US, UK commence for strikes against Houthis in Yemen: 18 targets at 8 locations hit | LiveNOW from FOX

We want to continue our conversation right now and bring in a a friend here of live now from Fox Hal keer National Security expert comes on and joins us so much and we always appreciate it Hal and thank you again for joining us on the Saturday thank you Mike so uh this uh Monumental an anniversary of two years and Hal I just want to get your thoughts.

On this war as it continues uh to rage on you know I think the biggest uh take on this is that the ukrainians are still fighting two years into this war when you look at what Russia thought they were going to be able to accomplish at the beginning of the war you know seizing ke within three days seizing the rest of the country within a few weeks.

That obviously did not happen the Ukrainian people uh really a Levan Mass across the board uh resisted the Russians the world Community the European Union NATO the US uh Japan all over the world came together to provide Aid and support to the ukrainians in this fight and and here they are and and actually uh whereas there's been some uh.

You know rather minor setbacks if you will uh minor advances uh recently on the battlefield with the with the Russians and certainly they've they've incurred phenomenal cost for rather marginal gains the reality is that over the last two years uh that the Russians came in took a lot of territory but Al mosta territory that they took the.

Ukrainians have taken back and uh so uh it does show resolve resilience of the ukrainians and it shows that the Russians aim of taking over Ukraine is probably not something they're ever going to be able to do I don't know how the war will go over the next year or two but uh but they've had a tough time yeah they certainly have and I'm glad.

That you brought that up in the the beginning phases of that war is the first 48 hours there was so much thought and from the Russian side where they thought they were just going to roll uh ke right over and continue to March right through but that resistance was heavy and the support from around the world came in.

Fierce well some of their assumptions obviously just weren't valid and they overestimated their ability to do things dare I say clandestinely I think that they over you know this is a danger of any of any country uh it's a it's a danger that we faced at times in in US history that we get a little overconfident in our abilities you know.

The Marine Corps we had a a famous saying when when uh we'd find something was kind of going a little astray in the planning process and we found Marines saying hey we're Marines and we can do this you know we'd all kind of look at each other and say I think this guy's been watching our recruiting videos too often uh you really want to test those.

Assumptions I think the Russians were very overconfident in both their overt military and their covert capability uh to quickly go in there seiz objectives deep in the country uh and it just didn't happen it didn't happen for them at all and hel I want to get your thoughts as uh we enter this third year just how.

Much longer can this war continue to go on as both sides are losing a lot of soldiers well the ukrainians have some challenges uh but both sides are having a tremendous amount of challenge you know I heard a ratio of of Russian losses to Ukrainian losses it's about five to one five Russians are are killed or injured for every Ukrainian I've.

Heard other estimates of three to one but that is uh even with Russia's Advantage uh in material uh and and and Manpower uh that's very difficult for them to sustain now Ukraine's got some problems they've got to uh they they did a sort of a Lev and mass raising everybody up every everybody from I think the age ofh 18 to 60 or something.

Initially after the war but now they're having sustainment issues their conscription uh needs to be reworked surprisingly compared to what it used to be in the US they can script people at age 27 uh we can script people at age 18 or 19 uh so that's something they've got to work on but also we've got to get the.

Ammunition in there we've got to get the USA in there and at that point they can go for for quite some time and if those uh Russian those seized Russian assets uh if they do take that $300 billion and find a way to move that to Ukraine certainly Ukraine can keep going for the next two or three years and frankly at that point I think Russia's going to run.

Out of steam and run run out of material and Manpower uh somewhere in that time period and uh since this War uh has started so much obviously has changed in the world and now there is another war going on between Israel and Hamas and uh just uh the continued fighting there but I I I want to talk a little bit about uh some of the breaking news that just.

Happened within the last hour of uh us and UK Coalition uh attacking uh houthi Rebels out in Yemen and uh this fighting uh continues as we've learned just since October more than a 100 attacks on our uh soldiers overseas have happened uh Mike as you know we we've had some uh the us working with the United Kingdom and our Coalition allies we've had some.

Major strikes that we've incurred on the houthis however over the last week we've seen the houthis launch a lot of missiles um they have uh they they put one ship of fire to the point where the crew had to abandon ship uh the ship didn't sink although the houthis claimed it did but it was seriously damaged they damaged another ship yesterday and and.

With that uh there was I'm not surprised that this big strike which is today our time nighttime uh over in Yemen took place with coordinated action by the United States and the United Kingdom I would point out when the United Kingdom's involved with these strikes we have a big carrier sitting offshore so it's a little easier for us to pull this.

Off with Britain they've got to fly all the way down from Cyprus they have to do inflight refueling so it's h for them it's a little bit more challenging to uh put these strikes together but uh but they hit a lot of targets command control missile sites uh Logistics sites radar intelligence sites we'll see what effect it has but I was expecting that.

There would be another big strike on this order of magnitude uh soon just because of what the houthis have done over the last week and the Red Sea obviously is just a hot Target right now where it is uh just in an area that is seeing uh this go back and forth right now and just how much longer can.

Uh the US kind of do these these uh attacks against the houthi rebels before the houthis and maybe Iran as well get the clear message that if they continue to go this way more strikes like this will happen well here's the thing with the houthis we're not going to win their hearts and Minds uh we're gonna impress them with kinetics if you will uh it's.

Degrading their capability it's not clear at what point I don't know if the houthis politically will ever rhetorically back down they may operationally back down when they realize that the uh the pain is definitely not worth the game so to speak in terms of what they're getting but there's a lot of missiles that Iran.

Has put in there uh there's uh it's a very busy Waterway so intercepting uh Munitions from Iran is always a bit challenging although we have a very aggressive program in doing so uh but they have a lot of drones and missiles stored up so I anticipate there's going to be strikes for quite some time this is the thing though with the Red.

Sea the ballman Deb straight that strategic straight uh between jouti and uh and and certainly Yemen and uh and then of course the Gulf of Aiden this is a critical Waterway 15% of global trade goes through the sus Canal that's the transit area you have to go through to go to and from the sus Canal so in that regard you're not going to see this.

Coalition standing down anytime soon because the threat till the threat is eliminated uh you're going to see more strike missions like this until the houthis either come to some sort of agreement and stop all operations or they simply get a trid to the place or attrition I should say to the place where they can't keep sustaining these.

Type of operations yeah that is uh so key as well and hell I also want to talk about another uh big story that was happening at the end of the week yet a another uh High altitude balloon over the us but this one a little bit different than what we were first thinking this is uh a tweet from Lucas Tomlinson saying the.

Balloon currently flying over the United States that prompted norrad to scramble fighter jets is not from China but instead the property of an amateur balloonist that is according to defense officials and uh again I hell I want to get your thoughts on this one where uh even though it's you know very high up we're talking about 40,000 feet in the.

Air and uh the Jets had to be scrambled again just to make sure uh uh what this was uh you know Mike before that uh that that Chinese spy balloon uh incident last year uh routinely we did not scramble jets for balloons uh in fact most of the parameters on The Radars and and all the other settings for air traffic were such that uh we really.

Didn't look closely at things you know balloons fall into some of that lower Spectrum scatter that can really clutter up your uh your air picture or your picture of what's out there so they weren't set and so they had to reset all the parameters for uh for our air defense Radars and and basically our Radars and general so we pick up on this.

So we're picking up on balloons like this hobbyist balloon uh it was not it was not a threat balloon it wasn't a spy balloon it wasn't anything like that it was you know I think it was it wasn't maneuverable like the Chinese balloon it just a balloon and by the way I point out there's a lot of balloons at any given time surprisingly you know they.

They launch weather balloons all the time that go into the upper atmosphere and um and so if we we respond to every weather balloon you could imagine that we'd be pretty busy f with fighter jets but this one caught the attention of NORAD they they did scramble Jets they went up there looked at it didn't pose a threat and it just shows that we have a.

Uh much more heavily watched uh airspace today than we had before the Chinese balloon incident last year and uh and I think this is an indicator that we're uh much more Vigilant in that regard U where that will that may wear us out at some point launching Fighters for every balloon but but right now you know we can take some solace in the fact.

That we we detected it we responded to it we checked it out and uh we made an assessment of what it was and what it wasn't and H do you think that there so so you don't have to every time there is a balloon up there scramble a jet could there be uh a way that they have a system of if if you you know put a balloon up in the air and if you're an.

Amateur that you have to you know uh kind of submit it and and put a a tracking device so we kind of know where these things are at any time that is a great question that has been discussion uh I got to tell you hit the nail in the head on that one that has been a big discussion because up to this up to the well certainly up to last year uh.

Balloons are being launched all the time and they they were not they did not have to file a flight plan or anything like that and that is something that's been uh very much gone back and forth whether every balloon that gets launched I mean short of a inflated Mickey's head balloon from Disneyland that gets accidentally released but short of that.

All these balloons that go out all time should they put out some sort of flight plan or notification and they're still going back and forth on that just because of the sheer volume of balloons that go out there uh do they want that much information flowing in so that that's a great question I think that's going to be one that actually this.

Incident that just happened will be part of the discussion which is what should we do and uh uh should we tighten this up even more and I'm sure within the uh FAA uh Federal Aviation Administration they're probably looking at this right now to say should we tighten up our regulations on that even further and when when last question to you Hal when.

When China sees that we scrambled a jet because we didn't know what the origin was uh do they smirk and laugh at that knowing uh what they did before I don't know if they smirk or they just take note of it uh they they know that that's something that that is a uh interestingly that is a methodology that is not available to them like it.

Was one thing uh we see the balloons over the continental US this is where this one was was a hobbyist balloon but one thing if you get out to the Pacific particularly the West Pacific um they've been for example last week didn't make the news much was uh eight spy balloons were launched by China over Taiwan went right to their airspace and the.

Taiwanese picked up on that uh we have uh balloons that have been spotted over China I mean sorry over from China over Guam which is you know US Territory um you know the Northern Mariana Islands US Territory certainly where uh we have bases throughout the Pacific and and we've also had balloon threats uh over Hawaii so these are all strategic.

Locations a lot of uh defense department a lot of military installations and activities on those places so I think what this is telling the Chinese is that use of balloons to collect intelligence will not go unnoticed and it's not going to be easy as easy for them to utilize as it used to be which is going to limit what they can.

And can't do in terms of collecting intelligence and so I don't see this as a negative thing I don't know if they smirk so much as they simply take note of what we're doing sure sure and H hell comfor thank you so much for coming on here on live now from Fox always a great wealth of knowledge and uh giving us insight as always we always appreciate.

It here on live now from Fox all right thank you Mike

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