Urban Warfare Capability: A Background to the Challengesand a Call for Professional Debate

Abstract

This article invites readers to contribute to a professional debate about the capability required for urban operations: does Australia have it—and does Australia need it? In exploring what that might mean, it starts from an accepted position that urban operations are increasingly likely. It examines in some detail the nature of the limitations imposed on military operations by urban terrain, which is particularly important in understanding the dependence on the use of firepower to conduct offensive operations. A historical discussion about changing attitudes towards civilian casualties helps to explain why urban operations may be increasingly challenging. It may also provide some background for discussion of the puzzling question of why armies have consistently failed to prepare for urban warfare and are remarkably quick to neglect past lessons. These themes are then brought together to argue that the challenges of such operations, especially the moral challenges posed by civilian casualties, represent both vulnerability and opportunity for Western militaries generally and Australia in particular.

---

Introduction

Contemporary Western armies are capable of operating in urban areas, but few have fielded capabilities for urban combat, except within their Special Forces. This is perplexing. Fighting amongst populations and structures presents well-documented, discrete military and political challenges.

Demographic, social and rapid technical changes are increasing both the likelihood of urban combat and the severity of these challenges, not least of which is political sensitivity to suffering own and inflicting civilian casualties. Ugly outcomes are foreseeable. Yet most Western armies have not acquired specialist capability tools to address these challenges. If tasked to dislodge a committed urban defender, they have no choice other than the historical default: firepower and substantial dismounted numbers.

This also applies to the Australian Army. If called upon to deploy, it has only modest infantry numbers and is likely to be constrained by casualty sensitivity. Given these constraints, can the Army offer government politically palatable options in urban scenarios, and how much does this impact on land forces’ relevance to regional missions?

Capability that mitigates the political and military risk of urban operations exists. Proven tools include highly protected engineering platforms, special breaching munitions, screening and obscurant methods and tele-operated breaching and reconnaissance systems. Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are enabling increasingly agile and durable ground platforms that reduce risk to humans still further. Arming such platforms would accelerate this. Effective domination of a significant urban area using tele-operated platforms and deploying only a few soldiers is now technically feasible. Such capability would not only address the urban vulnerability of the current force but also might represent a valuable niche asset to be deployed in a coalition context.

Does the Australian Army need ‘specialised’ capability for urban combat— noting that the specifications for new procurement projects such the Land 400 Infantry Fighting Vehicle address operating in urban terrain? If it does need such capability, what are the technologies and methods that will deliver it? The first question is a matter of resourcing priorities. It may be argued that the Army has never yet been required to conduct major conventional urban operations and may be able to continue to continue to avoid them; if not, it is sufficiently adaptable. Conversely, it may be suggested that an Army that has the limitation of small size and modest capacity to replace casualties, combined with the constraint of likely sensitivity to civilian casualties, may be particularly challenged by urban operations—which could increase the likelihood of such a fight. The second question is a matter of deciding which are the high-payoff tools, how best to use them and whether such capabilities should be integral to formations or a ‘bolt on’.

This article provides context to consider these questions. It notes consensus on the likelihood of urban warfare and describes the key challenges common to Western armies. The often-overlooked background to historical avoidance of cities is highlighted and related to the puzzle of neglect. Finally, particular issues for Australia are identified. This paper does not propose solutions or offer analysis of the historical events it uses to illustrate.

Iraqi Army soldiers from the Counter Terrorism Service conduct urban warfare training under the Special Operations Task Group’s mission to train, advise and enable the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service in their defeat of Daesh. Image courtesy Department of Defence

Challenges for All Militaries

Urban operations are both a daunting and a looming challenge, and not just for armies. Over a decade ago Hills¹ warned of the acute dilemma they present to liberal societies. Even then, the likelihood of urban operations was accepted in both Australian Army doctrine² and operating concepts³ which argued that the key fights of the future will be on humanly, informationally and physically complex terrain. The probability and difficulty of such events has been increased by the acceleration of four global megatrends: population growth, accelerating urbanisation, littoralisation (human clustering on coastlines) and increased connectedness through information technology (IT). This is reflected in both Western militaries’ recognition of an ‘urban imperative’⁴ and the report When War Moves to Cities: Protection of Civilians in Urban Areas by the International Committee of the Red Cross.⁵ For example, in 2008, 10 men paralysed Mumbai for four days; and, in 2017, Mosul and Marawi resisted clearance for months and weeks respectively. Such battles are but an illustration of this trend and the compounding challenge of unprecedented global visibility.

Technology has changed and continues to change the conduct of war, especially war amongst populations. New media, smartphones, head cams, the Global Positioning System (GPS), small drones and other tools present an uncontrolled and often real-time picture of the battlefield.⁶ The visibility of civilian casualties has geopolitical impact and obliges political leaders to give direction to tactical commanders. Concurrently, military technology has pushed conflict into cities, as adversaries seek concealment and protection from surveillance and precision targeting.

In the past, walls and roofs of buildings offered concealment from the naked eye. Now they also conceal combatants from electromagnetic sensors. Electromagnetic sensors, particularly when overhead, allow a technologically capable superior force to dominate open terrain. Indeed, Australian forces might choose urban areas for concealment against a peer military. Certainly, urban areas may be the only place Australia’s contemporary asymmetric adversaries can hide. When this advantage is combined with the firepower- inhibiting presence of civilians, the attraction of urban areas is compelling.⁷ To this is added the prospect of fighting on more even terms. Since ancient times, the physical and structural constraints in cities have reduced attacker advantages provided by numbers, better weapons and discipline. The environment gives a defender opportunities to fight on their own terms—it obstructs the massing of forces and force while it separates and exposes the troops. During the siege and assault of Jerusalem in 60 CE the Roman soldiers were constantly ambushed by the Jewish defenders within the buildings and on the narrow streets. Split into small groups and unable to form the stabbing shield-wall that was irresistible on open terrain, the legionaries were frequently repulsed.⁸

Two thousand years later, the problem remains. Units are channelled and separated by the buildings along their axis of advance, limiting their communication. Moving on the street, soldiers are starkly exposed while enemies lying in wait may be well protected behind hard cover. Entire sub-units may be enfiladed by fire sweeping from ahead or behind. There is a constant threat of ambush from defiladed positions in buildings to the flanks or from cross-streets selected so that only the victims in the killing zone can see the firers, who are thus relatively safe from reprisal. If soldiers seek shelter in and amongst buildings, their movement slows almost to a standstill as they seek routes through rooms and spaces where an untrained defender with basic weapons can ambush, at short range, the best-armed warrior.

The urban fight typically develops into a series of sub-battles by groups unable to properly support each other. The buildings, walls, floors and ceilings of an urban area form a cellular matrix that separates a soldier fighting in a room from the support of mates outside the room—and those soldiers in the building from others beyond. As a result, the effective combat power of a force, especially of its small arms fire, is greatly diluted when compared with open terrain. There are many factors that determine the outcome of firefights, but Lanchester’s square law⁹ helps to explain what simulation and history shows. In any close assault, provided the number of attackers who are engaging the defenders significantly exceeds that of the latter, suppressive fire superiority and attacker victory with limited casualties is likely. This ascendency is usual in a rural attack with a bigger force. However, when attackers are moving amongst buildings, often only a few can see and engage any given target: total suppressive fire is reduced. Furthermore, unlike on open terrain, where the suppressive effects of small arms fire extends in a ‘beaten area’ all around a target, the effects are often localised and do not penetrate within buildings. A handful of assaulters moving within a building may effectively be fighting alone and constantly risking exposing themselves to defenders waiting in cover.

An Australian Army officer instructs Iraqi Army soldiers during urban warfare training at the Taji Military Complex in Iraq. Image courtesy Department of Defence

This solution is known: prophylactic use of high explosives. During World War II, every army learned whenever possible to precede the attack on a building by using tanks, artillery or any other explosive firing or flame weapon. Entry was preferably achieved from an unexpected direction by a sapper blowing a hole in an interior wall. Once into the building, the vital tool was the grenade. One Soviet source recommended assaulting with 20 grenades and yet only one spare magazine for the submachine gun. A grenade or two would precede entry to each doorway or room. The prophylactic technique works. It enables steady progress and minimises own casualties. The problem today is that collateral damage considerations may prohibit its use.

Urban clearance consumes resources—especially time, ammunition and personnel. It takes many soldiers a long time to clear room by room, building by building and block by block. Not only do they get tired and need to be rotated; they will also suffer casualties. Furthermore, when fighting a determined defender, an attacker cannot advance and disregard the risk of ambush from the flanks and above or infiltration that cuts off the rear. The environment demands not just systematic clearance and checking of all the rooms and spaces of buildings in an area of operation but also systematic deployment of defenders to protect the flanks and lines of communication. This can rapidly require more soldiers than the assault force itself.

The slow, expensive nature of the urban fight has not changed, but there is a new constraint. Armies of the past were much bigger. Most Western armies now plan to fight with brigade-sized task forces. While these have far more firepower and better target detection and communication systems than their predecessors, they have fewer soldiers. If such a force were to fight in a city using historical methods, they could only clear and hold modest sectors— perhaps an area 700 metres wide by two kilometres deep.¹⁰ It is unclear how a modern brigade would deal with a determined adversary in anything larger than an Australian country town: the resources are not there.

The most pressing challenge faced by Western militaries in populated urban areas is moral. This arises first from the inevitability of civilian casualties and then from Brown’s ‘US casualties versus collateral damage dilemma’.¹¹ Measures to reduce own casualties, especially the use of explosive firepower, increase non-combatant casualties. New media technologies now reveal this consequence to the world in unprecedented, awful detail.

The risks that these challenges present to Army appear severe. Risk management frameworks suggest treatment by acceptance, transfer, avoidance or reduction. Army needs to acknowledge that, while the strategy of ‘avoidance’ of urban fighting has an appealing logic, it is directly associated with a readiness to harm civilians when it fails.

The Rationality of Sanction and Acceptance of Civilian Casualties

Armies have always fought for cities and the communication networks and resources that they control, yet they have always sought to avoid the challenges of fighting in them. In 557 CE Sun Tzu counselled that attacking cities was the ‘worst possible policy’. He warned that the engineering to breach a city’s defences might take six months and a rash assault could cost a third of an army. Like later writers, he also recommended that battles be away from cities.¹² Historically, the military difficulty of urban fighting, the possible casualties amongst attackers, and the risk of destruction of the economic resource that a city and its inhabitants represented combined to motivate avoidance, creating social norms that eschewed fighting in cities. The norms were enforced by the brutal utilitarian rationale of placing a terrible price on urban resistance.

If a city’s defenders refused to submit and the besieger eventually assaulted, they could expect what the Old Testament says the Israelites did to Jericho when the walls fell: ‘destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys’ (Joshua 6:21). As the Mongol invaders swept across China and Eastern Europe they would spare those who surrendered immediately but none in a city that resisted.¹³ In 1209, before the sack of the city of Beziers, the crusader Abbot Amalric infamously advised an attacker ‘kill them all, let God sort them out’.¹⁴ The Irish bitterly remember that, after Cromwell’s eventual successful assault of Drogheda in 1641, the inhabitants were slaughtered. Yet this was on par with European wars—indeed, the penalty of killing all of a city’s defenders if it fell to assault was codified in the laws of war that emerged in the 17th century.¹⁵ The professional armies that developed between 1500 and 1800 to fight for the emerging nation-states of Europe gradually constructed a moral ‘convention’ of not fighting in populated places¹⁶ that informed current international humanitarian law (IHL).

Contemporary norms place huge emphasis on protecting non-combatants, so it is perhaps ironic that civilian suffering in war is increasing and may be greater than under harsher norms that incentivised avoidance. The phenomenon of increasing collateral damage is further explained in two recent books by Downes¹⁷ and Slim¹⁸ analysing civilian casualties across a wide range of conflicts. Both show that the turn towards destructive violence is a rational decision triggered by a desire to win and reduce own casualties. This effect is particularly acute in urban combat, with subsequent studies echoing Brown’s work¹⁹ showing that, as the fight protracts, armies accept heavier civilian casualties. This intuitive finding appears true across very different armies, both those who disregard IHL and those who strive to follow it. On the one extreme, the Russians invading Chechnya in 1995 quickly abandoned initial reticence to demonstrate not merely a very high tolerance of collateral damage but a willingness to coercively target civilians.²⁰ On the other, Kahl’s analysis²¹ suggest that, while US forces in Iraq after 2003 made historically unprecedented efforts to comply with norms of non-combatant immunity, urban fights against serious resistance still required increasing firepower and civilian casualties. This is not to suggest that this shift towards accepting more collateral damage in urban battles contravenes IHL: the concept of proportionality allows for such harm. Rather, the point is that a shift occurs because as an urban fight protracts the judgement of military necessity changes. Unfortunately, this interpretation is increasingly proving to be at odds with global opinion. As the United States (US) Army Chief of Staff, General Milley, suggests, there seems to be increasing political risk in deploying to an urban fight with a force ‘designed, manned, trained and equipped to operate primarily in rural areas’.²²

Neglect is a Puzzle

It is rational for advancing armies to avoid an urban fight and to discourage defenders, but neglecting study of an acute problem that could and did sometimes occur is curious. SLA Marshall observed a ‘curious void’ in the work of all the great military thinkers.²³ This oversight might be understood in the 19th century, when mass armies could swamp cities. Similarly, that the fighting in the rubble of deserted towns during World War I was not seen as a distinct from trench warfare is understandable. However, continued neglect of the topic by the military long after the decisive bloody battles in cities during World War II is puzzling. It might be explained by the US experience in Vietnam and European domestic politics.

The main role of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) armies during the Cold War was to prepare to defeat Soviet invasion. Defending in the cities in the middle of Europe would have offered great tactical advantage, but the political imperative was to appear ready to fight the Warsaw Pact in the open countryside at the eastern border. Had the NATO armies been seen to prepare to fight in urban areas, this would have undermined that deterrent posture.²⁴ In the global context, after defeat in Vietnam, the US military turned away from its experience there, including urban combat, and focused on constructing its preferred vision of ‘high-tech’ armoured manoeuvre forces.²⁵ Its NATO allies followed its lead, and the approach appeared to have been vindicated by the decisive coalition victory in Kuwait in 1991.

Whatever the reasons for neglect, Rosenau’s analysis²⁶ showed that, after World War II, Western armies continued to treat urban conflict as an ‘aberration’ to be avoided rather than studied or prepared for or even learned from. Examples abound. In 1945 the US Army attacked Aschaffenburg with unsupported armour and suffered heavy losses, as did the Soviets who attempted the same in Berlin. Yet the importance of combined arms tactics would continue to be forgotten. In 1973 the Israeli Army lost many armoured vehicles driving unsupported into El Qantara and Suez but still repeated that error in the towns of Lebanon in 1982.²⁷ Without having developed better tactical solutions, the default position when forced into urban areas was, and remains, firepower at a premium in civilian casualties.

The 1995 Russian assault on Grozny demonstrated a similar pattern. The leaders declared the necessity of capturing the Chechen rebels’ capital and a commitment to avoiding civilian casualties, and they promised a quick victory. The army employed tactics adapted from open warfare without much preparation and, initially, using restricted rules of engagement. The Russian Army then suffered very heavy casualties, became trapped and resorted to massive firepower to extract themselves, causing heavy civilian casualties leading to international political fallout.²⁸

By 2000 the trends towards urban warfare were widely accepted in allied armies and this was reflected in Australia’s doctrine²⁹ and operating concepts.³⁰ The need for the future force to be capable of operating and surviving in urban conflict was articulated; however, this did not translate into specialised systems and platforms to deal with urban specific challenges.³¹ The exception was the two armies with recent urban war humiliations. The Israeli Army fielded highly protected armoured vehicles,³² engineering equipment and ‘robots’ and the Russian Army deployed new vehicles designed to deliver greater suppressive firepower effects in urban areas. In contrast, Western forces, most notably the US Marine Corps, invested effort in training (including a focus on restraint in the presence of civilian populations).³³ Essentially, they were ‘doing the same thing better’.

The political and ethical limitations of this approach, and the central importance of media as a player, became evident in Iraq in April 2004. After emotive footage of insurgents desecrating the bodies of four contractors in Fallujah was shown on US media, the White House ordered a US Marine Corps force to attack the city of Fallujah and ‘punish the killers’. The commander, Major General Conway, objected, warning of casualties and political consequences.³⁴ His repeated warnings were overruled. There followed three days of intense urban fighting with an increasing use of firepower. This was the only option to progress against the Iraqi insurgents and comply with US domestic political demand³⁵ to advance to ‘pacify the city’. Ultimately, media reporting of civilian casualties saw international and Iraqi public anger destabilise the Iraqi government and a halt was ordered before operations were complete.³⁶ The combination of the civilian bloodshed and factional Iraqi perceptions of heroic and effective resistance catalysed the insurgency that would rage for a decade.³⁷ The vital message from Fallujah is that a political imperative may override military expertise and caution.

History demonstrates that the low prioritisation of dedicated capability for urban warfare represents significant risk, both political and moral. In some countries there have certainly been changes in tactical training and some system modifications and changed requirements—for example, 360-degree ‘urban’ protection upgrades for a limited number of US and British tanks. Similar options are envisaged for Australia’s new Land 400 vehicles. However, these should still be understood as improving capability to operate in urban areas rather than capability for urban operations: they do not address the underlying ‘engineering’ challenges of the physical environment and the presence of populations. The exception is within the Special Forces, which have outstanding tactical capabilities for light assault in and around small urban complexes.

The Challenge for Australia

The challenges described apply equally to Australia. No matter how good Army’s general-purpose capabilities may be, they do not offer ways to avoid the collateral damage dilemma in urban operations. If the Australian Army is deployed to such operations, the political consequences of Army operations causing extensive casualties may be more of a problem than for allied forces: for Australian forces they would be almost unprecedented.

Urban operations may not be a choice. Australia’s alliance strategy with the US depends on it being a reliable and valuable partner. In the last 15 years Australia has been exactly that. However, our excellent reputation in the US could readily be lost by refusing a request for help. This plausibly might oblige the Australian Army to contribute ground forces to a US-led intervention involving intense urban operations. In a similar vein, Australia’s recent provision of trainers to assist the Philippines military highlights the possibility of urban operations in the region. In either eventuality, specialist urban capability might either reduce the risk of sending conventional infantry or provide a politically attractive and alternative niche contribution.

Australian Army soldiers fire an 84mm recoilless rifle at the urban operations training facility on the Singleton Army Base. Image courtesy Department of Defence

Conclusion

Urban areas will be the battle grounds for future wars. The enduring problems of the physical environment will be overlaid by emergent challenges, especially new technologies and the immediate broadcasting of civilian casualties. Australian doctrine and development thinking recognises the need to operate in urban areas and, once planned systems come into service, Australian capability will be comparable with that of peers. However, this is not sufficient. The operational challenges of urban war are acute for any small professional army, and the attendant political and reputational risks of significant own and civilian casualties demand additional dedicated capability. Conversely, capabilities adopted to mitigate these risks might allow Army to offer government options to assist allies and regional partners in a wide range of military and disaster contingencies and thereby enhance Army relevance.

Addendum: Questions to Prompt Thinking and Papers

This addendum is for readers who want to think further about the challenges of urban operations and seek inspiration for joining the debate. It describes a set of 12 vulnerabilities that exist for urban operations. (Conveniently, the vulnerabilities are clustered into three broad areas: mainly people related, mainly physical terrain related, and mainly limitation-related.) For each vulnerability three questions are posed, prompted by reflection about that ‘problem’. These are merely possible questions to stimulate thinking. You might be interested in addressing one or several of the questions or you may identify another important one that you want to tackle with a paper—you should not constrain your ideas.

Mainly People Related

1. Unstable Constraint on Force describes the consequences of the legal and moral constraints placed on the use of force in order to protect non- combatants and certain structures. There is a dilemma of balancing risk to own troops against civilian casualties and the prospect of that balance shifting sharply in response to casualty events.

• Do norms of populations remaining in place and restrictive rules of engagement reduce net harm to non-combatants or do they result in higher totals of civilian casualties occurring across protracted battle, although at reduced rates?
   
• What methods, influences or changes to norms or obligations might we use to separate non-combatants from adversaries?
   
• In what ways might we enhance, integrate or use existing or new weapon, surveillance and control systems differently in order to better discriminate and engage adversaries amongst civilian populations?

2. Media Exhibition describes the vulnerability caused by the conjunction of increasing military importance of public opinion locally, domestically and internationally with an increased presence of and vantage points for media and recording devices.

• In what ways can the information flowing within and out of an area of operations be controlled or influenced?
   
• How should Army respond to the external media narratives of urban operations?
   
• Should Army generate its own media narrative and, if so, how?

3. Logistic and Security Encumbrance is the legal and humanitarian obligation to provide security and logistic support to populations.

• Can the obligations to provide support plausibly be met by smaller armies in larger urban areas and, if not, how can we reshape the political–legal environment and international expectations?
   
• What are the military and civilian capabilities required to effectively and efficiently deliver a (presumably substantial) minimum level of logistic support to populations and how might a society best develop these to meet obligations?
   
• What opportunities do robotics and similar technologies offer to deliver logistic support and achieve security, and to what extent might these offer an opportunity to shape battlefield conditions?

4. Community Hindrance is the passive obstruction or active protest and resistance to military manoeuvre by crowds or third parties.

• What technologies will help ascertain the composition, attitudes, locations and likely intentions of populations within areas of operations?
   
• What is the threshold at which activities in support of violent actors— which might range from obstructive protest to passing operational information—lose the actor non-combatant status and how might they be established?
   
• What deployable barrier, blocking or deterrent systems might be employed to prevent individuals or groups within populations from compromising operations?

Mainly Physical Terrain Related

5. Concealment³⁸ and Ambiguity gives the adversary relative freedom of manoeuvre and insulation from effective intelligence, surveillance or reconnaissance adversaries amongst urban structures, infrastructure and population.

• What surveillance methods or technologies reduce urban concealment, and how can they be applied to locate adversaries and deny their freedom of actions?
   
• Can computer-generated imagery, presented in three dimensions, reduce the problems of spatial understanding, navigation and the coordination of both lethal and nonlethal effects?
   
• Would the persistent deployment of smaller autonomous or semi- autonomous lethal platforms within the putative concealed spaces of an urban area effectively neutralise its advantages?

6. Aggravated Exposure is the dramatically increased exposure to attack throughout an urban area and from vantage points in three dimensions that may be at close range, protected and/or defiladed.

• What obscurant, physical screening or blocking technologies, systems or methods can be used to deny adversaries vision and other sensing capabilities?
   
• Can a combination of sensing and semi-automated fire control technologies offer overwatch so effective in responding to any enemy fire that it will mitigate the existing vulnerability of troops in open spaces?
   
• Can tele-operated and autonomous tools and platforms reduce the risks of urban movements?

7. Diluted Combat Power is the reduction in the ability to apply force and manoeuvre amongst a matrix of cellular structures because of the channelling and slowing of movement; the isolating and blinding of personnel; the masking and absorbing of weapons effects; and the personnel consumption of clearing and securing.

• What tools and platforms would enable forces to move through the urban fabric without being channelled?
   
• What tools and technologies might rapidly check and clear the interiors of large numbers of urban structures?
   
• What weapon systems might deliver scalable lethal and nonlethal effects at precise points deep inside urban structures?

Mainly Limitations Related

8. Degraded Technology is the reduction in the effectiveness of sensors, communications equipment and advanced weapons because of physical obstruction and visual obscuration as well as electromagnetic spectrum effects, including absorption, reflection and noise.

• Which weapons, communications and surveillance technologies might best exploit the characteristics of the urban environment?
   
• Which technologies, processes and procedures mitigate degradation of existing equipment?
   
• What combination of technologies will be required to penetrate the urban fabric and visualise the operating picture?

9. Absent Actor Attack is the engagement of forces using weapons displaced in time or space from the operator. It may be self-initiated mines or improvised explosive devices (IEDs), or involve increasing degrees of remote control or intelligent autonomy.

• What fleets of systems and platforms will provide the robust capacity for deception and route clearing/proving that will enable force manoeuvre?
   
• What own methods of operation will reduce the effectiveness of an adversary system that makes extensive use of tele-operated and autonomous weapon systems?
   
• What active countermeasures might disrupt the command, control and communication (C3) of a system of weapons that have few or no local operators?

10. Non-Readiness is the deficiency in equipment, training, regrouping and rehearsal to effectively conduct complex operations.

• How do we shift the Army towards not just psychological preparedness for urban operations but also an environment where a technocratic innovative force might dominate?
   
• Where should the focus on delivering new urban capability be: long lead-time systems, critical/high-payoff systems or maximum distribution?
   
• To what extent can simulation, modelling and gaming of urban operations deliver deep understanding and enhance capability?

11. Overload Scope is the potential for induced error where the military C3 system is temporarily overwhelmed by the tempo, density and diversity of urban events, compounded by political interference and the psychological difficulty of switching between combat and benign tasks.

• What additional or increased C3 functions are required in the urban battlespace?
   
• Can the functions of C3 be differently delivered for urban combat? Which functions must be physically present and which might be delivered remotely?
   
• How can new technologies be managed to both provide improved visualisation at manageable cognitive load?

12. Philosophic Dissonance is an intellectual shortfall with three elements: the dissonance between the primordial demands of urban combat operations and the expectations of liberal societies; the dissonance between military focus on tactical methods and outcomes while adversaries target strategic perceptions; and the dissonance between contemporary acknowledgement of the need for urban operations and the cultural change and investment needed to be able to prevail there.

• How can the military legitimately shape public and political expectations of urban combat?
   
• How do we develop and diffuse a strategic perspective of urban operations?
   
• What command and control structural enhancements would better manage the political and informational challenges of an urban battle?

Editor’s Note: The Australian Army Research Centre seeks to start a debate about the need for greater capability for urban operations. We seek papers for both this journal and the blog spot. Contributors might focus on whether there is a need for greater capability—the importance of urban operations relative to other tasks—or, alternatively, what such capability might be. Responses might address known problems such as protecting dismounted urban movement or reducing civilian casualties; or they might consider new concepts for the fight itself. Furthermore, we are very interested in receiving ‘futures’ papers that pose urban scenarios and explore ‘unknown unknowns’. This paper provides a conceptual starting point for discussion.

Endnotes

---

1. Alice Hills, 2004, Future War in Cities: Rethinking a Liberal Dilemma, London: Frank Cass, p 2
2. Commonwealth of Australia, 2004, ‘LWD 3-9-5 Urban Operations (Restricted)’, in Land Warfare Doctrine, Puckapunyal: Land Warfare Development Centre, Introduction
3. David Kilcullen, 2004, ‘Complex Warfighting’, in Future Land Operating Concept, Canberra: Army Headquarters
4. Michael Evans, 2009, ‘Lethal Genes: The Urban Military Imperative and Western Strategy in the Early Twenty-First Century’, Journal of Strategic Studies Vol 32, No 4
5. International Committee of the Red Cross, 2017, Outcome Report: When War Moves to Cities: Protection of Civilians in Urban Areas, Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross and InterAction Roundtable
6. Mark Corcoran, 2014, ‘Drone Journalism: Newsgathering Applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in Covering Conflict, Civil Unrest and Disaster’, Adelaide: Flinders University, at: http://www.flinders.edu.au/ehl/fms/law_files/Drone%20Journalism%20Durin… Conflict,%20Civil%20Unrest%20and%20Disasters%20March%201%202014.pdf
7. Sean A J Edwards, 2000, Mars Unmasked: The Changing Face of Urban Operations, Santa Monica: Rand Arroyo Center, Vol 2, No 3
8. Flavius Josephus, 1987, The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, book IV, chap I, para 4
9. When two similar forces are fighting on open terrain with projectile firing weapons, the advantage of the bigger side is the difference between the square of the numbers in each force. Thus a three-to-one numerical advantage is actually a nine-to-one combat exchange advantage. See Dean S Hartley and Robert L Helmbold, 1995, ‘Validating Lanchester’s Square Law and Other Attrition Models’, Naval Research Logistics (NRL) Vol 42, No 4, p 135
10. This estimate is based on US doctrine. Imagine that such a brigade is tasked to assault and clear into an urban area and that it has three infantry battalions with four rifle companies each. The requirement to secure the starting area and flanks and have a reserve means it can probably only attack with two of these battalions. Therefore, the widest probable advance would be ‘four companies up with four back’ across a four-block frontage (maybe 700 metres wide). Assume the third battalion is employed to secure both flanks as the battalion advances. In an urban area it can defend a frontage of up to about eight blocks (around 1.4 kilometres), so assuming that flank protection can be done with a somewhat more spread-out force—say twice that—the flank protection battalion will run out of soldiers on both flanks after advancing somewhere between 1.5 and 2 kilometres. Note that Australian brigades typically only have two infantry battalions and three infantry companies.
11. KW Brown, 1997, ‘The Urban Warfare Dilemma—US Casualties Versus Collateral Damage’, Marine Corps Gazette^{, Jan}
12. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 1963, Samuel Griffith, trans, Oxford: Clarendon Press, chap 3, para 3
13. David Morgan, 1986, The Mongols, Oxford: Blackwell, p 82
14. Césaire de Heisterbach, 1851, Dialogus Miraculorum, Joseph Strange, ed Coloniae: Sumptibus JM Heberle, p 302
15. Geoffrey Parker, 2002, ‘The Etiquette of Atrocity: The Laws of War in Early Modern Europe’ in Geoffrey Parker, Empire, War and Faith in Early Modern Europe, London: Penguin, pp 147-48
16. Gregory J Ashworth, 1991, War and the City, London: Routledge, p 112
17. Alexander B Downes, 2008, Targeting Civilians in War, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, p 121
18. Hugo Slim, 2010, Killing Civilians: Method, Madness and Morality in War, London: Hurst Publishers Ltd, p 197
19. Brown, 1997
20. Jason Lyall, 2009, ‘Does Indiscriminate Violence Incite Insurgent Attacks?: Evidence from Chechnya’, Journal of Conflict Resolution Vol 53, No. 3, p 331
21. Colin H Kahl, 2007, ‘In the Crossfire or the Crosshairs? Norms, Civilian Casualties, and US Conduct in Iraq’, International Security Vol 32, No 1, pp 31–32
22. Michelle Tan, 2016, ‘Army Chief: Soldiers Must Be Ready to Fight in “Megacities”’, Army Times, 5 Oct
23. SLA Marshall, 1973, ‘Notes on Urban Warfare’, Special Publication No 6, Maryland: Army Materiel Systems Analysis Agency, p 3
24. Paul Bracken, 1976, ‘Urban Sprawl and NATO Defence’, Survival Vol 18, No 6, p 254
25. Lawrence Freedman, 2017, The Future of War: A History, UK: Penguin, p 190
26. William G Rosenau, 1997, ‘“Every Room Is a New Battle”: The Lessons of Modern Urban Warfare’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol 20, No 4, pp 72-85
27. Yezid Sayigh, 1983, ‘Israel’s Military Performance in Lebanon, June 1982’, Journal of Palestine Studies Vol 13, No 1, pp 46, 61
28. Michael W Kelly, 2000, Grozny & the Third Block (Lessons Learned from Grozny and Their Application to Marine Corps’ MOUT Training) Monterey: Naval Postgraduate School, p 44
29. Australia, 2004, Introduction
30. Kilcullen, 2004
31. Michael Peck, 2005, ‘Army Developed Urban Tactics, but Lacked Doctrine’, National Defense Magazine, 7 Jan
32. Nathan L Sayers, 2006, ‘Future Combat Vehicle Systems: Lessons from Operation Defensive Shield’, in DSTO-GD-0484, ,Edinburgh SA: Defence Science and Technology Organisation
33. USMC Warfighting Laboratory, 2000, Basic Urban Skills Training Package, Quantico, Virginia: Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory
34. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, 2004, ‘Key General Criticizes April Attack in Fallujah’, Washington Post, 13 Sep
35. David Walsh, 2004, ‘US Media Applauds Destruction of Fallujah’, World Socialist Web Site, 17 Nov, at: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2004/11/fall-n17.html
36. Carter Malkasian, 2006, ‘Signaling Resolve, Democratization, and the First Battle of Fallujah’, Journal of Strategic Studies Vol 29, No 3
37. Oxford Research Group, 2005, Learning from Fallujah: Lessons Identified 2003–2005 Oxford: Oxford Research Group / Peace Direct
38. ‘Concealment’ is used here in the military sense of hiding but without the inference of physical protection that the word ‘cover’ has.