Urban / City Warfare (merged thread)

[SWJED]

The Coming Urban Terror - John Robb, City Journal.

For the first time in history, announced researchers this May, a majority of the world’s population is living in urban environments. Cities—efficient hubs connecting international flows of people, energy, communications, and capital—are thriving in our global economy as never before. However, the same factors that make cities hubs of globalization also make them vulnerable to small-group terror and violence.

Over the last few years, small groups’ ability to conduct terrorism has shown radical improvements in productivity—their capacity to inflict economic, physical, and moral damage. These groups, motivated by everything from gang membership to religious extremism, have taken advantage of easy access to our global superinfrastructure, revenues from growing illicit commercial flows, and ubiquitously available new technologies to cross the threshold necessary to become terrible threats. September 11, 2001, marked their arrival at that threshold...

[davidbfpo]

John Robb writes well, citing examples of the 'new urban terror' in Latin America, notably Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

If you look at 'Old' Europe wayback in the C19th, especially after the French Revolution, the danger posed by urban mobs and revolutionares was well known. The streets of Paris weere laid out so artillery could sweep them; Austria-Hungary built forts around its cities to dominate them and in the UK we invented a civilian police force.

Cities can be anonymous, but local culture can be very invasive - many Europeans accept far greater regulation than elsewhere, e.g. Belguim.

Modern legend is that the state has a monopoly on force, well the state would want to claim that, but I have my doubts. Even before drugs organised crime had an extensive reach, e.g. the Mafia in Italy.

Groups, whatever their motivation, that prey on the public and challenge the state need to be confronted, not always by force. Retaining public support and confidence is the key. High visibility operations, so favoured in counter-terrorism alerts, must be far outweighed by a "ground cover" of contacts able to report. Building on the "cover" are informants who can penetrate the groups.

All too easy to slip into the "police state", careful now Napoleon is back!

Davidbfpo

[Hellbilly Soldier]

We're certainly seeing a projection of power by non-state actors never really seem before in history. In looking at the number of open terrorism cases by the FBI, Scotland Yard, etc. (as were noted after the UK Doctor Bombers episode), there is no doubt about the certainty of activity by cells at work.

In another thread here on SWJ, the question was brought up about "what if they (the terrorists) were more compentent?" And that goes right along with much of the analyses we see from various think tanks around the world. If they were more competent, imagine the destruction we might see?

My question--which I'm sure I'm not alone--why haven't we seen more competent attacks? The recipe has been supplied many times over by the Washington Post, New York Times, RAND, Brookings Institute, etc. What is the limiting factor that keeps these cells from wreaking the kind of havoc that journalists, pundits, and experts keep telling us about?

[selil]

Basic human nature is to be very positive and constructive in society? You only truly become corrupt when you become a politician.

[RTK]

My question--which I'm sure I'm not alone--why haven't we seen more competent attacks? The recipe has been supplied many times over by the Washington Post, New York Times, RAND, Brookings Institute, etc. What is the limiting factor that keeps these cells from wreaking the kind of havoc that journalists, pundits, and experts keep telling us about?

It's rare to see the synchronization necessary to pull off a spectacular event.

If you'll notice the cells that have been broken up in the past few years, they're ultra-spread out with a lot of moving parts. Consequently, there's a greater chance for error.

You'll notice, as well, that when they are brought down they're still a few steps away from an operational plan. They may have an end and motive, but rarely the means.

The lack of synchronization, a viable and feasible plan, and the quest for the "biggest, largest, or most impressive" attack makes it easier to defeat before culmination, especially since 2001 (whether others want to admit the Patriot Act works or not).

[jonSlack]

William Langewiesche's City of Fear

May ask for an email, nearby library, and a zip code in order to access the article. Other than that, the article is freely available.

[Mike Innes]

Paul Torrens, a geographer at the University of Arkansas, posted some visuals of a geosimulation he's put together modeling urban crowd behavior in response to a car fire/explosion. His site's been swamped with hits since the thing was mentioned on a few blogs and the word spread. Take a look at the video, which is limited but suggests some interesting possibilities for computer sims for urban warfare. He's got some other groovy sims on the site, too, worth looking at.

You can find the crowd simulator at http://www.geosimulation.org/crowds/

[Ron Humphrey]

Paul Torrens, a geographer at the University of Arkansas, posted some visuals of a geosimulation he's put together modeling urban crowd behavior in response to a car fire/explosion. His site's been swamped with hits since the thing was mentioned on a few blogs and the word spread. Take a look at the video, which is limited but suggests some interesting possibilities for computer sims for urban warfare. He's got some other groovy sims on the site, too, worth looking at.

You can find the crowd simulator at http://www.geosimulation.org/crowds/

I have to look and find it again but I remember finding Crowd model work in the last two years where they not only have all the rendering capabilities worked out but some good work in interactions amoung random groups.

Random patterns established with reactivity to stimuli of verying intensity in order to allow for more than less than fear or attraction among the entities.
As the model continues running the entities begin to develop ties to each other based on the number of times they encounter one another and thus begin grouping into smaller subsets as time goes by.

There was also supposed to be friend vs foe recognition and subsequent reactions accordingly bad guy = move away big bad guy run away etc.

I ll look for it

[William F. Owen]

Take a look at the video, which is limited but suggests some interesting possibilities for computer sims for urban warfare. He's got some other groovy sims on the site, too, worth looking at.

You can find the crowd simulator at http://www.geosimulation.org/crowds/

Land Warfare simulation is a potential war winner. The Aussies currently leas the way wit the USMC coming a long second. The UK has yet to switch on. LWS allows you teach and learn stuff that is simply impossible wandering around the training area. It's an excellent tool.

...but AI is a huge problem, so this may have some merit.

[Norfolk]

Very interesting Mike. I seem to recall that a similar (or perhaps an early version of this) program was used recently to model the passage of elements of Lee's army through Gettysburgh in the hours leading up to the main battle. As Wilf says, even given the present status of AI, this is a tool with real and vast potential.

When I saw your name Mike, I thought it was vaguely familiar, and now I see that you were from that other English-speaking regiment; welcome to the SWC. Haven't you published in the CAJ and a few other places already?

[jcustis]

Someone I know loosely from the Lightfighter.net board is a computer graphics animation guy who works on Hollywood production, and is a CA Reservist with time in Iraq. I mentioned this thread to him and he replied with the link, which appears to be software he and his kin use to create environments and characters.

http://www.massivesoftware.com/whatismassive/

Is there a difference between crowd modelling and animation?

[selil]

Someone I know loosely from the Lightfighter.net board is a computer graphics animation guy who works on Hollywood production, and is a CA Reservist with time in Iraq. I mentioned this thread to him and he replied with the link, which appears to be software he and his kin use to create environments and characters.

http://www.massivesoftware.com/whatismassive/

Is there a difference between crowd modelling and animation?

There is a difference between the two. The animation stuff is the representation of the mathmatics behind the crowd modeling. There a variety of epidemiology simulations that show infection rates (you see them in the bad sci-fi movies poorly showing density and infection rates). A lot of the crowd modeling software follows infection rates only the infection is an idea or emotion. There are a lot of other factors that go into the "what" of the animation.

Thinking about bad sci-fi movies and patterns of movement. In the bad sci-fi movies they show infection spreading rapidly as a wave form across the nation. That is usually far from the truth. Reality is you get corridors of infection following road systems between large city centers, and jumps from air travel to the hub cities. Not take a look at crowd dynamics.

A crowd must follow physical ground paths. So waves and other patterns aren't going to work. Hydraulic theories of pressure and concentration help to inform crowd movement theorist though. Other things that help in imagining what needs to be animated are issues such as incident, obstructions, distance to injury ratio's, and even things like mental state. A good simulation allows you to easily adjust those parameters like in the infection simulations you can adjust regions of the map for population distance, technology level, etc (All those hofstedder elements).

I don't know if that helps at all, but there is some GIS stuff coming from Google that is supposed to mimic these type of questions pretty close.

[Mike Innes]

Is there a difference between crowd modelling and animation?

I'm pretty sure that Torrens demonstrates the how behind it - if you watch through the video on his site, there's a segment that demonstrates the sort of motion capture technology used to create characters for the big screen, using live models wired up to sensors.

[Mike Innes]

Very interesting Mike. I seem to recall that a similar (or perhaps an early version of this) program was used recently to model the passage of elements of Lee's army through Gettysburgh in the hours leading up to the main battle. As Wilf says, even given the present status of AI, this is a tool with real and vast potential.

When I saw your name Mike, I thought it was vaguely familiar, and now I see that you were from that other English-speaking regiment; welcome to the SWC. Haven't you published in the CAJ and a few other places already?

Not me. There was at least one other Mike I serving in 1 PPCLI at the same time. Thanks for the greets. Nothing in CAJ, but just published Denial of Sanctuary: Understanding Terrorist Safe Havens (sorry, shameless plug), along with a few articles in SCT and Civil Wars.

[selil]

Interesting article on military operations urban terrain

Link to story

This year marks a milestone in human history: For the first time, more than half the world's population will live in cities. A June 2007 report by the United Nations Population Fund said this "decisive shift from rural to urban growth" marks a change in "a balance that has lasted for millennia."

Not coincidentally, Army Chief Gen. George Casey recently gave a blunt assessment of how the United States would wage wars in the future: "We're going to fight in cities."

During his three years as commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Casey tried to come up with a way to fight an adaptive, largely ur-ban insurgency. That he never developed a fully effective approach explains, in part, his replacement by Gen. David Petraeus in early 2007. Petraeus' strategy of moving U.S. troops off huge bases and into local neighborhoods has tamped down violence in much of the country. Whether it will work in the long run remains to be seen.

Cities - from Stalingrad to Moga-dishu to Fallujah, Iraq in 2004 - have long played host to history's major battles. In a 2005 speech in Quantico, Va., Marine Gen. Michael Hagee said, "In my opinion, Fallujah is . . . not a bad example of what we're going to fight in the future, and not a bad example of how to fight it. . . . It is about individual Marines going house to house, killing."

The city as battlefield is partly a function of the city as the hub of modern commercial, educational, financial, social and political activity - a trend accelerated by globalization. Densely packed cities are where transportation arteries converge. Troops moving along the path of least resistance, such as paved roadways linking together major urban areas, are at some point bound to bump into opposing troops.

Meanwhile, the urban explosion is accelerating: By 2020, the number of city dwellers will swell to 60 percent of the world's population, and by 2030, it will reach 80 percent. The most rapid growth now is occurring in Asia and Africa, where the ranks of city dwellers increases by a million people every week.

Megacities - those with more than 10 million inhabitants - continue to expand. The U.N. says the wave of urbanization in the developing world could lead to continued unrest and conflict as the growth in population taxes the ability of cities to deliver security and basic services. It also will tax the ability of the U.S. military to adapt to a very different kind of war than it has traditionally waged.

Much more at the LINK

[William F. Owen]

This is the same old stuff that's been doing the rounds now for 20 years.

It's always the same angle, which is 'Future wars will be urban because,..." and then cite 5 or 6 facts that bear no relation to the argument.

Question 1: Which of the worlds top 50 armies is optimised to conduct combat more in urban terrain than rural? - answer none.

Question 2: How do armed forces and criminal gangs benefit from Urban terrain? - now take the answers to that question and relate them to the 5 or 6 facts.

Question 3: How does urban terrain hinder armed forces and criminal gangs?

I wish I was a senior military officer. I could express opinions without having to think about them before hand!

[wm]

I think forces that have chosen to stake their campaigns on capturing/defending cities have tended to be the big losers in historical campaigns. It represents a variation on the "hunker down in a FOB" theme that we have acknowledged wasn't working in the current AOR.

I can think of no good reason from a tactical perspective to fight in cities. Seems to me that there are two ways to do MOUT well--1)clearing buildings from the top down or 2)surrounding/bypassing cities, cutting off their denizens' access to critical infrastructure (like water, fuel, and electricity), and letting the occupants starve themselves into submission. The first imposes significant risk to one's own forces and the second has severe limitations from a humanitarian perspective.

[SteveMetz]

I think forces that have chosen to stake their campaigns on capturing/defending cities have tended to be the big losers in historical campaigns. It represents a variation on the "hunker down in a FOB" theme that we have acknowledged wasn't working in the current AOR.

I can think of no good reason from a tactical perspective to fight in cities. Seems to me that there are two ways to do MOUT well--1)clearing buildings from the top down or 2)surrounding/bypassing cities, cutting off their denizens' access to critical infrastructure (like water, fuel, and electricity), and letting the occupants starve themselves into submission. The first imposes significant risk to one's own forces and the second has severe limitations from a humanitarian perspective.

I've been arguing for years that MOUT is the environment where nonlethality and robotics could make a substantial difference. Clearing buildings and, more importantly, keeping them cleared are perfect tasks for robots equipped with nonlethal systems.

[Mike Innes]

All - sincere apologies for long absence from this forum, and for showing up now, only to toot our own horn.

I wanted to call your attention to an upcoming book discussion that's going to be held at CTlab, from 5-8 December. The author is Dr. Antoine Bousquet, and the book, about to be published with Hurst & Co Publishers in the UK and COlumbia University Press in the US, is entitled The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity.

We already held a public lecture last week at University College London, entitled "Feral Cities and the Scientific Way of Warfare". It's the first in the Battlespace/s Public Lecture Series; it mixed architectural speculation and Bousquet's ideas. Streaming video of that event'll be available within a few days, and an interview with Bousquet has been posted to the CTlab website here, in preparation for the discussion. Quicklinks for the symposium can be found at top right of the main CTlab blog page.

CONFIRMED PARTICIPANTS:

Kenneth Anderson – Law (American University)
Josef Ansorge – International Relations (Cambridge University)
John Matthew Barlow – History (Concordia University)
Antoine Bousquet - Politics & Sociology (Birkbeck College)
Martin Coward – International Relations (University of Sussex)
Armando Geller – Conflict Analysis (Manchester Metropolitan University)
James Gibson – Sociology (California State University, Long Beach)
Derek Gregory – Geography (University of British Columbia)
Craig Hayden –International Communications (American University)
Charles Jones –International Relations (Cambridge University)
Jason Ralph – Politics and International Studies (University of Leeds)
Julian Reid – War Studies (King’s College London)
Martin Senn – Political Science (University College London)
Marc Tyrrell – Anthropology (Carleton University) [yes, OUR MarcT]
Tony Waters – Sociology (California State University, Chico)

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

We're all looking forward to it, and I'd be interested to see the discussion extend to this part of the ether, as well. All feedback on form + content is welcome. Ping me direct with any questions/comments/suggestions.

[120mm]

Thanks for the heads-up, Mike. Marc told me about this, and I plan on reading the book as soon as I can get my grubby paws on it.

However, there is one thing; I am unable to go to your site at work. Any idea why my local DOIM would block it? Unless there is something wrong with your end, I plan on pushing the issue to get access.