July 11, 2023 • 11 mins
Mike Lyons graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1983 with a degree in general engineering and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the field artillery. He joins the guys to talk about the war in Ukraine and cluster bombs.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello there from Avilius. Lovely morning here in Lithuania. And
we should note there are Ukrainian flags everywhere in this city,
a city that has completely turned out and show solidarity
with the war effort, the resistance against Russia. Of course,
here in a former Soviet state in the Baltics.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
One.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
And I'm standing in George W. Bush Plaza, named after
the former president because he gave a speech here in
two thousand and two in which he urged Lithuania to
be admitted to NATO. And NATO transformed then and it
has done so again now.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
So goes on to make the point that he is
about three miles from the Belarusian border, like one hundred
miles from Russia, right next to Ukraine. All the world
leaders there are within striking distance of a war. I
guess that's not a concern.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Apparently not that would absolutely usher US into World War three.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Sure, respect, Sure, but it was seen as a big
deal when various leaders were going to Kiev. I just
I was surprised they're all gathering right there in the corner.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
So many things to discuss with Mike Allions, who served
the United States military and a variety of capacities in
a variety of places now respected military analysts for CNN,
among others. Mike, how are you, sir.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Hey, good morning guys. Great to be back with you.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I've been following your Twitter feed and we know your
neck of the woods has been affected by the horrendous
rainfalls in the northeast. How's everybody doing.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
Yeah, West Point underwater on the town outside Highland Falls.
The same roads are out. Actually I can't get up
there right now. There's no way nine W. The main
artery into the academy is shut down, both from the
north side and the south side the town. So it's
pretty devastating. Hopefully the Army Corp of Engineers is moving
quickly to try to restore services there. Out of the
(01:40):
building I work in is un habitable right now. It
was flooded in the floor, so you got mold. All
kinds of things are going to happen. So yeah, once
in a thousand year storm, they're saying it was.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, speaking of powerful forces, mother nature is unmatched. Let's
talk about the situation in Ukraine. We talked a little
bit about your opinion on cluster munitions yesterday. We know
you're in favor of Ukraine using them.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
Why Yeah, First of all, let's set the law of
land warfare dictate, and that should be the litmus test
for this right. I mean, the legality of the situation.
Number one, it's a military necessity. Right now, Ukraine is
trying to do a counter offensive without air superiority, which
is foolhardy in some ways to begin with. And you
can even say it's not even a counter offensive, it's
(02:23):
just trying to figure out some probing operations anyway. At
the bottom line is they're running out of ammunition, so
they need more ammunition. We've knew this eight months ago
that eventually they would run out of ammunition because we
can't resupply them at the pace that they're using it.
We don't have enough of material on our side, and
we don't have enough reserves. And that that was the
no known that they were going to run out of animals.
So that's number one as a necessity to use these rounds.
(02:45):
Number two, proportionality. They are proportional in that Russia's use
them already. They've used them on civilian targets, they've used
them on things they shouldn't be But this is not
going to be a game changer, it's not going to
allow them a tremendous advantage, and they're going to use
them in a way. On the third thing, civilian or
military targets only, there's going to be a distinction between
(03:06):
combatants and non combatants. And so again, if you use
those three tests of the law of land warfare, you
know Russia has failed all three. Russia, you know, uses
them without necessity, has fired him on civilians, and doesn't
use them in proportionality. But Ukraine's going to do that.
I think legally they have a case that they they
should use them.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
I think a lot of people were hoping the Ukrainians
would make some big advances once the Wagner Group had
to pull out, since that was Russia's best fighting for us.
Why does that not happen?
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Right? So they're not twenty five thousand men as you
could see now too. I never thought they were going
to just disappear or be part of thee the Russian military.
Ladimir Putin is not giving up on the Wagner Group.
They're earners. They you know, Progosians an earner. He earns
it not only in Ukraine, he earns it in Africa
and rare earth minerals and all the things going on,
so that you know, we're surprised that you know, he's
(03:54):
meeting with Vladimir Putin. Progosion is no, we shouldn't be
surprised because he's not going to get rid of them.
The bottom line is Russia still out guns Ukraine artillery
almost ten to one on the front. They've had six
months to dig in, they have more AMMO, they can
throw an endless number of resources at this. You know,
it was a lot of hope that some counter offense
(04:14):
would be able to break through. The only place that
would really matter is in the south, and Russia blows
that last bridge, that last dam, that floods in the
entire area that definitely that narrow is now the avenues
of approach there. So they're going to march into these
kill zones. Now. They could wait another eight to ten
weeks when the native equipment arrives, because right now Ukraine
(04:36):
crew survivability is so important, and the equipment coming from
nat it would still not there yet will be there
and they'll have a little bit more of a chance.
But Russia still owns the air space, they still own
a lot of different things they need attack thems. They
need deep strike missile capability, they need air defense artillery
in order for them to have any success. To think
(04:57):
they're going to have success with this counter.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Offensive, anticipate in my next question, do we have any
idea of the timetable, Say Abrams tanks or F sixteen's
being brought.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
To Bear September and the crews are still being trained
on them, and just because you know, what they'll do
is they'll allow the crews to survive more. The question
is whether they're still going to be able to fight
with them. They're they're complex systems. I mean, in some ways,
the catillacts what the gunner uses to hit targets with
is believe it or not, is designed after It's kind
(05:28):
a video game, and it's a lot of things to
kind of go into that from a simulation perspective, But
they are They are big, heavy pieces of equipment that
have long logistical supply chains to them. They get like,
you know, eight gallons to the mile that you know,
there's a lot of things that go in. It's that
it's not just these tanks showing up. It's going to
be the support that's gonna that's going to that's going
to keep them running. They're not getting F sixteen. They're
(05:49):
not seeing any kind of air superior already happening within
the next year or so. But but again, September would
they'd be lucky, And that's the time that I thought
they were going to go on this counter offensive. It
looks like they had to do this politically. They looked
like they had to do something right before the NATO
summit to show that they were doing it. But I'm
afraid that they're just throwing, unfortunately, Ukraine soldiers into that
meat grinder that Russia was doing eight months ago.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
So the NATO leaders, as you mentioned, the NATO summit
are meeting there just a couple of miles from the
border there with you know, an opponent of NATO. How
big a deal is Sweden joining NATO?
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Yeah, big in both of them and Finland because of
their neutrality for the past you know, seventy plus years,
and more than that, this has drawn NATO together, I think,
and NATO has never been as united as of right now.
I'm glad at least we're not allowing Ukraine into NATO.
I think we've talked about this before. I've never been
a fan of all these countries joining NATO. We can't
(06:47):
have the membership of NATO to be everybody but Russia,
because that's how the First World War started. But that's
where we're at right now, and I think that there'll
be a path if Ukraine continues to smash the Russian
military in place and hold its own, you know, four
or five years from now, they're going to have a
case that they're going to want to be in NATO.
Depends on what Russia looks like at that point. But
we also can't put in NATO a country that has
(07:08):
a border dispute with a country like Russia, because then
that triggers, you know, Article five, and next thing you know,
we're at World War three.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I was reading coverage in the Wall Street Journal about
that very question, and they were writing that the European
powers seem to be in favor of a fairly direct
paths to membership. For you, I heard Macrone in France said, Hey,
Ukraine's the best military in Europe right now, so why not.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Yeah, the one of the largest, I think after Turkey,
they're the third largest or whatever in Europe at this point.
And that's that's kind of at some point that we
have to watch that as well, to make sure that
they don't get too powerful. As again, as we just
look at history as the course, but you're going to
see other countries eventually start to puke over this, like Germany,
for example. Germany at the end of the day wants
(07:53):
everything to go back to February twenty twenty two, twenty
twenty two. They want this whole thing to be over.
They want to wake up like a bad dream, and
they want to get cheap you know oil again. They
don't They're not interested in making Russia angry. So I
think that people are talking a good game right now.
Germany has talked a good game in some ways. But
(08:13):
when push comes to shove, putting you know, Ukraine into
NATO is going to be a really, really big deal.
I mean that they should only agree to that if
we don't believe Russia is the threat that it currently
could be, and as long as they have nuclear weapons,
that might never be the case.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
We're talking to military analysts, Mike Lyons, Mike, we can't
let you go without asking you about recruiting in the
United States military was just reading yet another report saying
that other than the Marines, everybody's falling miserably short, and
everybody's trying to understand why. Any thoughts on.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
That, Yeah, I think I think it is two things.
I do think. Number one, that those of us in
the military are stopping no longer sending our children into
the military. I mean, my son's in the Navy, and
I'm glad he's serving, But I talked to more and
more of my peers that were in the military and
their children are not going. And it was very much
a family business. So that's there's no question that that's
(09:04):
impacting it. And the second thing is that the bar
remains very high to get into the military. I mean,
if the the amount of information on an individual that
is in their country right now, for example, any kind
of drugs, any kind of drug use, any kind of
ADHD medication is disquality, So.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
They're going to eliminate a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
There exactly, aside from overweight, aside from not being in shape.
There's all there's. So the poll is shrinking all the time.
I think it's a national security issue on some level.
But you know, and and it did something did happen,
a lot of those restrictions might go away, So they
still might go in and they did, they did drop
(09:45):
the restrictions during combat times. It's called a category four.
It's just a high risk recruiter that that the military
doesn't look let in. That's because the Army does a
pretty good job of knowing who is and isn't going
to succeed in the army, right because we've been recruiting
people for a hundre, you know, two hundred years, so
they know they have pretty good data as to what
a person is going to do inside the military. You know,
(10:06):
there it's different. It's a different world, but it's a
different life. But but you know, I'm still seeing I've
got a young man that I've been working with last year.
He just finished up basic training. He's on his way
to Airborne school and Special Force of school. So it's
still you know, the bar is pretty high still, which
I think is good. And I think our army today
is still better than it was twenty years ago, better
than it was when I was in. So you know,
full steam ahead.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
There are a lot of good reasons for tradition and
not being you know, flitting from one trend to another,
and I'm glad the US military is that way. But
do you see signs that they are adapting to the
modern young person in the modern world.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Yeah, they have done that before. Back if you look
remember twenty years ago, there was this recruiting campaign called
the Army of One. And back then when we were
in we were all shaking our heads, going, well, the
army is the last thing. The army is is an
army of one. And that lasted about five minutes and
then everyone realized that that's just not a good message
because then they got into the army and realized it
was no army of one. But I think they do
(11:00):
have to stay current with social media and all the
forces that act on them, but they still have to
hold the line with regard to of the primary mission
of the US military is fighting to win the nation's wars. Period.
It's not to create diversity, it's not to force feed
social changes into the military, which is you can easily
do because of the government control over it. The bottom
(11:21):
line is the military exists to win the nation's wars,
and if we can't do that, then then we'll fall
short and we will let our country down.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Mike Lyons always pleasure. Thanks so much for the time, Mike, great,
thanks
Speaker 4 (11:32):
For having me
Hello there from Avilius. Lovely morning here in Lithuania. And
we should note there are Ukrainian flags everywhere in this city,
a city that has completely turned out and show solidarity
with the war effort, the resistance against Russia. Of course,
here in a former Soviet state in the Baltics.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
One.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
And I'm standing in George W. Bush Plaza, named after
the former president because he gave a speech here in
two thousand and two in which he urged Lithuania to
be admitted to NATO. And NATO transformed then and it
has done so again now.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
So goes on to make the point that he is
about three miles from the Belarusian border, like one hundred
miles from Russia, right next to Ukraine. All the world
leaders there are within striking distance of a war. I
guess that's not a concern.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Apparently not that would absolutely usher US into World War three.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Sure, respect, Sure, but it was seen as a big
deal when various leaders were going to Kiev. I just
I was surprised they're all gathering right there in the corner.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
So many things to discuss with Mike Allions, who served
the United States military and a variety of capacities in
a variety of places now respected military analysts for CNN,
among others. Mike, how are you, sir.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Hey, good morning guys. Great to be back with you.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I've been following your Twitter feed and we know your
neck of the woods has been affected by the horrendous
rainfalls in the northeast. How's everybody doing.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
Yeah, West Point underwater on the town outside Highland Falls.
The same roads are out. Actually I can't get up
there right now. There's no way nine W. The main
artery into the academy is shut down, both from the
north side and the south side the town. So it's
pretty devastating. Hopefully the Army Corp of Engineers is moving
quickly to try to restore services there. Out of the
(01:40):
building I work in is un habitable right now. It
was flooded in the floor, so you got mold. All
kinds of things are going to happen. So yeah, once
in a thousand year storm, they're saying it was.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, speaking of powerful forces, mother nature is unmatched. Let's
talk about the situation in Ukraine. We talked a little
bit about your opinion on cluster munitions yesterday. We know
you're in favor of Ukraine using them.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
Why Yeah, First of all, let's set the law of
land warfare dictate, and that should be the litmus test
for this right. I mean, the legality of the situation.
Number one, it's a military necessity. Right now, Ukraine is
trying to do a counter offensive without air superiority, which
is foolhardy in some ways to begin with. And you
can even say it's not even a counter offensive, it's
(02:23):
just trying to figure out some probing operations anyway. At
the bottom line is they're running out of ammunition, so
they need more ammunition. We've knew this eight months ago
that eventually they would run out of ammunition because we
can't resupply them at the pace that they're using it.
We don't have enough of material on our side, and
we don't have enough reserves. And that that was the
no known that they were going to run out of animals.
So that's number one as a necessity to use these rounds.
(02:45):
Number two, proportionality. They are proportional in that Russia's use
them already. They've used them on civilian targets, they've used
them on things they shouldn't be But this is not
going to be a game changer, it's not going to
allow them a tremendous advantage, and they're going to use
them in a way. On the third thing, civilian or
military targets only, there's going to be a distinction between
(03:06):
combatants and non combatants. And so again, if you use
those three tests of the law of land warfare, you
know Russia has failed all three. Russia, you know, uses
them without necessity, has fired him on civilians, and doesn't
use them in proportionality. But Ukraine's going to do that.
I think legally they have a case that they they
should use them.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
I think a lot of people were hoping the Ukrainians
would make some big advances once the Wagner Group had
to pull out, since that was Russia's best fighting for us.
Why does that not happen?
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Right? So they're not twenty five thousand men as you
could see now too. I never thought they were going
to just disappear or be part of thee the Russian military.
Ladimir Putin is not giving up on the Wagner Group.
They're earners. They you know, Progosians an earner. He earns
it not only in Ukraine, he earns it in Africa
and rare earth minerals and all the things going on,
so that you know, we're surprised that you know, he's
(03:54):
meeting with Vladimir Putin. Progosion is no, we shouldn't be
surprised because he's not going to get rid of them.
The bottom line is Russia still out guns Ukraine artillery
almost ten to one on the front. They've had six
months to dig in, they have more AMMO, they can
throw an endless number of resources at this. You know,
it was a lot of hope that some counter offense
(04:14):
would be able to break through. The only place that
would really matter is in the south, and Russia blows
that last bridge, that last dam, that floods in the
entire area that definitely that narrow is now the avenues
of approach there. So they're going to march into these
kill zones. Now. They could wait another eight to ten
weeks when the native equipment arrives, because right now Ukraine
(04:36):
crew survivability is so important, and the equipment coming from
nat it would still not there yet will be there
and they'll have a little bit more of a chance.
But Russia still owns the air space, they still own
a lot of different things they need attack thems. They
need deep strike missile capability, they need air defense artillery
in order for them to have any success. To think
(04:57):
they're going to have success with this counter.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Offensive, anticipate in my next question, do we have any
idea of the timetable, Say Abrams tanks or F sixteen's
being brought.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
To Bear September and the crews are still being trained
on them, and just because you know, what they'll do
is they'll allow the crews to survive more. The question
is whether they're still going to be able to fight
with them. They're they're complex systems. I mean, in some ways,
the catillacts what the gunner uses to hit targets with
is believe it or not, is designed after It's kind
(05:28):
a video game, and it's a lot of things to
kind of go into that from a simulation perspective, But
they are They are big, heavy pieces of equipment that
have long logistical supply chains to them. They get like,
you know, eight gallons to the mile that you know,
there's a lot of things that go in. It's that
it's not just these tanks showing up. It's going to
be the support that's gonna that's going to that's going
to keep them running. They're not getting F sixteen. They're
(05:49):
not seeing any kind of air superior already happening within
the next year or so. But but again, September would
they'd be lucky, And that's the time that I thought
they were going to go on this counter offensive. It
looks like they had to do this politically. They looked
like they had to do something right before the NATO
summit to show that they were doing it. But I'm
afraid that they're just throwing, unfortunately, Ukraine soldiers into that
meat grinder that Russia was doing eight months ago.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
So the NATO leaders, as you mentioned, the NATO summit
are meeting there just a couple of miles from the
border there with you know, an opponent of NATO. How
big a deal is Sweden joining NATO?
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Yeah, big in both of them and Finland because of
their neutrality for the past you know, seventy plus years,
and more than that, this has drawn NATO together, I think,
and NATO has never been as united as of right now.
I'm glad at least we're not allowing Ukraine into NATO.
I think we've talked about this before. I've never been
a fan of all these countries joining NATO. We can't
(06:47):
have the membership of NATO to be everybody but Russia,
because that's how the First World War started. But that's
where we're at right now, and I think that there'll
be a path if Ukraine continues to smash the Russian
military in place and hold its own, you know, four
or five years from now, they're going to have a
case that they're going to want to be in NATO.
Depends on what Russia looks like at that point. But
we also can't put in NATO a country that has
(07:08):
a border dispute with a country like Russia, because then
that triggers, you know, Article five, and next thing you know,
we're at World War three.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I was reading coverage in the Wall Street Journal about
that very question, and they were writing that the European
powers seem to be in favor of a fairly direct
paths to membership. For you, I heard Macrone in France said, Hey,
Ukraine's the best military in Europe right now, so why not.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Yeah, the one of the largest, I think after Turkey,
they're the third largest or whatever in Europe at this point.
And that's that's kind of at some point that we
have to watch that as well, to make sure that
they don't get too powerful. As again, as we just
look at history as the course, but you're going to
see other countries eventually start to puke over this, like Germany,
for example. Germany at the end of the day wants
(07:53):
everything to go back to February twenty twenty two, twenty
twenty two. They want this whole thing to be over.
They want to wake up like a bad dream, and
they want to get cheap you know oil again. They
don't They're not interested in making Russia angry. So I
think that people are talking a good game right now.
Germany has talked a good game in some ways. But
(08:13):
when push comes to shove, putting you know, Ukraine into
NATO is going to be a really, really big deal.
I mean that they should only agree to that if
we don't believe Russia is the threat that it currently
could be, and as long as they have nuclear weapons,
that might never be the case.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
We're talking to military analysts, Mike Lyons, Mike, we can't
let you go without asking you about recruiting in the
United States military was just reading yet another report saying
that other than the Marines, everybody's falling miserably short, and
everybody's trying to understand why. Any thoughts on.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
That, Yeah, I think I think it is two things.
I do think. Number one, that those of us in
the military are stopping no longer sending our children into
the military. I mean, my son's in the Navy, and
I'm glad he's serving, But I talked to more and
more of my peers that were in the military and
their children are not going. And it was very much
a family business. So that's there's no question that that's
(09:04):
impacting it. And the second thing is that the bar
remains very high to get into the military. I mean,
if the the amount of information on an individual that
is in their country right now, for example, any kind
of drugs, any kind of drug use, any kind of
ADHD medication is disquality, So.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
They're going to eliminate a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
There exactly, aside from overweight, aside from not being in shape.
There's all there's. So the poll is shrinking all the time.
I think it's a national security issue on some level.
But you know, and and it did something did happen,
a lot of those restrictions might go away, So they
still might go in and they did, they did drop
(09:45):
the restrictions during combat times. It's called a category four.
It's just a high risk recruiter that that the military
doesn't look let in. That's because the Army does a
pretty good job of knowing who is and isn't going
to succeed in the army, right because we've been recruiting
people for a hundre, you know, two hundred years, so
they know they have pretty good data as to what
a person is going to do inside the military. You know,
(10:06):
there it's different. It's a different world, but it's a
different life. But but you know, I'm still seeing I've
got a young man that I've been working with last year.
He just finished up basic training. He's on his way
to Airborne school and Special Force of school. So it's
still you know, the bar is pretty high still, which
I think is good. And I think our army today
is still better than it was twenty years ago, better
than it was when I was in. So you know,
full steam ahead.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
There are a lot of good reasons for tradition and
not being you know, flitting from one trend to another,
and I'm glad the US military is that way. But
do you see signs that they are adapting to the
modern young person in the modern world.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Yeah, they have done that before. Back if you look
remember twenty years ago, there was this recruiting campaign called
the Army of One. And back then when we were
in we were all shaking our heads, going, well, the
army is the last thing. The army is is an
army of one. And that lasted about five minutes and
then everyone realized that that's just not a good message
because then they got into the army and realized it
was no army of one. But I think they do
(11:00):
have to stay current with social media and all the
forces that act on them, but they still have to
hold the line with regard to of the primary mission
of the US military is fighting to win the nation's wars. Period.
It's not to create diversity, it's not to force feed
social changes into the military, which is you can easily
do because of the government control over it. The bottom
(11:21):
line is the military exists to win the nation's wars,
and if we can't do that, then then we'll fall
short and we will let our country down.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Mike Lyons always pleasure. Thanks so much for the time, Mike, great,
thanks
Speaker 4 (11:32):
For having me
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