The Strategic Corporal

[Stratiotes]

More of the world is becoming urban. A century ago most of the population was involved in agriculture, rural guerillas had a ready supply of men and material, this is no longer the case. Also modern weapons give the established state forces a huge advantage in most terrain, the complexity of a city along with the collateral damage factor evens the playing field.

I understand how the logic would seem to imply that we should expect more urban warfare - but I wondered if there was any data to support that assumption since I haven't seen it. The war in Iraq is predominantly urban but the wars in south and central Americas seem to have been predominantly rural. The war in Afghanistan is also predominantly rural. The Balkans conflicts have been predominatly rural too I believe. I just wondered if the data supported the presuppositions and I'm still not sure it does.

As for the advantages, I'm not so sure technology has really given a significant advantage. I think people are smarter than most technology and tend to figure out ways to thwart technological changes rather quickly. At least, that seems to be the case historically. Technological advances in weapons are, at best, a very temporary advantage it would seem.

[DDilegge]

I've collected some background info and studies for you on our urban operations page. It's all there and supports what smart people have been saying about the future over the last two decades.

More info can be found on the SASO, Transition, COIN, Threat, Interagency, Chechnya, Somalia and other pages in the SWJ Reference Library.

[Stratiotes]

Thanks, I appreciate the effort and I am familiar with some of those works.

My problem is this - from the ones I've read there seems to be an accepted conventional wisdom that wars will be more urban. I know a lot of the people saying that are smarter than I am for certain. But, dumb as I am I still find it difficult to accept conventional wisdom when I have not seen the raw data to support that wisdom. Are you aware of any studies based on the raw data? I'm afraid I did not find any such data in sampling of the articles you've mentioned - only the opinions of experts who tend to accept it as a given without questioning the assertion. They may be right and I would tend to believe that they being smarter than myself are right - I just haven't been convinced from their opinions alone. I'd like to see the same data they are looking at. From what I have seen, I do not see a trend evolving there. I see some evidence of the contrary, as I said.

What I would hope to find one day is somebody who did the analysis to come up with some numbers like:

1960 - There were 1300 rural COIN ops and 500 urban
1961 - 1400 rural and 800 urban
:
:
1990 - 700 rural and 1000 urban
:
:
2005 - 300 rural and 1400 urban

If I saw something like that, then I could see for myself that there did seem to be a trend toward one more than the other. So far, I haven't seen any such analysis. What I have seen so far is the opinion of "experts" and however highly I value that expert, it is still just an opinion without supporting data and therefore somewhat suspect.

[GorTex6]

The future warrior should be tactically mobile, morally responsible, lightly equipped, culturally-centric, witty, and capable of making a sound decision without a technological cloak for micromanagement.