The ability to disable a city’s critical infrastructure, such as communications
and transportation grids, is just one example of some of the new skills that
Marines are learning in urban-warfare exercises.
During a recent live exercise in North Little Rock, Ark., Marines from the
4th Expeditionary Brigade headquarters conducted what is known as a “staff
ride,” visiting key infrastructure sites—telecommunications, water,
power, rail transport and nuclear-power facilities. Their goal was to help develop
“tactics and techniques to protect and destroy key infrastructure …
or take the control of it from the hands of terrorists,” said Brig. Gen.
Douglas O’Dell, commander of the brigade, which is the Corps’ elite
anti-terrorism unit. O’Dell spoke to National Defense during the exercise
in North Little Rock, which was part of a larger Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory
urban warfare training initiative called Project Metropolis. The drill involved
about 300 Marines.
“We’re looking at how to protect these critical vulnerabilities
from subtle or not-so-subtle attacks by those who would do us ill,” said
O’Dell. “In the United States and in major European cities, transmitting
towers are in the heart of major cities, like the space needle in Seattle,”
O’Dell said.
As the United States seeks to broaden its global campaign against terrorism,
it’s important for the Marines to learn how to control the communications
channels typically used by terrorists, O’Dell explained. “The real
intent of terrorists in seizing and exploiting radio and television communication
is to broadcast their message, and to create uncertainty and fear in the populace,”
O’Dell said. If terrorists seized control of a local radio station and
broadcast a message that the water supply had been contaminated with chemicals,
the ensuing panic, “whether real or imagined, could be devastating.”
O’Dell said. “The thing you really want to seize, if you’re
bent on controlling local telecommunications, is not the radio station, but
the transmitting tower.”
The 4th MEB was designated as the Corps’ main anti-terrorism unit last
October. O’Dell noted that the brigade originally dates back to 1917,
but was deactivated in 1991 after the Gulf War. In the weeks following the September
11 attacks, the commandant decided to reactivate the unit.
The tactics, techniques and procedures that the Marines were learning in North
Little Rock easily could be applied to missions such as guarding the U.S. Embassy
in Kabul, said O’Dell. This made the exercise “extremely timely.”
Project Metropolis also is focusing on urban ground reconnaissance, said Randy
Gangle, a retired Marine colonel, who works at the Corps’ Warfighting
Laboratory, which is based in Quantico, Va. The ability to hide sensors in a
city is key to improving reconnaissance. “What you see looks like normal
garbage you might see on the street — bricks, pieces of concrete, dented
oil cans. What they actually are, are different types of sensors,” said
Brig. Gen. Andrew Davis, a Marine Corps spokesman.
The lab, which manages the Corps’ training exercises, is sharpening its
focus “from theatre-level or strategic concepts, to experiments that support
the Marine in the last 1,500 meters to the objective,” said Davis.
The training also will help the Corps decide what equipment they should buy
in the future. “There are technologies out there that are going to help
protect us,” said Davis. An example is camouflage garments. “We’re
assessing a new type of camouflage utility pattern color for the urban environment,”
he said. There is also interest in lighter backpacks and smaller batteries,
so Marines are not so weighed down with gear.
Gangle noted that, in the past 20 years, 21 out of the 26 U.S. military deployments
have had an “urban context,” and 10 of them have been exclusively
in an urban environment.
He explained that some of the technologies used for conventional warfare are
ineffective in an urban environment. Overhead imagery systems don’t work
well in looking inside buildings, so enemy forces tend to hide inside buildings
and underground. “Because we can’t find you, all the precision weapons
we’ve developed are for naught,” he said.
“There is no silver-bullet technology available out there for the urban
battle,” said O’Dell. “But if we train better, use moderate
maneuver warfare tactics on the urban battle space, we can improve our efficiency
by about 70 percent.” New procedures have already brought the casualty
rate from 30 percent down into the teens. “Now, I’m still not happy
with the teens, but it’s a hell of a lot better than 30 percent, which
is the historical average for warfare,” he said.
The North Little Rock experiment was a peacekeeping scenario with an anti-terrorism
flavor, said Maj. Pete Sullivan, a company commander. “It’s a compilation
of Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans and Central Asia rolled into one.”
The Marines used the Miles (Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System) laser-tag
instrumentation system and observer-controllers to keep track of direct-fire
engagements.
Establishing the company’s permanent base is the first priority for the
company commander, Sullivan said. That takes the first few days of any operation.
In addition to the patrols, there are missions such as house searches.
Physical and mental exhaustion are assessed during these exercises, Sullivan
explained. “We made [the experiment] long enough so that they could get
a feel for how important the sleep plan is.” The Marines worked six-hour
shifts, followed by six-hour breaks. It’s important for Marines to grasp
how long they have, after they set up their base, before they start collapsing
from exhaustion, Sullivan said.
“The question often comes up is, why are you here in a real city, like
North Little Rock?” he said. The reason is that the average urban training
facility on an Army or Marine base consists of 30 buildings, all made out of
cinderblock. “They don’t have any glass in the windows, they very
seldom have furniture inside, and they don’t have populations in them,”
Sullivan explained. “The opportunity for us to get out, in a real city,
operate in this type of environment, gives us a little more of an edge, in figuring
out if what we’ve developed conceptually and in those urban training facilities,
works when you get it out on the ground.
“The experiment in Little Rock has even taken it a step further than
previous experiments,” Sullivan said. Other experiments have occurred
in Charleston, S.C., but the perimeters of operation included only the campus
of the Citadel. In Oakland, Calif., the operation occurred within a former Navy
base that the city now owns.
“Here at Little Rock, we are actually out in the entire city, in the
neighborhoods, we’ve blocked off streets, we’ve stopped cars. It’s
as real as it can get without going overseas and doing the real thing,”
said Sullivan. Local law enforcement participated as “interpreters”
in the operation, in this case, making certain that residents understood that
the Marines were in training, not invading their city.
“We’ve found some things that work; we’ve found a lot of
things that don’t work. We still don’t have all the answers to the
problems, but we’re going to keep working on it,” said Gangle.
Lt. Gen. Emil Bedard, Marine deputy commandant for plans, policy and operations,
has experienced first-hand the challenges of urban warfare. During a breakfast
with defense reporters in Washington, he cited fratricide, fire support and
command and control as the most critical concerns.
“The environment can become very hostile, very rapidly. We’ve got
to be able to operate in that kind on environment,” he said. “If
you’re going into an environment that is held entirely by the enemy, that’s
somewhat easier than if the enemy is dispersed within the population,”
he said. “The ability to communicate in an urban environment” is
also a huge challenge.
“I spent 13 months in Somalia, on two different tours. … The urban
environment is one of the most difficult and challenging ones.
“We believe, as Marines, as an expeditionary force, we’re going
to find ourselves fighting in every kind of terrain. Urban warfare is not our
only mission, but it’s an important one,” he said.
Bedard explained that with the return of the 4th Brigade, the Corps will have
an expeditionary force ready take action at any time, anywhere, including within
the borders of the United States, if necessary. “Let’s say another
‘New York’ happened. I could see this brigade going in and doing
a security mission around ground zero, to be able to let the emergency folks
do their jobs, focus on civilian protection and sealing off sanitation,”
he said.