steve albino
New Member
taken from Jane's Defence News:
From space, it is easy to see why the US military is thinking a lot these days about urban warfare. An image of the Earth at night, created by NASA with pictures from the Defense Meteorology Satellite Program, shows large portions of the landmass illuminated by the lights of an increasingly developed and urbanised world.
The UN estimates that half of the world's people will live in urban areas by 2007 and nearly two-thirds by 2030. That means an increasing number of conflicts will occur in cities. Leading US defence advisers have now declared cities "the most likely battlefield of the 21st century".
Despite these projections, the US armed forces still largely prepare for battle like a military expecting to avoid urban operations. Its military doctrine, training and equipment remain focused primarily on fast-moving armoured warfare. Institutional aversion to urban warfare, a reflection of leaders' desires to limit casualties and to minimise political complications, goes back as far as 500BC when Sun Tzu, a Chinese general, warned against walled cities in his famous treatise The Art of War.
A growing number of military officers and analysts say the US DoD can no longer afford to ignore urban operations. US forces have not conducted a large-scale urban operation since the 1968 Battle of Hue City in Vietnam. However, during the post-Cold War period, city conflicts have been on the rise. They have offered repeated reminders of the difficulties encountered in urban terrain, like the 1993 ambush of army rangers in Mogadishu, Somalia, that left 18 personnel dead; and peacekeeping operations in the Balkans. The experiences of the UK in Northern Ireland, Russia in Chechnya and Israel offer further examples of modern-day urban conflicts.
A decade ago the US armed forces began to consider how to update their treatment of military operations in urban terrain (MOUT). Before that, training focused on tactics and doctrine that had progressed little since the Second World War, experts say. MOUT facilities built in the USA were modelled on European villages and towns, now no longer a realistic representation of the threat. During the past five years, especially in the past six months, the study of MOUT has begun to show results.
The idea that a US invasion of Iraq could lead to battle in the streets of Baghdad has heightened interest in the military's urban combat capabilities. The DoD is preparing for such a scenario: units of the army's 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) and 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), among its premier urban warfare units, recently conducted urban-terrain exercises at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana.
No one says the US forces cannot fight in cities. Many officials praise the improvements in tactics made by the army and the USMC, both of which promote their capabilities for night operations in urban terrain. Success, however, is a complicated measurement. Anybody can fight in a city, but, as Duane Schattle from the Institute for Defense Analyses says, can they win at an acceptable cost?
From space, it is easy to see why the US military is thinking a lot these days about urban warfare. An image of the Earth at night, created by NASA with pictures from the Defense Meteorology Satellite Program, shows large portions of the landmass illuminated by the lights of an increasingly developed and urbanised world.
The UN estimates that half of the world's people will live in urban areas by 2007 and nearly two-thirds by 2030. That means an increasing number of conflicts will occur in cities. Leading US defence advisers have now declared cities "the most likely battlefield of the 21st century".
Despite these projections, the US armed forces still largely prepare for battle like a military expecting to avoid urban operations. Its military doctrine, training and equipment remain focused primarily on fast-moving armoured warfare. Institutional aversion to urban warfare, a reflection of leaders' desires to limit casualties and to minimise political complications, goes back as far as 500BC when Sun Tzu, a Chinese general, warned against walled cities in his famous treatise The Art of War.
A growing number of military officers and analysts say the US DoD can no longer afford to ignore urban operations. US forces have not conducted a large-scale urban operation since the 1968 Battle of Hue City in Vietnam. However, during the post-Cold War period, city conflicts have been on the rise. They have offered repeated reminders of the difficulties encountered in urban terrain, like the 1993 ambush of army rangers in Mogadishu, Somalia, that left 18 personnel dead; and peacekeeping operations in the Balkans. The experiences of the UK in Northern Ireland, Russia in Chechnya and Israel offer further examples of modern-day urban conflicts.
A decade ago the US armed forces began to consider how to update their treatment of military operations in urban terrain (MOUT). Before that, training focused on tactics and doctrine that had progressed little since the Second World War, experts say. MOUT facilities built in the USA were modelled on European villages and towns, now no longer a realistic representation of the threat. During the past five years, especially in the past six months, the study of MOUT has begun to show results.
The idea that a US invasion of Iraq could lead to battle in the streets of Baghdad has heightened interest in the military's urban combat capabilities. The DoD is preparing for such a scenario: units of the army's 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) and 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), among its premier urban warfare units, recently conducted urban-terrain exercises at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana.
No one says the US forces cannot fight in cities. Many officials praise the improvements in tactics made by the army and the USMC, both of which promote their capabilities for night operations in urban terrain. Success, however, is a complicated measurement. Anybody can fight in a city, but, as Duane Schattle from the Institute for Defense Analyses says, can they win at an acceptable cost?
