Changing Battlescapes

Urban Combat
Military experts believe Third World cities could be the battlefields of the near future, writes John E Shreeve (DCLnews editor)

THE RECENT MOVIE Black Hawk Down chronicles the street battle in Mogadishu, Somalia, that left 18 American soldiers dead and many more wounded. It very much highlights the perilous conditions faced by soldiers fighting in urban conditions -- which, historically, are not the typical location for Western forces to do battle in. Traditionally, they have trained and equipped themselves to fight in fields and forests.

But Army experts say Third World cities will almost certainly be the main battlescapes of the near future. Some speculate that, sooner or later, G.I.s who are tracking down Al-Qaeda will return to the streets of Mogadishu -- or to Khartoum, Aden, or some other Third World urban environment.

Whatever proves to be the case -- as Black Hawk Down makes abundantly clear -- cities make war even more hellish. The U.S. Army pushes that point home in Soldiers in Cities, a collection of essays posted on the Internet by the Army War College. The recurrent theme throughout the collection is that urban warfare presents specific challenges -- and specific frustrations.

Urban warfare -- the great equalizer
Political scientist Michael C. Desch points out that throughout most of human history the majority of people lived on farms or in villages -- he notes that in 1900, only Britain had more people living in cities than the country. Today around half of humanity lives in cities. In two decades the figure is likely to reach 70 percent, possibly even 75 percent. That's a big turnaround. Given the clustering of terrorists in cities, and given the ever-expanding area cities eat up, armies will find it increasingly difficult to avoid urban skirmishes.

Beside sheer mass, cities are the place where society stores large amounts of its assets -- and that includes human, financial and technological assets. Consequently, they are prime targets for terror. What's more, terrorists know that in cities Western tanks, planes, and artillery lose a lot of their impact. In the end, it comes down to rifle-to-rifle or even hand-to-hand combat. That's why Desch refers to urban warfare as "a great equalizer."

Overkill firepower not an option
Fellow political scientist, Barry Posen, notes in his essay that American soldiers heading into conflict zones can do little to avoid cities. "U.S. forces need to get into the theater of operations," he writes. "So they need ports and airfields. These are usually close to urban areas." In the 20th century, relatively few Americans fought block-to-block battles in Third World cities. Those who did -- Manila in 1945, Seoul in 1950, Hue in 1968 -- had no wish to do it again.

Up until recently, U.S. doctrine on urban warfare boiled down to two rules: (1) don't fight in cities, (2) if you do fight in cities, first raze them with firepower. Today, demography and geography increasingly steer combat toward cities — and political and ethical considerations tend to make overkill firepower not an option. That can make combat on city streets both a risky and nasty experience.

Door-to-door, room-to-room combat
Urban conflict brings soldiers problems they never see in fields and forests. For one thing, cities have far more civilians to get in the way and, all too often, get killed. But unlike the residents of German and Japanese cities in World War 2, these civilians are not considered legitimate targets. The only problem is it is hard to tell them apart from the people who are shooting at you. And in an age when CNN tags along with armies, civilian corpses prompt a loud outcry across the world within hours -- usually before the military get a chance to put their side of the story across.

Built-up cities also dramatically slow down armies -- forcing soldiers to spend more time in the "killing zone", with woeful results. Plus they add new dimensions to combat: High-rise buildings carry combat skywards, while sewers and subways push it underground. And cities fragment armies. Instead of fighting as a unified force, an army in a city breaks down into small units of soldiers, largely on their own.

Urban combat also compresses "no-man's land." Combat is door-to-door, room-to-room, at uncomfortably close ranges -- usually too close for the artillery and air strikes that Western forces often rely on when the going gets rough.

Minimum not maximum force
Posen states that success in city battlescape starts with good intelligence. To collect it, however, an army must go beyond satellites and spy planes. Technology is not necessarily a magic bullet in modern warfare. The crucial information, writes Posen, "can come only from sources in the local population." Enlarging on this, former British army officer David Pearson notes that in Northern Ireland, British soldiers learned -- largely the hard way -- that the key to getting close to locals was "to use minimum and not maximum force."

The notion of restraint in firepower runs as a common thread throughout these essays.

In two days and nights of unrest in the 1992 Los Angeles riots, writes retired Major General James J. Delk, his California National Guard soldiers fired only 22 small-arms rounds. Restraint begins with discipline and American G.I.s and Marines have this in abundance, he states.

And even in the fragmentation of urban warfare, with much of the decision-making left to sergeants, American NCOs have leadership skills not often found in the ranks of non-Western armies. Delk writes that in Los Angeles, "the secret lay in the strength of our non-commissioned officers [and] they didn't let us down."

Keeping the peace
Finally, Posen notes that the Army is rebuilding itself with urban combat (and urban peacekeeping) in mind. The Army is organizing middle-weight brigades that are light enough to fly off to fight at short notice, yet heavy enough to flex some muscle once they arrive. Although the Army says its new units are designed for traditional warfare, Posen writes that "the structure, training and armament of the interim brigades suggests peace-enforcement missions."

John E Shreeve,
DCLnews editor

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