Sea Control - Sea Control 566: No One Should Think the War Will be Short with CDR Justin Cobb

Episode Date: March 8, 2025

Links: “No One Should Think the War Will be Short” by Justin Cobb, USNI Proceedings (September 2024). “Kill ‘em all? Denial Strategies, Defense Planning and Deterrence Failure,” by Evan Montgomery, War on the Rocks (September 2020). Bio: Commander Justin Cobb is the maritime fires officer with Carrier Strike Group 11. A rotary-wing aviator, he previously served as the commanding officer of the Helicopter Training Squadron 18 Vigilant Eagles at Naval Air Station Whiting Field, Florida. A graduate of the Joint Forces Staff College, he conducted his joint tour at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Mons, Belgium, where he was the lead action officer on the NATO joint command-and-control concept. Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinmcobb1310/

Welcome aboard the Sea Control Podcast from the Center for International Maritime Security. I'm Walker Mills, and my guest today is Commander Justin Cobb, a Maritime Fires Officer with Carrier Strike Group 11. We're going to discuss his recent article, No One Should Think the War Will Be Short, It was recently published in USNI Proceedings and actually won their Future of Naval Warfare Essay Contest. Justin, welcome aboard. Could you start by telling the listeners a bit more about your background?

Yeah, Walker, thanks for inviting me. Awesome to be here. I am a naval aviator, originally an H-60 guy. I flew 60 Foxtrots in hotels and MH-60 Sierras, so HSC pilot. I did a joint tour overseas with NATO, did my command tour at Helicopter Training Squadron 18. And I've been the Maritime Fires Officer and Air Ops Officer at Strike Group 11, which is the Nimitz Strike Group, for about the past two and a half years or so. Awesome. And as a reminder to the listeners, all the opinions are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we

might otherwise be associated. So just kind of getting right to the core of the issue here, you wrote that you think any potential conflict with China, between China and the United States, wouldn't be a short one. Why is it that you think that? I just think it can't be. I mean, if things go kinetic, certainly the stakes are too high. Like right out front, certainly China has staked its reputation on, you know, Taiwan, the reputation of the CCP and the PRC itself. And then for the United States, it's like our role as the de facto leader of a global rules-based order. With those stakes, how could we engage in a conflict that was just a limited conflict or cabinet war? That's kind of what I talk about in the article. And then the more that you think

about all the different ways it could play out and what's happening even right now in the world, I think maybe it's better to say we're already engaged in this, right? I just read an article a couple of days ago called, what is strategic competition and are we still in it? And it was in SAIS. That's John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Yeah. And a great article where they like lay out, are we actually still in competition or have we moved somewhere further down the continuum? I think the answer to that is probably yeah. You know, like if as Indo-PACOM is, we've changed the relationship now from, or the language from gray zone to ICAD, illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive activities that the PRC is conducting. But if we view what's

going on right now through that lens, and we're already in some sort of conflict below the kinetic state, then it's definitely going to be super long lasting. And if that conflict, unfortunately, were to ever go kinetic, I just can't imagine that it would just be over in a snap. Wanted to interview you and talk about your article, because I totally agree. I think, you know, you can look back over history, and there's a lot of examples of folks who thought that whatever XYZ conflict would be very quick, would be decisive, and it was really protracted. I mean, we can see we've got this example going on in Ukraine over two years now, and that was supposed to be quick and decisive, and it keeps dragging on because, like you say, the interests

of the different parties involved are simply too strong. If we assume that we're right in thinking that that this would be a more protracted conflict or perhaps that it's already begun what would some of the then risks be of focusing only on a short sharp war uh some of the language or a more decisive or limited conflict what's the risk yeah i mean i think so certainly from like a forced design perspective you kind of see what uh short sharp war or like thinking looks like right and i think it's the denial strategy that's definitely the you know i mentioned the article i certainly quoted rand they're like rand studies there's prior secretaries of defense you know we've set these like operational or tactical objectives on stopping a chinese amphibious

invasion of taiwan so so you see like this force design that's like really focused on just that like this short sharp war right there what does that look like i mean that looks like exquisite capabilities, lots of unmanned systems, counter A2AD. So you're specifically designing a force to go after an operational problem set. The reason that I think that's a risk is because you're focused on an operational problem set. Like if you're not thinking strategically about the broader picture of what's happening, then it may not be realistic. I mean, certainly the U.S. military has had, I don't know, 50, 60 years now of being operationally and tactically brilliant and strategically just failing. So we could out-compete in this particular area

with a force design that's specifically focused on preventing an amphibious assault and then still sort of miss the forest for the trees. And I think ultimately that's the risk. Like, where are we putting all of the eggs in terms of the military basket, but also, like, across the whole mil spectrum? The thing that I've been thinking about, I'm working on some other articles and stuff, is, you know, what if this force design, what if this operationally focused thing that we're doing, the denial sort of strategy, what if that's really just the Maginot line of the 21st century? I mean, what if we've made these really focused tactics, techniques, procedures, and capabilities that are just bypassed because that's not how a PRC chooses to start the war or to achieve their overall strategic objective? So I think, you know, ultimately that's what I think the risk is, right? And then certainly, if a war were to go kinetic, God forbid, if we were to get into like a big shooting war with the PRC, I can't imagine that low-density, exquisite assets will matter. We certainly haven't seen them matter that much in Ukraine.

Hypersonics haven't turned the tide of the war. Gen 5 fighters have not turned the tide of the war. So if we've put all of our efforts into small numbers of exquisite weapon systems, or even large numbers of really cheap but short range sort of drone weapon systems, what if it doesn't work? What if after that first phase of engagement, the follow on phases see us with no depth left on the bench? You know, what do we do next? So I mean, I think that's the risk of focusing on the short war. Wow. There's a lot to unpack there. I mean, force design is something that the Marine Corps is super interested in and working through. So like that, that definitely pops on my radar as we've kind of committed to a path forward. And I think the Commandant and the previous Commandant have kind of acknowledged that there is inherent risks in choosing a specific path. And then in terms of depth, I mean, one of the things that's been striking to me is you see both on both sides of Ukraine, the getting enough personnel. So like decisions on when to start drafting are really important. And so I wonder sometimes we talk like you're saying about exquisite capability and specific munitions or specific platforms.

But do we ever talk about how quickly we could pull more people into the selective service and train them up? And I think those are the kind of much more difficult questions that you would, if you assume you would have a protracted conflict, you'd have to start asking right away. And again, I think both Russia and Ukraine are feeling the negative effects of avoiding those questions for as long as possible, and then being put in kind of a crunch. then this kind of leads into the next question of if we do assume that a potential conflict would be protracted how does that change how we invest in structure the force if we think that what we're doing is more operationally focused to like you said solve a single operational problem set how would we change our investments in force design and i think like you you're already like getting at it with the but what about getting the population to think about it what about you know personnel and reconstitution of forces and stuff like that i think first and foremost also let me say i don't think that the marines force design is off target neither do i neither do i

yeah yeah yeah let's level the playing field here yeah i actually think the marines new force design is brilliant and i think it gets at both problems because certainly you would want something like an inside and an outside force. You would want something that could survive or blunt, but also the Marines like being boots on the ground is the model that I think is appropriate, which is to say it's more deterrence. So step one, don't even see that we have to go into a very large scale conflict. We should really be focusing on strategic deterrence and defense in the first place. This is shoring up allies shoring up our own long-term capabilities that's why i think like strategically we have global commitments as the united states we can't be operationally focused on just the taiwan

strait we have not just actual allies that we're in treaties with um with economic interests all across the world and all of those things are sort of at risk of this revisionist prc kind of russian north korean iranian like axis of ill will and we can't afford to just focus on one tactical problem set we have to like focus on all of those things together so i say like if you assume a conflict's going to be protracted and then i'm saying let's make an assumption that we're already in some sort of level of that that maybe we're moving a little bit beyond competition and we're moving into this place where there's some nefarious action that's taking place and and the PRC and Russia are explicitly trying to overturn an American-led system. And if you kind of accept

that, then you say, okay, so first, let's focus on strategy and deterrence. We want to reinforce allies and partners. And the way to do that is probably presence, like the Marine Corps is doing. Like, I would think that more rapid investments in the Philippines and in Japan specifically, but also in some other partners that are in the area, certainly we're allies with Thailand, And then we have great partnerships with many of the other countries there. But like, why are we seeding gray zone to the PRC right now? Why are we so hyper focused on the Taiwan Straits that we're allowing what's happening in the South China Sea to happen from a legal standpoint? I mean, there are lots of mechanisms that we could be engaged in if we had like physical presence, if we were helping them build their own capabilities. I said in my article, I think things like bulldozers and Marsden matting and bunkers and air defense capabilities are at least as important as hypersonics and swarms of drones, because I think you're building capacity and commitment and showing resolve, whereas like a short, sharp war doesn't really signal resolve, does it? Like, I mean, if we build a force that's ready for a really short thing, how are we telling

the Philippines and Japan, actually, guys, we're in this for the long haul. This is important to us, this world order. So, I mean, I think that's like where I would focus on what protraction looks like, is it looks like carrying something like that through for some undetermined amount of time until the U.S. achieves overall strategic objectives or shores up or like values in our way of the world. and then like you got it specifically well okay there's also the industrial stuff and the personnel stuff there's like all the depth that we would need for protraction and then like top level if

we think that the war is coming short or long shouldn't we be doing a better job to sound the alarm i mean to de-risk our economies to decouple some of the parts of our economies that are at really high strategic risk for the united states and the west to strengthen our industrial base to like streamline and uncomplicate the ridiculous laws and acquisitions processes i mean there's like so many things that we could be focused on if we think we're entered we've entered into this era a sort of long-term conflict across a continuum and i think those maybe those are being overlooked for like the self-aware invisible hypersonic missile system or you know whatever fill in the blank replicator initiatives that we're doing, and then kind of foregoing all the rest of this stuff.

Really interesting stuff. Again, lots to unpack there. I think I have to challenge you on a couple things, because the first two things you talked about were presence and building capacity with our partners, especially our treaty allies. So talking about Japan, South Korea, really focusing on the Philippines, I feel like we are doing that. And that at least mirrors the language that I see coming out of senior folks in the DOD. We've got our new enhanced basing or enhanced security cooperation agreements with the Philippines. You know, we rotate forces through there. We exercise with them. We work closely with them. We have an alliance with them. Similar in Japan, you know, there's how many tens of thousands of U.S. troops based in Japan and Korea

on a permanent basis. I mean, I can certainly concede that there's room for more and I wouldn't disagree that more would be better, but I do feel like if those are really supposed to be the crux of what we're doing to deter essentially malign or aggressive action, I do feel like we are doing that already. And so then that begs the question, if we're still seeing things that we don't like, is it not enough or there would there be other things that we need to do in addition to i'll just pause there totally agree right i just just i don't know i guess it's been a year since my last deployment to the westpac but certainly lots of that happening and and we're fully involved with our integration with japan and also the philippines and i think the past couple years have shown

huge movements and increases with the relationship with the philippines specifically yeah but but i definitely think there's more to do there okay i think all of these things are like moving in the right direction like across the board you you do see both politicians and senior military leaders all saying all those things you see movement across the board for those but i do think like yeah i mean not enough right i guess like what what are we doing actually in the second thomas shoal i i don't know i just it feels like we should be able to do more than that i mean they're violating international law against one of our allies and i i that seems like an area where it would be a little bit easier to draw a line a line that's not going to lead us into war that

supports our allies that also reinforces commitment to those things so yeah i think there's more that could be done and i think that that maybe more imposition could be put on that in lieu of some of the like denial heavy strategies i mean it's a balance right i mean you want for deterrence you want to show that you can win and denial is part of that for sure and so that's not like complete folly but i do think it's just like one piece of the broader strategic problem set right i can imagine kind of seeing it as a balance between like what what are you doing on the ground day to day to support these allies and partners and then like what's the like big theoretical break in case of war option that you have, and you have to be able to do both instead of focusing

too much on one or the other. Yeah. And I talk in the article specifically about, you also, I think we need to be realistic, more realistic than we have been as it relates to the denial strategy. I say in the article, it's misaligned with current capabilities, but it's also misaligned with maybe some political realities, but it's also misaligned with current risk tolerances and across those three things that's why kind of going all in on denial is tough because denial there's another there's another great great article and this one it actually makes me kind of sad and that's a cool title it's in war on the rocks it's called kill them all denial strategies defense planning and deterrence failure and in this article they say

a narrow focus on something like just denial of an amphibious assault through the taiwan strait could actually heighten the prospect of failure of deterrence, because it might show like us vulnerable with a lack of will, a lack of endurance, and a lack of relevance. The lack of relevance piece is sort of the, what I'm saying is the Maginot line of the 21st century. The lack of endurance is that we've got this bespoke, highly sophisticated, very exquisite and expensive force that really can't even sustain itself for a year, right? But the lack of will is what signals uh if we think to engage that strategy that we have to move out immediately does that seem politically realistic i mean the american public is not like tracking this debate

it's to me it would be shocking if any administration were able to snap their fingers and start what could be world war three which is what you would need to do for denial Right. I mean, you would need to be engaged like immediately. Right. And so if you're not actually willing to do that or people question your will to do that or your ability to politically do it, doesn't it undermines your entire defensive posture? yeah and i can also see that folk overly focusing on denial maximizes the the geographic asymmetry it really emphasizes like they're very close to their goals and we are very far away and the time becomes much more important and like you're saying you you'd have to be almost anticipatory you couldn't hesitate even for 24 hours to make a decision because it would be yeah and do you see that happening and so here's the what i said that that article was sad i'll

tell you why i said one i think it's an awesome article the reason it's sad is because it was written in 2020 so so if you you're saying we're doing a lot of these things and i agree and i find myself like day to day my emotions just like radically teetering between i feel really confident at all the brilliant great americans and awesome leadership across the dod the cno's new nap like there's so much to be hopeful about you're like oh man we're good we're still like the leaders in the world we got this but then you know an hour later i read this an article from four five six years ago and i think to myself oh my gosh it's been years and have we made that much ground or are we just spinning our tires here and not actually moving out with the speed

that we need to move out? And I don't know, I can't answer that. Certainly we've done a lot of awesome stuff. Are we moving fast enough? I don't know that this, the 2020 date on that article kind of made my heart sink a little bit. I also want to follow up on something you said about, you talk about sounding the alarm, which I agree with, right? You know, we're talking about something that's kind of arcane for, for probably most Americans, obviously the listeners on the podcast are probably aware of what's going on, right? People that are interested in maritime security. But I also wonder sometimes if seeing particularly military leaders beating the drum about a potential conflict, and I'm sure that both of us have seen it, you know, in the press

and also personally when we talk with people that we work with, you know, there's kind of the trope of the military leader who says, you know, it's coming. War is coming. You know, I've seen it before and it's coming back. And I, I always wonder, you know, if that could do more harm than good, because I think everybody can agree that nobody wants a conflict. That would be like a horrific, terrible thing. So if everybody's invested in not having it happen, is there danger? Is there risk to having your professionals tell everybody that they think it's almost inevitable. And I also simultaneously understand that the role of our military is to be prepared and you're not doing a good job of preparedness if you tell people that you think this outcome

that you're preparing for is unlikely, right? So it's a complicated exercise in communication. I definitely sometimes am concerned that the military is going to speak the war into existence. that maybe if we keep talking about it in these terms of inevitability maybe that that those words sort of become a self-fulfilling prophecy or reality and i definitely don't think that war with china is or should be inevitable at all certainly politically i think that that's true right because the it's not the military who's not sounding the alarm the military is definitely sounding the alarm but it's kind of everybody else that's not and and i don't know like i agree with you we do have a responsibility the military does to to be prepared to to think about most

dangerous koa and make sure that we're posturing to defend against that that's like literally our job um but but on the flip side of that coin if if there's no appetite for the way that we think we want to get at that, like a denial strategy, then that's where I think we need to sort of maybe adjust or compromise to what's more realistic. I don't know. And I think about it too, like in terms of the Cold War, I think maybe there's more analogies to where we are now to like World War I than the Cold War with possibly what's coming. But like in the Cold War setting, when I think about what should be done in terms of sounding the alarm, I just like, can you imagine in the Cold War, if the Soviet Union had the equivalent of Confucius Institutes with actually Politburo

guys in all of our universities, and if the Soviet Union had lead engineering PhD students and owned media outlets, and the Soviet Union owned businesses, and if we were that coupled in with what we thought was this existential competitor or possible enemy, if we think that that's true, that we need to be confronting them, that's the kind of alarm. I mean, and I don't advocate a radical decoupling because I don't think our future with China has to be one that's all bad. Not at all. I think we can dial it back to competition, like and lower the threshold. I think that we benefit from each other and that we need to talk about those things. And so, you know, that's where I think maybe we're owed more from the civilian leadership

as a military maybe we're owed more to help set a national strategy that's a little more balanced yeah i buy that i mean i think i think you're you're right there are some good like thinking about it at least specifically from the narrow technological lens i think there's a lot more in common with the pre-world war one the conventional wisdom now would say that those nations those empires kind of stumbled into into this huge war that they didn't necessarily want and they didn't really know how it was going to go. But a topic for another day. I mean, I think the decoupling, perhaps here, Ukraine is maybe an instructive example. Those countries are at war, Russia and Ukraine, but there's still Russian gas getting transshipped through the Ukraine to Europe,

and they're still both exporting grain on the same trade. There's still economic links that these countries have not completely entangled. Keeping us going here, asking kind of the counterpoint are there risks to assuming a conflict might be protracted right so we talked about what are the risks of thinking the conflict would be short you know and sharp and decisive are there on the other side risks of assuming that a conflict would be protracted or is it just all upside oh i don't you know i feel walker that's like a that must be a trick question because i can't think of any downsides to assuming that it would be worse that it would be longer i i guess perhaps if we were not sort of forced modernizing to do something like a really rapid denial strategy to

achieve a rapid tactical or operational objective maybe if we didn't do that at all then we would be at risk of getting caught flat-footed i mean maybe that's true maybe if we were if we were not moving at the speed that we needed to for those things it's conceivable that there might be little flare-ups that it would absolutely be to our benefit to have a force designed for like a really rapid response that was decisive so i mean maybe maybe that's the risk but broadly i think we do better to assume that any war between two major powers that have the probably the will and the capability to endure through protraction, we probably do better to plan for that protraction from the outset rather than make these assumptions that it would be over

rapidly. I buy that. I mean, at first glance, I think I see the downside is that it's probably more expensive. It's more disruptive at a time when you're not in a conflict to prepare for a large conflict than it is to prepare for a small conflict. So you're, you know, inconveniencing your, your citizenry more. Yeah. And there's like a lot of little things we could do that wouldn't be super, I mean, maybe they're not inconveniencing at all. Maybe we could actually just improve efficiencies that have, cause we've baked in kind of crazy inefficiencies, certainly into the military acquisitions process. That stuff is insane. I mean, the, the web of, of laws and policies and rules and procedures that we've created are not to our benefit like

wrecking those and starting over allowing a playing field that lets you know two circle and palantir and andrel like really get involved from the get that just sounds like better across the board not an inconvenience taking something away from the primes but then there's also like a lot of manpower issues that are also held up by artificialities like our current usns fleet is just in the just in the hurt locker for manpower well i mean okay pay them more restructure that organization to make that and incentivize because there's a lot of patriots who would love to do that job, but maybe we're not structured to facilitate what is their modern lifestyles and pay cycles and to be competitive against the merchant marine fleet. That would both

improve our capability to endure through protraction and also probably just be a net benefit to merchant mariners and sailors across the whole country. There are lots of laws about U.S. shipping and shipping industries and all sorts of things that wouldn't really be a burden to the United States if we fix them, but would also posture us for like a larger scale war if it were to happen. I think there's a lot of room there for there to be like easy, quick wins if there was political willpower and the leadership could sort of push behind it. Kind of our last question here. I'm curious how your article has been received. I mean, obviously, you won the USNI contest. So the USNI, the United States Naval Institute editorial board liked it. They

brought you on their podcast. I liked it. We're bringing on our podcast. Have you gotten other feedback? Because it's kind of, I think it makes a lot of sense, but it is perhaps bucking a little bit some of the rhetoric and other conventional wisdom that we've seen out there. I guess I think it's been perceived well because of the things you just said, because I won that contest because I got to do a couple of podcasts which have been super fun i'll say i don't i don't read any of the comments for the article or that's good never read the comments never read the comments so i i can't exactly tell you what people think about it my my inner circles my friend circles have liked it not everybody agrees with me and and i i love that like i value having the debate and the

conversation it's actually my favorite but also i don't know i hope i'm not coming across as too contrarian because i don't completely disagree with what we're doing i think a lot of the things we're doing are awesome and i think that they're hedges that are making us more lethal and posturing the force for the future so i don't want to be like a complete naysayer i guess i just want to like contribute to the conversation in some small way and help elevate it to think strategically i think you know more broadly that the world's super dangerous but i hope i'm not being too contrarian. And maybe because I have a few of those kind of tip of the hat that I do respect and agree with a lot of the things that are happening, I haven't received too much negative

feedback. That's good. That's good to hear. Or it could be coming. Yeah, you never know when that general officer, flag officer email pings your inbox. Sorry, I think that's about all the time we have for today. I'd like to thank my guest, Commander Justin Kopp, for discussing his recent essay with us, and we'll make sure to post a link to it in the show notes. And then we always ask, Justin, where, if anywhere, can our listeners find you online, and what are you working on next? You mentioned you had another couple of papers coming. Yeah, my only online presence really is LinkedIn, so that would be kind of the only place. And then I'm working on a couple articles, one that's just this exact topic again, but I'm looking at it. I try to like talk about what I think a war might

look like with a little bit of imagination of what I think Russia, North Korea, and Iran might do coordinated with or just adjacent to PRC if conflict broke out. That's like the first one. I'm almost done with that one. And then I'm working on another one about what I think the role of the numbered fleets and the mock is. So those are the two kind of papers I'm working on now they'll probably i'll be submitting them you know in the next month or so hopefully they get picked up for publishing awesome we'll look for those and we may have to uh invite you back on to talk about it thanks again for joining us and to the listeners thanks for tuning in see you next time Thank you.

We'll be right back.