Urban warfare did not receive concentrated Army attention until
the 1990s, despite a wealth of experience gained during conflicts
spanning more than half a century.
Army doctrine has evolved into a focused plan of identifying, isolating
and destroying concentrated targets within cities, rather than avoiding
key population centers or storming them with all resources available.
It wasn’t until quite recently that troops received realistic
training in urban mockups.
In World War II, soldiers learned city fighting the hard way as
they battled and blasted their way through the Ruhr and Manila,
said Arthur Durante Jr., deputy chief of doctrine at Fort Benning,
Ga., who has studied the history of Army urban warfare methods.
“But at the end of the war, we didn’t have a doctrine.
What we had were tactics. We knew how to do it. But we had never
written it down, thought it through and said, ‘This is why
we do it this way, and this is how we ought to approach it.’”
The first manual for urban operations appeared in the 1950s. Solidly
rooted in World War II experience, the book “Combat in Fortified
Areas” focused more on tackling entrenchments than cities.
“For 30 years, that was the only book,” said Durante.
“Good for what it was, but it talked about Sherman tanks against
dragon’s teeth and pillboxes on the Siegfried Line.”
In 1979 came Field Manual 90-10, which reflected the change in
Army focus from jungle warfare in Vietnam to mechanized warfare
in Europe. And therein lay the problem. The manual used examples
of village fighting in Germany—though West Germany had become
heavily urbanized by the 1970s. “If you got down to it, the
manual said, ‘avoid fighting in cities,” Durante said.
“We bypass cities. We fight in the open. Cities are bad places
to fight. Here are some things you can do if you’re there,
but don’t fight there if you can avoid it.’”
So the Infantry School came out with a supplement in 1982: FM 90-10-1,
“Infantry Guide to Urban Combat.” Though it focused
more on city combat than previous works, it came out when the infantry
was mostly stuck with M-113s instead of Bradleys and Abrams. “We
were still back in the days of the Sherman,” said Durante.
Perhaps worse, training didn’t simulate urban combat. Durante
recalled conducting lessons learned surveys of 7th Infantry Division
soldiers who had participated in the Panama conflict. “One
of the things that struck us was that we heard the same statement
over and over again: they didn’t have any idea of what the
effects of their weapons would be against be against urban targets.
When we went to the range, we shot at tank hulls and pop-up targets.
We didn’t shoot at cinderblock walls and car bodies.”
He cited an interview with a platoon commander who had been ordered
to secure a Panamanian water treatment plant. The gate was locked,
so he fired a LAW anti-tank rocket at it. All it did was punch a
hole in the gate without even destroying the lock.
“He told me, ‘Honest to God, sir, I expected that gate
to blow open, because that’s what it does in the movies.’”
The platoon only entered the plant after one of the employees shouted
that he had a key.
“They needed a picture in their mind, and the only one they
had came from Hollywood,” said Durante.
It wasn’t until 1993, and the FM 90-10-1 supplement, “Infantry
Guide to Combat in Built-Up Areas,” that a current, comprehensive
concept of urban operations began. Based on experience in Panama
and Somalia, it “significantly increased our discussion of
combat under restrictive conditions,” he said. “We introduced
the concept of high-intensity, precision and surgical operations,
which were levels of violence and focused violence, as opposed to
general attack.”
Instead of bypassing or demolishing a city, current doctrine focuses
on finesse and going for key “nodal points,” such as
communications centers and utilities. Combat is localized. “If
he’s concentrated his defense around an apartment complex
of 25 or 30 small buildings, then you fight him there,” said
Durante.
In the 1990s, the concept of discriminatory engagement during room
clearing operations also emerged. “Rather than just simply
chucking in grenades from the outside until the screaming stops,
we taught them to engage targets that need to be engaged, but don’t
engage others that don’t need to be,” Durante said.
The fundamentals of urban combat haven’t changed much over
the years, Durante said. Isolate, create breach, seize foothold,
expand. But technology has changed some tactics. Instead of isolating
a building with continuous artillery fire before assaulting it,
UAVs enable commanders to call in fire only when needed.
Armor in urban terrain has become much more resilient. Durante
admits that studying the disastrous Russian armored assault on Grozny
in 1994 gave U.S. planners “an exaggerated sense of the vulnerability
of armored vehicles in a large, modern city. So before Iraq, we
had a little bit of reluctance to put heavy armored forces without
a lot of dismounted infantrymen into urban areas.” But superior
American vehicles and training enabled U.S. armor to function where
Soviet armor was slaughtered.
Sophisticated computer simulations and urban combat training ranges
have replaced plywood village mock-ups. American soldiers are much
better trained and equipped to deliver lethal force. “But
the issue isn’t how many we can kill,” Durante said.
“It’s how many we can avoid killing and still accomplish
the mission. We’re much prepared doctrinally to pursue the
full range of urban operations, which includes offense, defense,
stability and support operations.”