The Chinese are making huge strides in their Navy.

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning the New Year. With us this morning is doctor William J. Parker. He’s the CEO of the Parker Maritime Technologies and he was a president of the East West Institute and thirty years in the Navy at very very high levels. And doctor Parker, what the heck is going on? I mean, there’s so many questions I could

0:26 ask you on the first Sunday of the New year. The drones, where the heck are they coming from? They say that it’s really a division of the Navy. What’s going on with China? Where do you want to start?

0:43 Speaker 2 Well? John, first of all, Happy New Year. It’s great to finally make it to twenty twenty five here and looking forward to a very exciting time here this year. I guess we can months. We’ll start with China, since that seems to be a regular discussion of our As you know, John, the number of vertical launch systems that

1:06 the Chinese have gone from basically zero to now over forty three hundred ls cells and the United States has about eighty four hundred. So they’re about to shoot passes here in the next couple of years, just as they have shot pass us in the number of surface combatants, and now they’re designing some pretty high tech aircraft that

1:28 they’re flying around as well.

1:30 Speaker 1 Understood, where does this technology come from?

1:34 Speaker 2 Well, the technology comes from internal to them. A lot of it comes from the United States when you look at their aircraft carrier and much of their technology, it comes from not only visits but from stealing technology from the United States. It also comes from their friends’ allies such as Iran and others around the planet. So they’re

1:57 getting it from wherever they can and they’re doing a good job of exploiting it.

2:03 Speaker 1 And they have an aircraft now, supersonic aircraft now that they they’re bragging they’re going to make a airline out of it that looks like the SR seventy one.

2:16 Speaker 2 They do, and and bragging with them usually means that they’re going to pull it off. And numbers matter, and John, you and I have talked about this a lot before, and the amount of ships that they build compared to the number of ships that we build, a number of aircraft they’re building far exceeds ours now. And we can’t

2:34 forget that. The reason we won World War Two, in addition to the Great Americans they thought there, was because we had a system that allowed us to build ships and aircraft and all those things we needed quickly to surge, and we don’t have much of that now, and we need to get back to it and get back to

2:53 it quickly.

2:54 Speaker 1 Understood the technology that they using on these possible A lot of people are blaming the drones on them too. Are they ours es of theirs? Are they both a little bit of both?

3:10 Speaker 2 Oh, I’ll separate what I know and what we’ll talk about, and we’ll talk about is that there are a lot of countries out there that would like to exploit the United States in any way they can, not just our facilities here in the continental United States, but around the globe.

3:28 And we know that the Chinese have done that in the past, as as of the Russians and many others, And so do we know exactly who? The public know exactly who these many drone sightings that we’ve seen over the last weeks are no. But we did have balloons fly over it’s not that long ago either from China.

3:51 So I think it’s you’re probably gonna find when it all comes out public that there’s a combination of our own stuff and things from other countries and also within the United States because we do not have good control right now over these drones. I think it’s just a matter of time before we start having issues with aircraft

4:10 strikes on final or taking off as these drones are flying around our airports as well.

4:17 Speaker 1 What else would you like to talk to the American people have on a Sunday morning, the first Sunday in the new year of twenty twenty five.

4:25 Speaker 2 Well, John, I’m privileged to be on that first call with you in twenty twenty five, as we have been many years before. You know, as we look at the Red Sea, major issues there, and it’s interesting that it is the Chinese, that it is the Indians, the United States, many others who are dealing with the houtis and having

4:45 missile shot at their ships, et cetera. And so that has got to stop. The reality is that there are a lot of folks that looked at the world and looked at the United States and how we left Afghanistan, how we’ve dealt with Ukraine and other issue like this, and they’re now emboldened and they’re in boldened to the

5:03 point where they’re taking shots at our ships, whether they’re civilian or military. And that’s got to change, and I suspect it will change here in the next couple of weeks. As far as the Panama Canal goes, you know, that was the largest US project in our history. When we built the canal, it was about three hundred and seventy

5:23 five million dollars in the early nineteen hundreds. We gave that a way under the Carter administration signed the agreement, and then it was actually transferred under the Clinton administration. And there’s a lot of people that are saying, hey, wait a minute, and including the next president, they’re saying, hey, wait a minute. We built that thing. We had a

5:39 lot of people died building it, and maybe it’s time to get that back where a minimum. Maybe it’s time to say all flagged US ships go through there for nothing, and we get a percentage of everything that goes through that canal that we built and paid for. So there’s lots of arguments on that, but my opinion is that

5:59 we do need to reap the benefits of what so many Americans their put their life towards and our money towards in building that.

6:10 Speaker 1 Now I was talking from the strategic point of view. We need the Panama Canal. We don’t need anybody else controlling it. Greenland. You were a navy man for thirty years. Is there a strategic value to Greenland going over the North Pole or into Asia and the Soviet Union or not well, Russia there is no Soviet Union.

6:36 Speaker 2 Sorry, yeah, John, I think you just hit it. Real estate and geography is everything there, but it’s also a very large piece of real estate, and I do think there’d be real value in US having more impact there.

6:52 And whether or not we you know, that becomes the fifty second state, or whether or not that just becomes another close ally is is a different conversation. But I do think there’d be real value in increasing our presence there.

7:07 There’s also real value and necessity in building icebreakers, and we’ve been talking about this for a decade now, but in order to have access to a certain part of the world, you have to have icebreakers, and the US just doesn’t have them and for some reason will not spend the money to build those to get us in

7:24 those areas that we need to. So I think that’ll be an issue hopefully in the next few years as well.

7:30 Speaker 1 Last question on a Sunday morning, Finland and Norway all upset at the Russians possibly cutting cable lines cable in other words, dragging their anchor and cutting lines communications lines.

7:47 Speaker 2 What say you, John, I think there’s no doubt that they did that. I think there’s no doubt that you’ll see more of that. I think that there was a major issue in the fact that we communicate exactly where those were to the world, and they’re not protected in the ways they should be. But this is a serious

8:08 active aggression and impact on those countries that are our allies, and I think there are some actions that are going to need to be taken to counter that. I remember that the vast majority of our banking goes through those types of cables as well. So if they can cut them there and get away with it, where will the

8:27 next place be that they cut them? And then what is going to be the backup when those go down? Or what is the backup when those go down? And now you lose a series of your satellites. Do you have HF capability for the future? Are we bringing that back up again which we took down over the last

8:46 several decades. So I think there’s lots of things like that that need to be talked about. It. What is the backup when that cable or when that satellite system goes down.

8:56 Speaker 1 When that satellite system goes down, in the cables go down, question, is there a new technology? I understand and what I hear there is a new technology being worked on.

9:10 Speaker 2 There are new technologies that are being worked on. But there’s also old technology which can be used again. And one of those is HF or high frequency capability, which has very long range and you can pump a lot of information through that. So I think the combination of those two things are very important. And who owns those

9:29 systems in that real estate to be able to move HF from one place to the other is important. Do you have it on your shifts or do you not? Is another way to move it. But you’re right there are some other new technologies out there as well, so I think that combination will play a critical role as

9:46 we move forward here, especially as we will likely see more of these cables being cut.

9:51 Speaker 1 Doctor William J. Parker, thirty years in the Navy. Thank you for your service, Thank you for what you’ve done, and you continue to speak out for our country. Thank you, and a happy new year and we’ll catch you up again.

10:05 Speaker 2 Thank you very much. John