[Peace-discuss] urban war

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

Fighting on urban terrain challenging, not impossible 
by Staff Sgt. Marcia Triggs 


WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Nov. 27, 2002) -- Americans believe that the 
next conflict will take place on urban terrain, which is the most challenging 
environment to fight, officials said. 

However, doctrine and training over the last decade have increased soldiers' 
level of preparedness, officials at the Army's Infantry School said at a 
Pentagon press briefing Nov. 25. 

In 1993, 18 Rangers from 3rd Battalion, 75th Regiment, Fort Benning, Ga., 
were killed in Mogadishu, Somalia, during what they described as a fight 
against an entire town. Now with an evolving doctrine and training at sites 
like the fictional Shugart-Gordon, named after two soldiers killed in 
Mogadishu trying to rescue a down pilot, soldiers can practice for the 
unexpected, said Col. Paul Melody, the director of the Infantry School 
Combined Arms and Tactics Directorate, Fort Benning. 

In the past, troops fighting in urban terrain had little knowledge of who 
they were going to fight and what the nature of the terrain was going to be," 
Melody said. "That's different now, we make a point to know the terrain 
almost as good as the people that live there. We know what is valuable to 
defend and what to attack." 

Field Manual 34-06.11 Combined Arms Operations in Urban Terrain was approved 
in March 2001 and can be found at 
http://www.adtdl.army.mil/cgi-bin/atdl.dll/fm/3-06.11/toc.htm. Just the name 
change from its predecessor, FM 90-10-1 Infantry's Guide to Military 
Operations in Urban Terrain, is significant, Melody said. 

"If we don't fight in a combined or joint way with our sister services and 
coalition forces, the level of success decreases," Melody said. "Other 
significant changes include the depth the manual goes into. 

"The first chapter of both manuals is the same. But the current manual 
analyzes and assesses eight different city patterns and seven different 
categories of terrain to help us gain insights on the best way to approach 
the mission to a degree that hadn't existed in the past." 

The tasks, conditions and standards in the current manual elaborate on 
scenarios like how to move a tank or armored vehicle in a town; how to engage 
a certain part of a building, and when and where to shoot, Melody said. That 
way units can train and practice before the rubber meets the road, he added. 

There are four principles that guide FM 34-06.11 - assess, shape, dominate 
and transition. Before troops go into an operation, the situation has been 
assessed, Melody said. To a novelist looking at an urban area he can be 
misled into thinking that that it is all the same, he said. For someone who 
sees the terrain for fighting, he realizes that there are a lot of areas that 
can lead to destruction and attack, he added. 

Shape means setting conditions prior to the offensive and defensive meeting, 
which includes putting civil affairs, information and psychological 
operations into play, Melody said. Taking away the enemy's options and 
collapsing their ability to resist or attack is to dominate, and when the 
focus of the operation changes, Melody said, soldiers can transition from 
offense or defense to stability and support. 

A doctrine that leads to realistic training for a modern fight gives troops 
an advantage, but it doesn't give them an over-manageable confidence. MOUT 
training at the Joint Readiness Training Center, Fort Polk La., is designed 
to produce well-trained soldiers, but it's also a very humbling experience, 
said Maj. Perry Beissel, the MOUT Team officer-in-charge. 

"We don't want units thinking that seizing control of Shugart-Gordon was 
easy. We want them to know that as much as they think they know about urban 
warfare, dilemmas such as sleep deprivation, lack of time to prepare can be 
life threatening," Beissel said. 

To increase the level of realism on urban terrain, JRTC places civilians on 
the mock battlefield. 

"It's too easy to land on foreign ground and just level a town," Beissel 
said. "We don't tell soldiers that under no conditions are civilians not to 
be harmed. We know that in the course of a battle there will be unavoidable 
casualties. We needed to use civilians as a way of introducing another level 
of sophistication and thought processes for leaders and soldiers to think 
about." 

About 4,500 soldiers a month go against JRTC's opposing forces to seize 
Shugart-Gordon. Part of their mission after taking control of the town is to 
transition control of the town back to the host nation government. 

Training in mock towns is also conducted at Hohenfels, Germany. "Our training 
and doctrine is unprecedented," Melody said. "However, our young soldiers 
fighting in Afghanistan have proven that they are aware of the risks over 
there and they are confident -- not cocky."