever they can to project this level of
power given what's you know, given what their plan is,
their belt and roads and suspenders, and that that that
initiative that is taking place throughout throughout Asia. You know,
they want to be the world dominant power. This is
their century and this is how they think they have
to do it. And um we're sitting there, you know,

(06:55):
are they ten feet tall? What they look like? You
know they're they're not. There might be ten feet tall,
but there's six feet in the rowing. So we're going
to have to deal with this. Um, I think sooner
than later. Mike clients military analysts down the line. Mike,
you mentioned our aircraft carriers as a friend and relative
of various naval and marine personnel and and somebody who's
been proud of our amazing aircraft carriers since w W two.

(07:16):
Can we defend them anymore? Well, that's a great question.
And given their hypersonic missile capability over surface to land
missiles that they have that they built on in those
South China, see, I don't know. You know, they're going
to change how warfare goes. Um. I just I'm on
a conference right now at the Modern War Institute and

(07:36):
just sort of very telling comment made by a guy
that said, you know we've got we've been a wrong
in predicting the next fight. Well, you know the next
fight we know it's going to involve cyber we next
we know the next fight is going to involve technology.
But I think the next fight involves this swarm technology
where drones and the like are just going to be
robots are being thrown out our our systems that are

(07:58):
manned by people, And you know, you can't defend against
two thousand things coming at you no matter what how
great the aircraft carror is and how many stroyers you
have around it to protect it. So I think that's
what the Chinese are gonna do, and we've got to
figure out a way to shut that down, maybe E
M P. Other other different weapons systems that that quite
frankly we're behind in right now that the Chinese have

(08:18):
the leading hypersonic missiles and drone clouds. Good lord, I'm
not going to be able to sleep tonight. Yeah well yeah,
maybe I guess this is what you know, kind of
we do as the analysts. I We're always looking at
what the capabilities are, and we've got to make sure
that we have the capability to defend, and we also
recognize whether it's a weakness to kind of kind of

(08:38):
run it through. Um, the Chinese could make a tremendous
mistake if they don't get it right the first time.
Here's what the Chinese don't have, whether we like it
or not. The US has been you know, bloodied. We
have got experienced military. You know, we've been the war
the past twenty years, so we kind of know how
to do this. The Chinese haven't shot at anybody since
nineteen seventy nine. So the question is if they do
get in some kind of land battle or some big conflict. Um,

(09:01):
I think I have the guts to pull the trigger,
and I think that's it remains to be saying. So
how much does that matter that we have you know,
recent actual military experience and they don't we personally, I
think it matters a lot um again because when you uh,
it's a function of how well they're going to do
once the shooting starts. Like like what I found in

(09:22):
combat was once our soldiers saw the confidence that they
had in their equipment and the fact that it was
no match, it created a sense of invincibility around our units.
And I'm sure the pilots feel the same way, and
I know the sailors feel the same way. That doesn't matter,
We're going to be fine in this situation. The Chinese
have yet to prove that out whether or not their
their investment is gonna take do that for them from

(09:43):
a cultural perspective, and they recognize the culture is an
important part of this because again the p l A,
the whole the whole army thing is still kind of
new for them. They're they're invested money in their officers.
The leader of China, for example, doesn't even trust a
lot of his general officers because a lot of that
has been brought and paid. So they have the traditional
problems of those those armies that kind of getting you know,
brought up from the from the root cause. But now

(10:04):
they're going to go actually fight. The question is whether
they'll actually fight. You know, what, what what are you fight for?
I know, I know when we're in our units, you know,
we fight for each other. The question is whether those
Chinese p l A and army units will do the
same for each other. Well, and I've been told by
somebody who studies this thing, in whose opinion I trust,
that just culturally and historically, we have a tradition of um,
you know the intent of your commander, they tell you

(10:26):
what we're trying to accomplish. Then if um, if it
turns out we need to improvise and do something different
or in a different way. Our people are empowered to
do that, as opposed to a lot of Asian cultures,
including Japan, which has struggled with this. It's very very
much top down and you dare not dishonored, dishonor your commander. Yeah,
I'm not sure that same level of dishonors in the

(10:48):
Chinese military, as they've tried to fight against that, and
again we won't know until the bullets start flying. I
guess in some level. We definitely saw that in the
Japanese military, especially during World War Two, and how they
felt UM. I think that they recognize cultures an issue.
If you look at their advertisements, if you look at
what they're trying to do, they're they're trying to power
down UM and focus on n c o s and the

(11:09):
the noncommissioned officers that actually run the battles there. Uh.
But but it takes it takes generation, and they're going
to have to get you into something. So I wouldn't
be surprised if you saw the Chinese deploy certain units
into certain places in the world to try to get
some combat experience as proxy forces to to their units
so they can kind of come back and tell the
story and recognize what their shortcomings are going to be

(11:30):
and where they're gonna have to overcome if they get
into if we get into this great land power mass
battle that could take place on those islands within the
South Chines. See so many interesting points. Mike Lion's military
analysts Mike, we truly appreciate it, guys, thanks for having me.
You can you can't get that perspective from anybody else,
so good. The last bit about China, look for them

(11:53):
to send their forces as proxies the various regions of
the world to get a little combat experience. Well now
I know what to look for. So over a hundred
military aircraft flew into Taiwan space, eighty fighter jets, four bombers,
five anti subplanes for early warning aircraft. Man, that is provocative,
and that thing about you know, we've got experience and

(12:14):
they don't. All the sports metaphors that that exists there,
you know, they've got experience. The new up starts, can
they handle the pressure? Well, sometimes you can't, and the
people with experience win. But sometimes the young upstarts who
have never been there. They win if they have enough
talent slash firepower in that place. Yeah, yeah, man. It's

(12:35):
just I know I've been talking about this for years,
but I just I just feel like there's so much
of our culture, so much of our population don't doesn't
think this is possible. There's no way great powers are
going to go to war the same thing they thought
in nineteen fourteen before August. Real wars are in history
right right. There's no way China would actually use a

(12:58):
technical nuke to take Taiwan. They could do that this
afternoon and change world history forever. And we got a
giant decision to make on whether or not we fight
back or just saying, okay, you have it, We're not
going to blow up half the world over this, and
then all of a sudden, Japan's got inside. Okay, I
guess we gotta deal with China because they control all
the commerce in the ocean over here now in the

(13:18):
United States doesn't, we don't, China does. And if we
won't even be a country and have anything, oil, food, anything,
we gotta deal with China because they're now the big
dog over here. In Australia might go along who knows.
I mean things. Actually listen to a podcast about this yesterday,
but things things to topple. Dominoes topple very quickly. If
the world decides, oh to the United States is not going,

(13:39):
then Taiwan okay, right, well, and I have a feeling
are babbling. Great Grandpa President would just take it to
the U N and hold a debate. That's some interesting stuff.
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