Confronting the demons of urban
warfare By David Isenberg
Last year, during the opening phase of Operation
Iraqi Freedom, US military commanders, in surveying what
they did right, breathed a big sigh of relief about
having avoided what is universally considered a
soldier's worst nightmare; urban combat, or what the
Pentagon calls MOUT (Military Operations on Urbanized
Terrain).
But they were wrong. Since US forces
launched Operation Vigilant Resolve in the beginning of
April, the fighting in Fallujah has brought that
nightmare to reality, despite it being a scenario that
the US military desperately wanted to avoid. To
understand why, think of the urban combat scenes in the
movies Saving Private Ryan or Black Hawk
Down. Other recent examples include the Russians
fighting in Grozny in Chechnya or the siege of Sarajevo
by Serb forces from 1992 to 1995. For a military
establishment which relies heavily on its technological
advantage, urban warfare is perhaps the ultimate
asymmetric equalizer.
Fallujah is ideal
territory for insurgents. The city has almost 300,000
residents in a complex mix of boulevards, narrow streets
and numerous back alleys. Much of this will not be on
the digitized maps soldiers download, so their Global
Positioning System-enabled technology (GPS) does them
little good. Apartment buildings are mostly of two,
three and four stories, with porches well suited to
snipers. And every neighborhood has a mosque, clinic,
schools and markets, where an errant shell from the
Americans could carry a high cost in civilian lives.
Soldiers run from house to house, taking fire
from shooters they can't see, and take heavy casualties.
Tanks become vulnerable to weapons fired from above.
Airplanes and satellites do not easily see into urban
areas. Unmanned aerial surveillance systems, such as
Predator drones, can't take pictures inside buildings.
Every window is a potential sniping post. Artillery
doesn't work well because buildings get in the way.
Communications get jammed due to the terrain. For
example, most of the radios used by American ground
forces are FM, like a car stereo. That means they're
subject to the same static that someone gets when they
drive between big buildings or through a tunnel.
And satellites also become harder for American
soldiers to contact in an urban setting. This makes US
bombs harder to guide and increases the likelihood that
they will miss their target, killing civilians. Weapons
like the JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) which were
used repeatedly to bomb Iraqi targets rely on GPS data
to find their targets. But buildings get in the way of
GPS communications, just like they disrupt radio
signals.
And, politically, urban combat is also
horrific. The US government knows that the American
public does not tolerate casualties well; especially in
a war that was not a "good war". Fighting in cities
tends to be bloody. While urban operations, UO in
military parlance, can take various forms, they are all
costly, both to attacker and defender. US Army Field
Manual FM 3-06.11 "Combined Arms Operations in Urban
Terrain" defines three general conditions of UO. The
third, Urban Operations Under High-Intensity Conditions,
states:
"These conditions include combat actions
against a determined enemy occupying prepared positions
or conducting planned attacks. UO under high-intensity
conditions require the coordinated application of the
full combat power of the joint combined arms team.
Infantry units must be prepared at all times to conduct
violent combat under conditions of high-intensity UO."
The Marine Corps manual 3.35.3 notes that:
"Urbanized terrain is a unique battlespace that provides
both attacker and defender with numerous and varied
approaches of approach and fields of fire. The urban
battlespace is divided into four basic levels: building,
street, subterranean and air. Operations can be
conducted from above ground, on ground level, inside
buildings, or below the ground. Most operations will
include fighting on all levels simultaneously."
While commanders say they go to great lengths to
avoid civilian casualties, they acknowledge they do not
know how many civilians have died in recent attacks. But
civilian casualties were inevitable, given that during
the fighting Air Force F-15E and F-16 warplanes, and
carrier-based F-14 and F-18 fighter-bombers, dropped
dozens of 500-pound laser-guided bombs in different
sections of Fallujah.
By day, AH-1W Super Cobra
helicopters launched Hellfire missiles at guerrillas who
fire on the Marines. And by night, AC-130 gunships with
105-millimeter howitzers targeted pounded trucks and
cars thought to be transporting insurgents.
And
despite increased emphasis in the US military in recent
years on preparing for urban combat, especially after
the fiasco in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993, US forces are
still playing catch-up. In the past, in classic urban
battles, such as the Nazi siege of Stalingrad during
World War II, a city was often subdued by laying waste
to it. But more recently, the US military adopted a more
methodical approach, pressed by such officers as General
Charles C Krulak, the former commandant of the Marine
Corps, who coined the term "three-block war". As Krulak
explained, Marines would be fighting on one block,
peacekeeping on another and providing humanitarian
assistance on still another.
In recent years,
the Marines and the army have set up mock cities at
bases across the US for training, including the
Shughart-Gordon MOUT village at Fort Polk Joint
Readiness Training Center, Louisiana, which opened in
1996 and Zussman village in Fort Knox, Kentucky. But
according to a forthcoming report by the RAND Corp that
focuses on the lessons learned from Operation Enduring
Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, due to be released
in October, the US military needs to improve its joint
urban warfare operations to ensure smoother transitions
between combat and support and stability operations.
To prepare for the challenges of urban fighting,
US forces have turned to other countries, notably
Israel, which has much experience in the area. At a
March 22-25 event in Tel Aviv sponsored by Israel's
Ground Forces Command, systems were on display, such as
a wall-breaching system developed by Rafael Armament
Development Authority Ltd based on the SIMON
door-breaching rifle grenade deployed by US forces since
2001.
Another system already on order by the
Pentagon is a prototype of a new, 360-degree
surveillance sensor from a small Tel Aviv-based firm
called ODF Optronics Ltd. Called the Eyeball, the tennis
ball-sized reconnaissance system contains
motion-detectors, a voice-activated recorder, speakers,
microphones and transmitters to see, hear and
communicate with enemy insurgents within a 25 meter
radius.
David Isenberg, a senior
analyst with the Washington-based British American
Security Information Council (BASIC), has a wide
background in arms control and national security issues.
The views expressed are his own.
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