I'm John Batchel with my colleague Colonel Jeff McPawson, the United States Army retired

artillerymen, CBS News.

The news is that there is a full-scale combined arms exercise by the PLA Navy in the Taiwan

waters.

Its name is Straight Thunder 2025 Alpha, suggesting there will be more.

It is involving carriers, missile fire, live fire on the second day,

lending craft and the suggestion of an invasion of Taiwan. The reason I emphasize what I've learned about this is that during the Cuban Missile

Crisis of 1962, one of the first things that happened after they confirmed that there

were Russian platforms as hidden in the parts of Cuba was that they ordered up a military exercise on Puerto Rico

called Ortzac, which is Castro spelled backwards.

That suggested they were going to be ready to jump if they needed to to hit Cuba.

Is that standard for armies when you're told to get ready for war, you run an exercise

and the enemy can't tell whether it's real or make believe? Yeah, exactly right, John. It becomes

a diversion. You try to get them to establish this as routine things we're doing so they become more lax in the preparation.

Another historical example I used as the Egyptians in 1973 conducted a number of exercises

which looked like they were moving towards crossing the Suez Canal because of course the Israelis occupied the other side of the Suez Canal

since the end of the

67 war and they did that multiple times and then finally in october 1973 and when the Israelis

took it as a norm and didn't react in any fashion in terms of bolstering the defense that's the day

the egyptians crossed the canal so that certainly could be the case that you would

do this routinely. It becomes a norm. And then one day you actually do the attack when you think

you have them at the weakest spot. But also you do it for another reason. Then you do it to intimidate.

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