Small Wars Journal

urban operations

The Art of Urban Warfare from the Deep Seas

Tue, 09/14/2021 - 9:26pm
In the short Sherlock Holmes story from 1885, Mycroft Holmes, the intellectual panjandrum of the British government, tells his brother Sherlock about the plans of the Bruce-Partington submarine. Mycroft mentions to Holmes that the submarine’s importance can hardly be exaggerated. It has been the most jealously guarded of all government secrets. “You may take it from me,” Mycroft declares, “that naval warfare becomes impossible within the radius of a Bruce-Partington operation.”                          Stealth is the common feature between submarine warfare and urban warfare. Submarines are asymmetric weapon platforms in the vast oceans. Contemporary US and Russian submarines are sophisticated and powerful weapon platforms. One nuclear submarine can obliterate two to four cities with intercontinental ballistic missiles or target centers of gravity like aircraft carriers and military installations with cruise missiles by staying safe thousands of miles away from the target.

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Urban Warfare Project Podcast: The Battle of Marawi

Fri, 03/05/2021 - 3:58pm

Link: https://mwi.usma.edu/the-battle-of-marawi/ 

 

In this episode of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Dr. Charles Knight. He is a senior lecturer in terrorism, asymmetric conflict, and urban operations at Charles Sturt University and a senior researcher at the University of New South Wales.

Dr. Knight has researched and and written about the 2017 Battle of Marawi, in which the Philippine Army fought against Islamic State fighters over the course of five months. With the two sides fighting through the streets, alleys, and buildings of Marawi, it was one of the biggest and most high-intensity urban battles of the modern era. In the conversation, Dr. Knight explains the context in which the battle must be understood, the phases through which the fighting progressed, and the types of tactics that characterized the battle.

Modern War Institute: The Eight Rules of Urban Warfare and Why We Must Work to Change Them

Tue, 01/12/2021 - 10:07pm

Full Article: https://mwi.usma.edu/the-eight-rules-of-urban-warfare-and-why-we-must-work-to-change-them/

By John Spencer

 

The article also includes an extremely useful overview of historical and recent urban warfare case studies which may be interesting/useful to researchers interested in urban operations.

Fighting in the Phone Booth: An Urban Pivot for the U.S. Army

Wed, 02/26/2020 - 5:59am
The United States Army is training to fight the wrong war. At the tactical level, units are preparing to meet near-peer threats in open terrain. A typical field exercise sees soldiers patrolling the woods or fighting pitched tank battles in the open desert. What you will not see is a rifle squad clearing a city block or practicing urban breaching techniques.

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Amid Humanitarian Crisis, Syrian Regime Intensifies Idlib Offensive

Fri, 02/07/2020 - 12:28am
Of the three million people in Idlib province, U.N. sources estimate more than one million have been displaced—with approximately 586,000 displaced since December 1, and the number is rising rapidly. With Turkey and other nations closing their borders, and harsh winter conditions in the region, what is the humanitarian situation in Idlib?

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A NATO Urban Delaying Strategy for the Baltic States

Thu, 12/19/2019 - 2:57am
Any successful Russian thrust into one or more of the Baltic States depends on the calculus of speed. They need to make the action a fait accompli before NATO reinforcement can arrive. A 2016 Rand war game indicated that current NATO capabilities cannot properly offset the Russian 6-1 armor advantage in the Baltics in a timely manner. However, if key Baltic urban areas can be turned into potential urban fortresses, the equation changes radically.

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The Role of Police and Military Special Forces in Counter-terrorism Efforts in Cities

Sat, 11/02/2019 - 11:15am
Given the heightened terrorist threat, the police forces of global cities are beefing up their special forces units by adopting more militarised approaches in weaponry, tactics, culture, and organisation even as they increase the level of cooperation with the state’s armed forces. This civil-military integration in homeland security is present in Singapore where the police force and the army are conducting more joint patrols in public places besides key installations (KINS), and the Army is training more soldiers for peacetime operations.

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What the Mosul Study Group Missed

Wed, 10/23/2019 - 11:04am

What the Mosul Study Group Missed by Amos Fox – Modern War Institute

The US Army’s Mosul Study Group released a report—What the Battle of Mosul Teaches the Force—in September 2017, a mere month and a half after the Islamic State was ejected from the city. The report purported to provide lessons derived from the battle. However, the short time that passed between the end of the battle and the report’s publication raises questions about the report and the group’s research methods. Moreover, the “intense 45-day effort,” as the authors described their work, to study the battle and produce the report yielded a view of the battle isolated from its place within the campaign and dislocated from trends in modern war. In doing so, the report inadvertently misleads the reader on particular lessons that Mosul illuminates.

The Mosul Study Group’s report is an important work, one whose contents should be read and understood. But it also either overlooked key aspects of the battle, did not fully develop certain lessons, or did not have sufficient time to appreciate the meaning of some conclusions…

Read on.

The Marawi Crisis - Urban Conflict and Information Operations

Thu, 08/08/2019 - 1:53pm

The Marawi Crisis - Urban Conflict and Information Operations by Charles Knight and Katja Theodorakis - Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Executive Summary: The seizure of Marawi in the southern Philippines by militants linked to Islamic State (IS) and the response to it by Philippine authorities provides useful insights to Australian and other policymakers, with relevance for force structure, concepts of operations and the breadth of activity required to deal effectively with the consequences of an urban seizure. One overall insight is that the increasing urbanisation of global populations, combined with proliferating information technologies, means there’s a need to be prepared both for military operations in urban environments and for a widening of what policy/decision-makers consider to be ‘the battlefield’ to include the narrative space.

The siege showed the unpreparedness of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) for an urban fight: the AFP took five months to recover the city, leaving it in ruins and sustaining a notable number of casualties. This will obviously provide a set of lessons and insights to the Philippine military and authorities, but it also can allow other governments and militaries to assess their own readiness to deal with urban operations, either as assisting partners or in their own territories. This seems especially relevant to considering capability options for supporting allies facing comparable challenges, which could reduce military and civilian casualties in future operations.

The insurgents’ seizure of Marawi was accompanied by a systematic IS propaganda campaign (online and offline) aimed at projecting an image of triumph and strength. The AFP engaged in active counter-messaging to undermine militants’ narratives, encompassing the online space as well as more traditional methods of messaging, such as leaflet drops, banners, and radio and loudspeaker broadcasts. In the tactical sphere, this was aimed at avoiding civilian casualties as well as stemming further recruitment by and popular support for the insurgents. In the longer term, the overarching goal was to morally denounce the militants and undercut their support bases.

Considering the centrality of ideology and information operations (IOs) in the future operating environment, the Marawi crisis offers an instructive case when preparing for the challenges of an evolving threat landscape. This report therefore examines both the capability aspects of kinetic hard power and the lessons from soft-power IOs, and how they intertwine in the urban environment.

There are lessons here for the Australian Defence Force (ADF).

This report makes the following observations and recommendations...

Read the entire report.