– Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chief of Staff of the Army
Ask the average division staff officer how many brigade combat teams it takes to seize a city of one hundred thousand people crammed into twenty-five square kilometers and you will likely get a blank stare or a wild guess. This reaction comes despite the realities of...
in January 1968, North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong forces launched the Tet Offensive, a series of coordinated attacks aimed at demonstrating to the governments in Washington and Saigon that continuing the war was futile. One of the offensives chief targets was the...
Earlier this summer, we published the first case study in a new series focused on important and instructive urban battles. It examined the World War II Battle of Stalingrad and identified a range of lessons that can be extracted from it. Our second case study, just...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Ze’ev Orenstein. He is the director of international affairs at the City of David Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the history and physical environs of...
Observers watched the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War closely, searching for indicators of the character of warfare on tomorrow's battlefields. The lessons extracted have covered advanced technology and unmanned platforms, proxy dynamics, the ongoing relevance of armor, and...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by retired Colonel Kevin Felix. He served thirty years in the US Army as both a field artillery and foreign area officer. His last assignment in the Army was as the chief of the Future...
Earlier this month, the Modern War Institute published an opinion piece, “The Tyranny of Battle Drill 6,” by retired Colonel Richard Hooker. In the article, Hooker argues that due to a culture of specialized urban tactics, conventional infantry soldiers should...
There has been no shortage of attention paid to the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. Commentary and analysis have produced a range of claims about what the six-week-long war means for the future of combat. What has been almost completely left out of these discussions is how...
How is breaching—a tactical task engineers specialize in—uniquely challenged by the complexity of cities? And why is it important that US Army units have this specialized capability within their formations? This episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast tackles...
Earlier this year, a video of 10th Mountain Division soldiers conducting live-fire room-clearing training—the famous “Battle Drill 6”—went viral. In the video, the soldiers repeatedly “flagged” each other, pointing loaded weapons at fellow soldiers during the drill....
Mentioning the phrase “urban warfare” to anyone who thinks seriously about the subject of war will almost certainly bring a specific image to the listener’s mind. Whether a military member, a national security professional, a scholar, or a generalist with only a...
There are more than 180,000 US soldiers serving in more than 140 countries around the world. During the height of the war in Iraq, there were more than 170,000 deployed in just that country alone. Much of the work soldiers did in Iraq—and do in combat zones around the...
Training to win in the urban space is one of the greatest challenges for any military. Dismounted small units are the key force within the urban battlefield and how goes their large number of small actions goes the fight. For individual training the basics of close...
Editor’s note: This podcast episode was created in partnership with the One CA podcast and the Civil Affairs Association. In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by returning guest retired Colonel Leonard DeFrancisci....
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Dr. Daphne Richemond-Barak. She is an assistant professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy and heads the international law desk of the International Institute...
In this episode of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Major Jayson Geroux. He is a member of the directing staff of the Tactics School at the Canadian Army's Combat Training Centre. Maj. Geroux is an urban warfare instructor and scholar who...
Editor’s note: This podcast episode was created in partnership with the One CA podcast and the Civil Affairs Association. In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by retired Colonel Leonard DeFrancisci. He served thirty-two years...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Major General Ross Coffman. He is the director of Army Futures Command's Next Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team—one of eight cross-functional teams working toward the...
In three previous episodes of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast, host John Spencer spoke with the commanders of the operations groups of the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, California, the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Polk, Louisiana,...
In this episode of MWI's Urban Warfare Project podcast, John Spencer is joined by Col. Rich Creed, the director of the Army’s Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. A graduate of the School of Advanced Military Studies, he has commanded Army...
In a recent article, author Paul Barnes argued against assertions made by Professor Anthony King of the University of Warwick a few months ago in an episode of the Royal United Services Institute’s Western Way of War podcast. During the conversation, Dr. King stated...
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...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Rob Taylor. He is the company director of 4GD, a UK-based organization that specializes in developing unique close-combat training facilities—what the company calls "SmartFacilities"—and...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, Dr. Louis DiMarco, a professor of military history at the US Army Command and General Staff College, presents a short lecture on the 2006 Battle of Ramadi, Iraq—one of the most significant urban battles of the...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Dr. Daphne Richemond-Barak. She is an assistant professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy and heads the international law desk of the International Institute...
From October 16, 2016 to January 4, 2017, US-backed Iraqi security forces conducted a full-scale city attack to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State. The operation was the largest conventional land battle since the attack on Baghdad during the US-led invasion in 2003...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Lt. Gen. James Rainey. He currently serves as the commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In 2004, he was the battalion commander of 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry...
Two years ago, the Modern War Institute's John Spencer wrote an article titled "A Soldier's Urban Warfare Christmas Wish List." As the chair of urban warfare studies at MWI, he had spent a lot of time thinking about tasks soldiers would be required to perform in urban...
In 2018, I created a soldier's urban warfare Christmas list. I limited myself to items that could (mostly) fit under a tree. I have learned since then—or maybe I have just become greedy. Either way, this year I want twelve days of Christmas, with a gift each day that...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Alex Giles. He is the chief commercial officer for ICENI Labs, a UK-based science and technology research firm with the mission to develop and deploy cutting-edge solutions for a safer...
This episode takes a slight departure from the format typical of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast. John Spencer is the podcast's regular host, but in this episode MWI editorial director John Amble, takes that role and Spencer joins as the guest. With more than twenty...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Master Sgt. Michael Kidd. He is an experienced leader in Army EOD—explosive ordnance disposal—with over sixteen years of service. The job that EOD personnel do is vital, and Master Sgt....
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Dr. Deane Baker, an associate professor and co-convener of the Future Operations Research Group in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences in the University of New South Wales,...
In two previous episodes of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast, host John Spencer spoke with the commanders of the Operations Group of the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, California and the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Polk, Louisiana....
This is a special episode of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast. The Association of the United States Army hosts a podcasts called Army Matters, which often brings together a select group of thought leaders to discuss a topic of pressing interest to the Army. One...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Samuel Bendett. He is an analyst with the Center for Naval Analyses where he is a member of the Russia Studies Program. He is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New...
It was all about speed. Russian Army planners assessed that their combined-arms battalion tactical groups could cover the two hundred kilometers from the Belarus border to Warsaw quickly, in a few days, taking the direct approach along European Route 30. The Russians...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Dr. Sokwoo Rhee. He is the Associate Director of Cyber-Physical Systems Innovation at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of the US Department of Commerce. He is...
There are more than 180,000 US soldiers serving in more than 140 countries around the world. During the height of the war in Iraq, there were more than 170,000 deployed in just that country alone. Much of the work soldiers did in Iraq—and do in combat zones around the...
In previous episodes of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast, host John Spencer has spoken to leaders from the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, and the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, about the urban operations training units...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project podcast, John Spencer is joined by Dr. Saskia Sassen. She is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and member of its Committee on Global Thought, which she chaired until 2015. She is the author...
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...
In a previous episode of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast, host John Spencer spoke to three guests from the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California about the urban operations training units undergo during rotations there. This episode features a...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by retired Sgt. Maj. Joe Vega. He works for the US Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group and is one of the most knowledgeable and experienced experts in underground warfare. He has been working...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Command Sgt. Maj. Daniel Hendrex. When the conversation was recorded, he was serving as command sergeant major of the 3rd Infantry Division. He has since become command sergeant major of...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by three guests. Col. Michael Simmering is the commander of the Operations Group at the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, California. Lt. Col. Andrew Steadman, the senior...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Maj. Gen. Roger Noble. An officer in the Australian Army, in 2016 he served as the deputy commanding general of the Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command – Operation Inherent...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project podcast, John Spencer is joined by Col. Douglas Winton, chair of the Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations at the US Army War College. In their conversation, Col. Winton discusses the topic of his PhD...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project podcast, John Spencer is joined by Dr. Richard Norton. He is a professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College and a retired US Navy commander. While in the Navy, he served extensively at sea on...
This episode of the Urban Warfare Project podcast is unique—mostly because it isn't specifically about urban warfare. In fact, the episode's guest, retired Sgt. 1st Class William Rothrock, shares three stories from his deployments to Afghanistan, and all of them...
In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project podcast, John Spencer is joined by retired Col. Patrick Mahaney. He is the cofounder and director of the National Center for Urban Operations. A career Special Forces officer, he retired from the US Army after thirty-two...
In the fourth episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project podcast, John Spencer is joined by retired Lt. Col. Rob MacMillan. In 2008, Lt. Col. MacMillan was serving as the battalion operations officer of 1-68 Armor in 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. The...
“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...
In the third episode of MWI’s new Urban Warfare Project podcast, John Spencer is joined by Sahr Muhammedally. She works at the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), a nongovernmental organization that seeks to convince parties to armed conflicts to recognize the...
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...
In the second episode of MWI's new Urban Warfare Project podcast, John Spencer is joined by Col. Rich Creed, the director of the Army’s Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. A graduate of the School of Advanced Military Studies, he has...
As the world becomes more urban, we need to be prepared for cities to become battlefields. That's why we launched the Urban Warfare Project in 2017—to explore the unique challenges that military forces face when forces to operate in dense urban terrain. Today we're...
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...
Several times each semester, the Modern War Institute convenes what it calls War Councils—interdisciplinary panels that explore an issue related to modern war from a variety of perspectives. These War Councils provide cadets and faculty the opportunity to engage with...
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...