Urban / City Warfare (merged thread)

**davidbfpo** · 10-31-2016

Windows 97,

Thanks and cited in part:

Originally Posted by Windows97

Dr. Russell Glenn, Australian National University, presents, "Megacities: The Good; The Bad and the Ugly"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgWm9BOVT3E

Having watched most of Dr Glenn's talk I do wonder if sufficient attention has been paid to relatively recent 'Third World' conflicts in large cities, I exclude the Soviet / Russian experience which has been looked at.

Two civil wars come to mind, one with significant external intervention and the second with IIRC with none. The fighting for years in Beirut, in the Syrian Civil War being the first; secondly the civil war in Congo Brazzaville:

Congo's democratic progress was derailed in 1997 when Lissouba and Sassou started to fight for power in the civil war. As presidential elections scheduled for July 1997 approached, tensions between the Lissouba and Sassou camps mounted. On June 5, President Lissouba's government forces surrounded Sassou's compound in Brazzaville and Sassou ordered members of his private militia (known as "Cobras") to resist. Thus began a four-month conflict that destroyed or damaged much of Brazzaville and caused tens of thousands of civilian deaths.

Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_the_Congo

Yes mega-cities are 'talent magnets', surely they are also "poor people magnets"?

I expect anyone who ends up fighting in most 'Third World' cities will strive to reduce any uncontrolled electronic communications - if only to prevent global media reporting. No imagery, no news. Presumably some are watching what media lessons there are with the Syrian Civil War.

**SWJ Blog** · 11-05-2016

Blood, Dirt and Bombs: Battle for Mosul is Fierce Urban War

**AdamG** · 11-07-2016

CNN journalist discovers what it's like to be on the wrong side of a sophisticated MOUT ambush.
http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/...ped-isis-mosul

**AdamG** · 11-15-2016

How Russia Responds to Cities That Rebel The flattened city of Grozny in Chechnya evokes Aleppo’s siege today

A trip to Grozny is an exercise in forgetting. This southern Russian city—the capital of the republic of Chechnya—was flattened in a government military offensive that began in late 1999. The aim was to return the breakaway, Muslim-majority region to Moscow’s control, and the block-by-block fight left no neighborhood untouched. U.N. monitors who arrived with humanitarian aid in late February 2000 described Grozny as a “devastated and still insecure wasteland,” where only about 21,000 civilians remained.
Today, Grozny is a thriving city of more than 283,000—and a flashy, Dubai-style showcase for Moscow’s ability to rebuild. Minutka Square, once the scene of a gruesome ambush, is now a big-box shopping center. The downtown, which had been leveled by artillery fire and Russian bombing, has been rebuilt with wide boulevards and a neon-lit center that features glass-and-steel skyscrapers and a glitzy high-rise hotel called Hotel Grozny City.
One man has presided over Grozny’s reconstruction: Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen president and trusted local strongman of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Mr. Kadyrov remade Grozny and, in the process, created a cult of personality for himself. His image adorns billboards and posters in the city; a recent nightly news broadcast featured 21 straight minutes of footage of Mr. Kadyrov as he inspected security forces and held a meeting, plus a reading from his Instagram feed.
With the Russian military now poised to resume airstrikes on the Syrian city of Aleppo, Grozny also remains international shorthand for Russia’s destructive firepower and willingness to use scorched-earth tactics. As Secretary of State John Kerry said on Oct. 16, “There are still deep beliefs in a lot of people that Russia is simply pursuing a Grozny solution in Aleppo and is not prepared to truly engage in any way.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-russ...bel-1478811150

**AdamG** · 11-18-2016

As the operation to retake Mosul enters its second month on Thursday, Iraqi forces are preparing for prolonged, grueling urban combat.

They have slowed the tempo of their operations, advancing just a few hundred meters at a time. Iraqi forces have gathered troops many times the estimated 5,000 IS fighters in the city.
But hundreds of thousands of civilians still remain in the city. And the ferocity and magnitude of IS counterattacks and defenses in Mosul is unlike anything Iraqi forces have confronted in the fight against the militant group so far. As a result, overwhelming force can't bring swift victory, and the campaign is likely to take weeks

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...117-story.html

**SWJ Blog** · 01-26-2017

U.S. General: Liberation of Mosul Involves ‘Hardest’ Urban Combat in Recent History

**SWJ Blog** · 03-14-2017

Reimagining the Character of Urban Operations for the U.S. Army

**AdamG** · 03-23-2017

The Army's chief of staff said Tuesday that in about 10 years, the service must be ready to fight in megacities, a type of warfare that will require future units to resemble today's special operations forces.
Speaking at the Future of War Conference 2017 hosted by New America in Washington, D.C., Gen. Mark Milley said that the character of warfare will likely go through a fundamental shift over the next decade.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2...ry.com+News%29

**SWJ Blog** · 03-25-2017

On the Likelihood of Large Urban Conflict in the 21st Century

**SWJ Blog** · 03-25-2017

Urban Operations: Battle in Mosul Halted as High Civilian Death Toll Investigated

**SWJ Blog** · 06-02-2017

Objective Metropolis: The Future of Dense Urban Operational Environments

**SWJ Blog** · 06-27-2017

Urban Terrorism Returns to Colombia

**SWJ Blog** · 06-30-2017

Urban Warfare, Then and Now

**SWJ Blog** · 07-07-2017

Complex Cyber Terrain in Hyper-Connected Urban Areas

**SWJ Blog** · 07-12-2017

Cyber Operational Considerations in Dense Urban Terrain

**SWJ Blog** · 07-18-2017

Fixing the Way the Army Trains for Urban Warfare

**davidbfpo** · 08-03-2017

This may have appeared elsewhere, so apologies if a duplicate. No time to open and read yet.

The introduction:

For more than a decade now, Israel has clashed with Hamas in Gaza, in cycles of violence defined by periods of intense fighting followed by relative lulls. This report covers a five-year period of this conflict — from the end of Operation Cast Lead in 2009 to the end of Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Drawing on primary and secondary sources and an extensive set of interviews, it analyzes how an advanced military fought a determined, adaptive, hybrid adversary. It describes how the Israel Defense Force (IDF) operationally, organizationally, and technologically evolved to meet asymmetric threats. Most broadly, this report details the IDF's increasing challenge of striking a delicate balance between the intense international legal public scrutiny and the hard operational realities of modern urban warfare. In this respect, this report's title — "From Cast Lead to Protective Edge" — captures more than just the names of the two operations that chronologically bracket its scope; it also describes the tension the IDF confronted between the military necessities driving maximalist uses of force and the political imperative for more restrained operations. This report draws a series of lessons from the Israeli experience for the U.S. Army and the joint force: from the importance of armored vehicles and active protection systems to the limitations of airpower in urban terrain and of conventional militaries to deter nonstate actors.

Link:http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1888.html?

Hat tip to WoTR where the RAND author has a commentary:https://warontherocks.com/2017/08/fi...-wars-in-gaza/