Urban / City Warfare (merged thread)

[davidbfpo]

This paper The Worst of Both Worlds: An analysis of urban littoral combat by Dr Dayton McCarthy is from Australia. I have only skimmed the introduction and the papers itself is 5Mb. The intro's key passage:

This is a paper about fighting in cities on coastlines – the contemporary topic of the combat in the ‘urban littoral’. This paper argues that urban littoral combat is the ‘worst of both worlds’ and brings together two of the most difficult forms of warfare – urban and amphibious operations.

Link:https://www.army.gov.au/our-future/a...ations/army-25

[davidbfpo]

A pointer to the Modern War Institute's Urban Warfare Project collection of articles:https://mwi.usma.edu/urban-warfare-project/

[AdamG]

(CNN)The coming decades will see the growth of colossal megacities as the world's population increasingly moves into urban environments, a new United Nations report predicts.
Today, 55% of the world's population is urban, a figure which is expected to grow to 68% by 2050, with the addition of 2.5 billion new city residents, according to projections by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
By 2030, there will be 43 megacities around the world with populations of over 10 million, up from 33 similarly sized urban centers today and just 10 in 1990.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/16/world...ntl/index.html

[davidbfpo]

A short article from Australia. Which opens with:

This systems-of-systems configuration is referred to as the Survivability Onion. Layers of the onion include: don’t be seen, don’t be hit, don’t be penetrated and don’t be killed. Each onion stratum features specific technologies to safeguard an AFV and its crew. However, AFV survivability is not just the sum of discrete defensive systems, but rather it is their collective integration that generates superior protection.

Link:https://groundedcuriosity.com/shades...kippur-effect/

Curious to see the Vulcan 20mm cannon back again, once more atop a M113.

Didn't the IDF deploy such a system years ago, possibly for another purpose: ATGM, not drones?

[davidbfpo]

A sixteen pgs. paper from MWI @ West Point and near the start a passage:

At the most basic level, however, there is an obvious, but neglected tactical problem in city fighting:simply crossing the street.
The amount of damage and numbers of casualties in fighting in recent years in Raqqa, Aleppo, Marawi, and Mosul show how rudimentary urban warfare tactics remain, as well as the highly destructive nature of combat in cities. Without new tactics and tools for dealing with some of the basic challenges of urban combat, military units are forced to employ extremely destructive methods to reclaim cities from entrenched defenders.

Link:https://mwi.usma.edu/wp-content/uplo...the-street.pdf

I noted a reference to Hue Citadel in 1968, with 90mm tank cannon being found to be useless; my understanding is that the USMC realised only the "big guns" could breach the walls, so called up 155mm & 8" guns to batter a hole in the walls. When the ARVN mounted an assault the NVA/VC had left. Less certain is the tale that the USMC in Hue after a few days called the USMC Library @ Quantico, where a librarian explained how siege warfare had worked and so they reverted to those methods.

Plus the reference to defenders who were willing to die, citing ISIS in Mosul as an example. Yesterday I watched a YouTube documentary on the Canadians assaulting the walled city of Ortona, Italy in 1943 held by German paratroopers, as relevant today as it was then.
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SO7MoWh48g

[AdamG]

The perfect petri dish.

In 1998, as the setting for his election celebrations, Chávez chose the balcony of the Teresa Carreño, a spectacular, brutalist style cultural centre. Built during the 1970s oil boom and reminiscent of London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, it has hosted stars such as Dizzy Gillespie, George Benson, Ray Charles and Luciano Pavarotti, and epitomised the country’s new ambition. “Venezuela is reborn,” Chávez declared.

Twenty years after that upbeat address, an economic cataclysm experts blame on ill-conceived socialist policies, staggering corruption and the post-2014 slump in oil prices has given Caracas the air of a sinking ship.

Public services are collapsing, businesses closing and residents evacuating on buses or one of a dwindling number of flights still connecting their fallen metropolis to the rest of the world.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2...-latin-america

[davidbfpo]

Discovered via a WW2 blog site and the first article concludes:

During the battle for Ortona, the Canadians innovated, improvised, and successfully exploited the effects of their personal weapons and supporting arms under largely unforeseen circumstances. Following a week of fighting in Ortona, the Canadian division became Eighth Army’s acknowledged street-fighting experts. In serving notice upon the Allies to expect further such battles, Ortona also carried implications. In Britain, armies composed mostly of untried formations waited to open the main ‘second front’ in northwest Europe, where they could expect an equally stubborn and desperate German defence. Ortona therefore merited close study, and received it from training staffs throughout the Allied armies.Canadian assessments figured highly, and they remain an instructive case study in the evaluation of battle experience.

Link:http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo8/...oderso-eng.asp

Amazing that the Canadians learnt so quickly.

The second article in part explains the learning:

The Canadians, recognizing that following standard doctrine would result in heavy casualties, swiftly indulged their tactical creativity, devising methods to make them more effective. The most notable of their solutions was the advent of mouse-holing, whereby soldiers would blow a hole in the wall separating two back-to-back buildings, either with explosive charges or the man-packed PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank) launcher, in order to avoid entering the streets and exposing themselves to fire. This inventiveness gave the Canadians a substantial advantage at Ortona, as the German forces were not only surprised by the switch from conventional tactics, but failed to adequately counter the improvised warfare, instead having to rely on conventional counterattacks, usually under the cover of night.

Link:https://www.seaforthhighlanders.ca/stories/470

The original website thread has other links, which include videos.
Link:http://ww2talk.com/index.php?threads...-ortona.55293/