Urban Warfare Project

By almost any metric, the United States has the world’s most powerful military. It is expected to be prepared to answer any call by the US government in the pursuit of national interests—anywhere around the world and in any domain. The Army, as the military’s chief...

“Contrary to what is often supposed, urban warfare is not more difficult than other types of warfare.” That’s what a recent article published in the Texas National Security Review argues. The authors believe, in fact, that urban environments are “neutral,” not to be...

I passed a checkpoint manned by a group of young men armed with assault rifles. But they weren’t like the Iraqi soldiers at other checkpoints. They didn’t really wear uniforms, their bearing was distinctly un-military, and they looked mean. These guys are shady, I...

A key message of this site is that contemporary armies are unprepared for the challenges of operating in cities. In some respects, though, we are actually much less prepared now than in the past. Last year John Spencer offered a wish list of tools the US Army does not...

Over 100 years ago, during the summer of 1919, dozens of members of that year’s West Point graduating class were sent to Europe to tour World War I battlefields. They walked on ground left deeply scarred by the conflict that had ended just months before, and met...

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...

Cities matter. They matter for fighting climate change, for fighting pandemics, and, as the Urban Warfare Project continues to demonstrate, they matter for the future of fighting itself. The heightened importance of urban spaces results from demographic developments,...

Last month former Staff Sgt. David G. Bellavia became the Iraq War’s first living Medal of Honor recipient. The details of the extraordinarily brave event read like every soldier’s nightmare. A “house of hell” filled with enemy insurgents prepared to die in almost...

In 2007, UK and coalition forces in the southeastern Iraqi city of Basra faced a series of tactical challenges. Those challenges—like the ones US forces would confront that year and the next further north in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood—offer insight into some...

If we are entering an era where military forces will increasingly be called upon to operate in cities (and we are), it follows logically that the Army should begin preparing for urban terrain. But a quick scan of the global contemporary operating environment reveals...

Future combat will take place in dense urban areas and likely in megacities, or so we are told. These are the new “truths” that are taking hold in the US military. According to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, who is likely the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs...

Combat in urban areas is the most destructive type of warfare imaginable. Densely populated terrain, complex systems of systems that support human life, military weapons not optimized to these conditions, and asymmetric close-quarters battle tactics all make warfare...

“Sir, what do you want us to do about the tunnel?” one of my squad leaders asked. We were conducting platoon attacks at the massive Range 220 complex at the Marine Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California as part of a training exercise in 2017. Nowhere...

The age of urban warfare is already here. It cannot be avoided any longer. And the urban environment includes not just what is on the surface, but also super-surface and subsurface levels. Most major urban areas include an entire world of underground transportation,...

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2017.   There are no urban warfare units in the US Army—not a single unit designed, organized, or equipped specifically for the challenges of operating in cities. There are no research centers dedicated...

“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” That’s how a US Army major during the Vietnam war described the decision to use massive amounts of firepower, to include aerial bombs and artillery, while attacking approximately 2,500 Viet Cong who were besieging...

Many of the challenges of urban warfare are not new; nor, unfortunately, are the options soldiers have to confront these challenges. The US Army has a long history of fighting in cities and its tactics, techniques, and procedures have been refined mostly from the hard...

The Wall Street Journal's "The Future of Everything" podcast aims to examine how science and technology are revolutionizing the world as we know it. In this episode, host Jennifer Strong looks at how rapid technological change overlays on global urbanization patterns...

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on October 17, 2017.   It will take months, possibly years, to fully understand how the senseless attack in Las Vegas will change American society. Hotels are considering metal detectors, X-ray screening of...

Ask any group of infantry soldiers what they train to prepare for urban operations and the answer will usually be: Battle Drill 6, “Enter and Clear a Room.” Battle Drill 6 is one of the fourteen drills, defined by doctrine, that infantry platoons and squads are...

Large, dense urban areas are both the engines of our economic prosperity and the locus of future national security challenges. As the world continues to grow more and more urban, challenges to the political stability and security in many cities around the world...

The world is urbanizing, and doing so quickly. By 2030, 60 percent of the global population will live in cities. At the same time, the US military remains committed to maintaining the capability to conduct an immensely wide range of operations—from humanitarian...

In 2001, when U.S.-backed Afghan fighters forced the Taliban out of Kabul, the capture of the city was largely a symbolic victory. In many ways, the more meaningful fight would rage in Afghanistan’s rural areas, scattered with villages from the ruggedly mountainous...

Diplomats, donors, and investors gathered last week in Kuwait for a conference dedicated to rebuilding Iraq. As the country emerges from the destructive war against ISIS, Iraqi authorities will need over $88 billion for reconstruction efforts. Some of the worst damage...

Fifty years ago this week, during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, a US Army major famously remarked to a journalist, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” Pilloried for its callousness, one fellow officer who claimed to have been present even said it...

For the first time since the Korean War, the U.S. military has to worry about enemy bombs dropping on them in combat. This threat doesn’t come from multibillion-dollar next-generation aircraft dropping precision-guided bombs on open battlefields. Instead, it comes...

Mosul has been wrested from the three-year-old grasp of ISIS. In Raqqa, the cityscape is one of ruin and devastation as efforts to dislodge the group continue apace there, as well. However, a fundamental question remains. Each city has thus far survived the...

Mosul is destroyed. Many of the estimated 875,000 residents displaced by the fighting can’t return home because their houses are among the piles of rubble left behind. Mosul joins cities like Stalingrad, Hue, Grozny, and more recently, Aleppo and Raqqa—all destroyed...

The battle for Mosul represents the future of warfare—and it wasn’t pretty for America’s allies. A ragtag army of a few thousand Islamic State fighters managed to hold the city for months against some 100,000 U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces. The ISIS fighters...

As Iraqi forces liberate Mosul, now is a good time to reflect on what lessons this recent round of urban combat means for the United States. After defeating ISIS’s mobile defenses of car bombs and suicide vests in Mosul’s suburbs, Iraqi forces attacked into prepared...

The Army does not have a school for learning how to operate in dense urban terrain. Beyond simply training soldiers for such a complex setting, one of the reasons the Army should establish such a school is to create a laboratory for innovation. Units in an urban...

We've published a number of articles on the unique characteristics of military operations in dense urban terrain. We also recently launched the Urban Warfare Project, which will continue to develop as a dynamic home for even more content we have in store. In...

As the global population evolves toward a denser, more urban-centric environment, the battlefield landscape will likely follow suit.  Where the US armed forces of the twenty-first century once militarily dominated the rural landscapes of Afghanistan and the deserts of...

“The Army will never need to fight in a megacity.” Over the past few months, MWI has published several articles exploring combat in megacities and examining the Army’s preparation for such an operating environment. The response these articles have produced has brought...

Train as you fight. It’s the first of the Army’s ten principles of training, meant to ensure that the Army will develop and execute tough, realistic training. As long as we train as we fight, no soldier should confront a situation or an environment for the first time...

In 2013, David Kilcullen, an advisor to Gen. David Petraeus during the Iraq War, was asked how the US military reduced violence in Baghdad by 95 percent. “We did it by killing the city,” he responded. “We shut the city down. We brought in more than 100 kilometers of...

A few weeks ago, I published the article “It’s Time to Create a Megacities Combat Unit.” This article received both criticism and support. Some of the supportive messages suggested that I take the next step and offer an organizational solution. If trends in both...

MWI’s Maj. John Spencer was interviewed for this episode of the BBC program The Inquiry, which examines the ongoing battle for Mosul and the challenges of urban warfare.

The conclusion of a two-part story about the first operational deployment of a purpose-built Army unit designed specifically to fight in megacities.

In 2029, a purpose-built Army unit designed to fight in megacities gets its first test.