A unique anthology on the challenges of Urban Operations
Preface: The battles of the past shape the wars of tomorrow
Jayson Geroux and John Spencer
Two urban warfare scholars and practitioners set the stage for this edited collection. They note that the collection provides a diverse and balanced presentation of the scope of issues involved in contemporary urban operations in a range of settings. As a result, the text is a foundational resource that will help shape understanding of the urban battles to come.
Urban Operations: War, Crime, and Conflict
John P. Sullivan, Nathan P. Jones, and Daniel Weisz Argomedo
This volume, Urban Operations: War, Crime, and Conflict started as a special issue on Urban Security at the Journal of Strategic Security, Vol. 16, No., 3 (2023). It brings together new contributions from top scholars and practitioners to augment the content of the special issue and provide a comprehensive look at modern and historic urban security operations. It is difficult to imagine a timelier contribution to the academic and practitioner literature on urban security. Global news has been rife with urban security issues, with the top headlines covering the Gaza war in response to the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7th and Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which in its initial phase tried and failed to take the urban center Kyiv.
Urban Security: From High-Intensity Crime to Large-Scale Combat Operations and Everything in Between
John P. Sullivan, Nathan P. Jones, and Daniel Weisz Argomedo
Fifteen authors across ten articles in this book explore key events that shape our understanding of urban security and provide valuable strategic lessons to better prepare for the growing threat of conflict in urban areas. This volume seeks to compile cases of urban warfare throughout different regions and decades to expose the ever-increasing trends of urban conflict and expose the complexities of urban combat in an increasingly urbanized world. It also provides lessons learned and makes theoretical contributions in areas such as urban warfare, urban conflict and non-state actors, emergency response to urban terror, artificial intelligence (AI) and data processing, and urban security.
Civil Affairs in Antwerp 1944-1945: Critical Infrastructure and Civil Defense
Louise Tumchewics
In the autumn of 1944, as the Allies moved through France and towards Germany, the city of Antwerp became a key logistics hub owing to its large, and for the time, modern port facilities. Owing to its strategic significance, it became a prime target for German V-1 and V-2 rocket strikes. In order to keep the population in the bombarded city, 1st Canadian Army Civil Affairs took on the challenge of Civil Defense to keep the population safe and the port operational.
Urban Disaster Wrought by Man: The Battle for Manila, 1945
Russell W. Glenn
Urban warfare tends to be intimate. If soldiers do not see the faces of those they kill—and they frequently will—those men and women will hear the screams or muffled groans of the wounded. US forces waging the battle to recapture Manila in 1945 experienced these horrors. Yet it was the noncombatants who suffered far more, suffering with wounds, disease, hunger and malnutrition. Recent fighting in Syria, Ukraine, Khartoum, and elsewhere tells us too little has changed three-quarters of a century later.The lessons of 1945 have much to teach today’s and future leaders preparing for, responding to, and guiding recovery from urban catastrophe.
Virtual Urban Siege: Modern Urban Siege and Swarming in Culiacán 2019 & 2023
Daniel Weisz Argomedo, Nathan P. Jones, and John P. Sullivan
Modern urban siege is a metaphor for evolved urban campaigns. The template for such attacks draws from the tactics seen in the 26/11 Mumbai attack in 2008, and continued with the 2013 Westgate Mall attack in Kenya, the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks in Paris, and the November 2015 attacks against the Stade de France and Bataclan. These virtual sieges employ swarming tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to provide a template for urban strife and insecurity. This chapter provides an overview of terrorist swarming tactics, expanding the aperture to review the use of similar TTPs by criminal gangs in Brazil. in the Novo Cangaço style high-intensity robberies and raids. The chapter then reviews the October 2019 Battle of Culiacán, where elements of the Cártel de Sinaloa (CDS) employed urban siege TTPs to counter the arrest of cartel leaders by state security forces.
Implementing NIMS: Lessons Learned from the Boston Marathon Bombing
James M. Duggan, John Petrozzelli, and Jay Slattery
Many opportunities to learn from the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing have not been capitalized on. The terrorist attack was launched in the heart of Boston, a densely populated urban area with a population of approximately 670,000. Those numbers are amplified by the hundreds of thousands of spectators that line the streets along the Marathon route, with most at the finish line on Boylston Street. Two pressure cooker bombs were detonated in the finish line area, killing three and injuring 264. Among the injured were 16 who suffered traumatic amputations. Numerous reviews of the response and investigation identified positive aspects to be expanded upon and others needing improvement. This chapter presents lessons learned within the context of the National Incident Management System. Individuals who responded to and investigated the attack provided insights into what went well and, more importantly, what didn’t in the days and weeks following the attack. How would the proper implementation of Unified Command have improved outcomes? Find out from those who were there, have separated from service, and are now free to speak. The lessons presented provide critical guidance for the proper preparation for and response to terrorist attacks in urban environments.
Urban Warfare: The Recent Israeli Experience
Nadav Morag
This chapter analyzes the evolution of urban warfare tactics, technologies, and approaches in Israel. The article briefly addresses the nature and constraints of modern urban warfare, examines Israel’s early experience with urban warfare during the 1982 Lebanon War, and then describes and assesses the development of Israeli urban warfare in a range of wars and operations starting with Defensive Shield in the West Bank, then moving to the Second Lebanon War and then addressing a number of conflicts between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip between 2007 and 2021. The chapter also identifies a few overarching trends in the evolution of Israeli urban warfare.
Artificial Intelligence and Urban Operations
Anthony King
It is widely believed that AI is about to revolutionize military operations. Many scholars have claimed that AI-enabled lethal autonomous weapons, especially drone swarms, are about to take over the battlefield. This chapter assesses the merits of those claims in relation to urban operations. Examining the cases of the Joint Special Operations Command in Baghdad in 2004-08 and the IDF's Operation Guardian of the Walls in 2021, it argues that AI will primarily be for military intelligence and targeting rather than lethal autonomy.
Wide Area Motion Imagery and the Colonial Antecedents of Surveillance
Dinesh Napal
Wide area motion imagery (WAMI) technologies are procured by federal and state security institutions across the United States, due to their capacity to surveil at an extraordinary scale. Innovation in WAMI development seeks to make them more compact or convenient to use and employ in a variety of situations. The increased use of WAMI, particularly through uncrewed aerial combat vehicle (UCAV) systems and operations, can render visible people, communities, and behaviors at an unprecedented level. This has implications for individuals’ and communities’ perception of surveillance and the ontology of security. The experience of being secured or kept safe is brought about through the surveillance apparatus, which imposes an unending gaze upon the secured population. This chapter argues that WAMI technology replicates the totalizing gaze of colonial surveillance architecture, and its deployment in areas such as Baltimore, Maryland and Dayton, Ohio in the United States reifies disciplinary boundaries around legitimate behavior in law enforcement and warfare.
The Battles of Hue: Understanding Urban Conflicts through Wargaming
David J.H. Burden
Recent years have seen increased interest in the professional use of wargames, and wargames are a potential tool to enable a better understanding of past urban conflicts and to plan for future urban security. While access to professional wargames is limited, hobby wargames have been identified as useful and closely related areas to study. This chapter examines how 6 different wargame designers have approached the Battle of Hue and how their design choices relate to the key characteristics of the Battle of Hue. The article also identifies the principal deficiencies. The chapter concludes by considering the issues highlighted by these games that wargaming has in representing urban conflict, and how these could be addressed in order to make wargaming a more useful tool to model urban conflict and security.
Why Cities Fail: The Urban Security Crisis in Ecuador
Jorge Mantilla, Carolina Andrade, and Maria Fe Vallejo
Compared to other countries in Latin America, Ecuador was traditionally considered a peaceful territory. However, 2022 was the most violent year in the history of Ecuador with a homicide rate of 25.6. In particular, the littoral city of Guayaquil (46.6) poses extraordinary challenges to Ecuadorian security agencies while criminal governance and firepower of criminal armed groups have increased steadily in the past four years. This chapter explores the relationship between ports, violence, and governance in the context of criminal wars. Through a process-tracing method, it studies the path through which Guayaquil ended up in a security crisis between 2018 and 2022. Using in-depth interviews, criminal justice data, and direct observations, the authors content the relations between states and communities can dramatically change under the perception of state weakness despite the implementation of iron fist approaches as exceptional public safety measures.
The Political Trajectory of Urban Violence: Organized Crime in Michoacán’s Apatzingán
Fausto Carbajal
Contrary to the “narco-centric” explanation of homicidal violence in Mexico, this chapter proposes “the political trajectory of urban violence” (PTUV) as an additional analytical category to nuance the developmental process of today´s large-scale violence in Mexican urban enclaves. Building on previous research, this authors content that organized crime-related violence in Mexican cities today has unveiled and exacerbated intricate power tensions among private actors—both illegal and, perhaps more importantly, legal ones—which need to be explored by considering the historical evolution of these political processes within a given urban context. The PTUV, then, regards recent organized crime-related violence as part of a continuum of the socio-political complex in urban environments, and not only due to criminal conduct or activity per se. Because a concrete case study is central to advancing this research agenda, the chapter posits that repeated outbreaks of homicidal violence in the city of Apatzingán, Michoacán, Mexico, have been the result of a rooted local conflict over land access, economic hegemony, political dominance, and increased urbanization.
NATO’s path to addressing Urban and Urban Littoral Operations
Alex Case and Gordon Pendleton
It is widely assumed that NATO has doctrine and operational capabilities for the urban environment. In fact, NATO’s urban doctrine had mainly been at the tactical level and was insufficient for large scale operations in cities or the urban littorals. It has, however, invested significant resources to address this over the last decade through its conceptual study, and strategic and operational concept development work. These efforts have been well researched, contributed to widely by the Allied Nations and have been rigorously tested and validated through a series of operational wargames.
Subterranean Operations
Andrew Craig
Underground warfare has been around for as long as war itself and remains a complex and wicked problem. Contemporary adversaries have already demonstrated proficiency at maneuvering multi-dimensionally throughout the urban environment, and with the decisive battles of the future likely to be urban, there will be the inevitable need to consider joint and combined subterranean operations. Depending on the underlying geology and history, the urban environment may comprise a complex and interlaced system of natural, historical, and modern-day subterranean networks, features, and facilities. Those using such spaces range from combat forces to insurgents and terrorists, to civilians and organized criminals. Despite ongoing research and development activity, a strategic, coordinated, and cooperative approach must be shaped as part of international efforts to embrace the subterranean environment.
Creating Light at Tunnel’s End: Ukraine’s Post-war Urban Recovery
Russell W. Glenn
The US response to Iraq’s recovery in the aftermath of 2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom suffered from an initial conclusion that it was the country’s petroleum infrastructure rather than its electrical networks that were in greater need of recovery resources. The resulting misallocation of resources delayed power restoration to much of the country and frustrated those in affected regions. Whether the cause is war or a catastrophe sparked by Mother Nature, accurately identifying and correctly prioritizing post-disaster requirements is fundamental to an effective and efficient response. Ukraine has demonstrated a commendable ability to repair war damage even as conflict continues, but ground operations in Bakhmut and elsewhere and continued aerial strikes nationwide mean much will remain to be done once hostilities cease. How best to accomplish that desirable response—one sure to involve hundreds of millions of donor dollars—will be a herculean task, a task greatly complicated by the number of donors, consequent challenges to their effective management, and—sadly—Ukraine’s legacy of corruption. History has much to offer in the way of how to address these challenges. Now is the time draw on its lessons and initiate the process of determining Ukrainian urban areas’ post-war needs.
Black Shabbat: Learning Lessons from the Urban Battles of October 7th
Jacob Stoil
On the 7th of October 2023, members of Hamas and its allied forces attacked out of an urban area under their governance known as the Gaza Strip, across a border and into the State of Israel. In places, their attempts to carry out massacres and atrocities resulted in urban combat as the citizens, police, security forces, and military of Israel opposed them. Although there has been much attention given to the Israeli counterattack into Gaza and the urban battles that occurred there starting weeks after the initial Hamas attack, the battles of the 7th have faded into the background. Yet, there is much to learn from the combat of that terrible day. It offers numerous lessons on the defense of cities in friendly territory and the nature of urban security and urban combat. This chapter examines two battles in particular—those in the cities of Ofakim and Sderot. It provides a chronology of some of the key events during the operation but, more importantly, draws some critical lessons for students and practitioners of urban security.
Civilian Protection in Urban Operations: Legal and Policy Approaches
Sahr Muhammedally
The humanitarian consequences of urban warfare—as seen in Aleppo, Gaza, Kyiv, Khartoum, Marawi, Mosul, and Raqqa—demand an improved approach to warfighting. The complexity of the urban battle, with its terrain, population, and infrastructure, creates unique problems for commanders to select appropriate means and methods of warfare, enable mission success, protect their forces, operate within the rules of international humanitarian law (IHL), and integrate civilian protection as a strategic requirement. This chapter provides an overview of core IHL rules and cites new strategic and policy approaches to civilian protection undertaken by some militaries that, if implemented, can reduce civilian harm.
Future Urban Operations in Context
David Kilcullen
Urban conflict forms part of a complex adaptive system and is shaped by demographic, economic, technological, and organizational changes, which can be studied to predict general future trends. The author notes the books’ ability to expose current urban conflict types, including organized crime, guerrilla warfare, and large-scale combat, to hypothesize about future urban operations. Kilcullen summarizes the main hypotheses in the book, which include the acceleration of state-on-state high-intensity urban conflict, the increasing importance of interior and subterranean spaces for maneuver, the impact of space as a warfighting domain, the rise of info-kinetic operations, weaponization of urban environments, expanded use of robotics and AI, and the trend towards remote, collaborative engagement by small, distributed teams. The concept of a combat fitness landscape is used to analyze how adaptive traits proliferate and maladaptive ones diminish, influencing future urban conflict. The author concludes that by examining today's traits and behaviors, it is possible to identify elements of future urban warfare that are already emerging. Continuous monitoring of these hypotheses through observable indicators will help validate these predictions and guide strategic planning for the future.