"In many cases, units will want to avoid going into a room or building at all and instead use firepower to neutralize threats from a distance."
This brought a smile to my face. What you've described is what I'd call "old-fashioned, but good". :-)
Because my service (Australian infantry) was pre-Iraq, pre-GWOT etc, we never trained in any of the subtleties of room clearing that you've described in other articles, and which I've never really understood.
When training for fighting through urban terrain (which I admit we didn't do a lot of) we kept it simple, aka WW2 style. Structures were generally to be prepared via M-79 rounds through windows from a distance, grenades and automatic fire through doors and walls up close, and then entry if necessary. M72 and Carl Gustav were also options for heavier structures.
The idea of entering a building or a room in a building without first preparing it with fire makes me shudder. The old school method is expensive in munitions, particularly grenades, and destructive, but I think it beats the hell out of being first through the door into a room full of enemy.
I'll clarify also that I'm talking about fighting through enemy occupied defensive positions in urban terrain. Patrolling into a "peaceful" village full of civilians and possibly not-so-civilians is a different matter altogether.
Thanks for a very interesting piece on what is an important and necessary paradigm shift. I'm looking forward to the follow-up articles.
Room clearing is sometimes Hostage Rescue, under very specific circumstances. Under other circumstances, which I think have been more common throughout history, it's done as I've described.
At Stalingrad, for example, there were no hostages and lots of rooms were cleared with fire.
It’s the last choice , unless hostage rescue- and our stack, etc is from hostage rescue.
Don’t bunch up went the way of political correctness. Cuz room clearing and ROE-JAG
What I am getting at is what is in that room or building to justify our casualties? And yes getting at the room clearing we were taught in the 2000s came from Hostage Rescue, a few years ago the SOF community online had a conversations about this along with us regular troops; it was a mistake.
Costly lesson.
OTOH Urban warfare- MOUT for instance is throw grenade first then hose room. However if tank or artillery is available even better. That’s if it’s even necessary to enter into urban combat at all.
From Sun Tzu to the Soviets and we ourselves it was considered wise to avoid cities and urban combat unless absolutely necessary. If the firepower is available and it can’t be bypassed;
level it with fires.
With regard to Stalingrad if one wishes to throw a million men away- a great example. Von Paulus was foolish to feed his armor and infantry into an urban meat grinder and the Soviets were happy to oblige as this favored them- Von Paulus trapped his army in a pointless meat grinder while the Soviets built up their army on his flanks; Operation Uranus followed.
A mistake by the Germans favored the Soviets, however they and the Germans still led with grenades, firepower and hosing the room.
Room clearing tactics we used weren’t MOUT, not that people messed around long with rules, etc.
Great discussion gentlemen and we apologize for arriving late. It seems like we are all agreeing and the initial misunderstanding was a question of semantics. Long Warred, if you look at the original article we essentially make your exact same points and many of LSWCHP's earlier comments in this thread echo them too. In COIN, where the hearts and minds of the local population is the "key terrain" MOUT has to be executed in a way similar to CT hostage rescue. However, in conventional war MOUT changes completely but many folks don't get that so that's why we wrote the article. We agree with you, and we expect LSWCHP agrees too, that if is not absolutely necessary to enter and clear a room you should not attempt to. However, even in conventional MOUT there are still cases when you must enter and clear a room but as you say (and as we point out int the article) you can be much more liberal in your application of grenades and fire than you can be in COIN. Thank you again for the comments gentlemen and feel free to offer additional insights.
Ok. If you were the leader of a unit engaged in MOUT, and you were tasked with taking control of a structure, how would you (a) approach the structure (b) perform entry and (c) clear the structure after entry?
Just saying "You can't do anything on the battlfield these days because drones" doesn't cut it.
How I’d do it? I’d tell my officer to go fuck off and do it himself, because I’m not risking my life for some shithole country thousands of miles away.
Warfare has changed, it’s not not IEDs and farmers with AKs anymore.
If you really want to do it, you’d need to do it the way that Russians do it.
And throw away most of the rulebook that exists, including how units are organized. The NCO model and squads? Dead.
First of all, you need to break up the squad into smaller groups. No vehicles within 10-15 km from the front, because that’s where the killzone starts.
You move at night or preferably when it rains or there’s fog. 2-3 men at a time.
Move from building to building, basement to basement.
Ideally you’ll either FAB the building or drone out any defenders.
People have been saying "warfare has changed" since the first guy used a rock to kill his opponent instead of his fists and teeth. Warfare has not changed.
Drones, for example, are a minor technical innovation that will shortly be rendered ineffective by counter-drone tech.
Your comment on the price difference between drones and the weapons they kill is very valid. However, the same argument was made comparing the price of AT-3 missiles to Israeli tanks in the 1973 war and was equally valid then. More importantly, your other argument of suggesting drones cannot or will not be countered is very difficult to support considering every military innovation in history has been countered and its effectiveness marginalized or negated. The gun, the machine gun, the tank, the airplane, the bomber, the guided missile, the ICBM, all of these weapons initially seemed unstoppable or un-killable but they have all proven vulnerable to very effective counters. Your claim that drones have operated virtually unopposed for years is not unusual in warfare. Sometimes a weapon will dominate the battlefield for many years but that dominance never lasts. Your comments about drones are echos of Stanley Baldwin's 1932 speech to parliament where he asserted "The bomber will always get through." Well, maybe in 1932 he was right but, the brave airmen who participated in the Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission on 17 August 1943 would likely disagree with him. Drones will be countered one day and there will be another dominant weapon on the battlefield. We welcome your counterpoints and discussion.
LSWCHP we fundamentally agree with your point. However, we would not go so far as to say "warfare has not changed." In our opinion, it does indeed change but the fundamental principles and concepts of warfare that remain constant. Also, individual domains of warfare change very little. If you look at infantry combat since the invention of smokeless powder the fundamental tactics and principles have remained remarkably consistent. The same goes for other domains of warfare. However, each new domain adds an additional "layer" to the equation. Drones and new EW technologies add an additional layer that is essentially an extension and intensification of the changes introduced by PGMs starting in the 70s. So we agree with you but we wanted to add a few additional points to the discussion. However, your key point in our view is that counter-drone technology WILL evolve and this era of the invincible drone will end.
Again: It’s not just drones: It’s the combination of loitering munitions, drones and 24-7 battlefield awareness.
(Though granted: Part of the kind of warfare we see right now, is because of the unique circumstances of the Donbas. Hilly terrain, densely built and one side that had over a decade to build defensive structures.)
I concur. When I said that war hasn't changed, I meant what you replied with. War definitely changes. The flintlock era was different to the the American Civil war era, which was different to WW1 etc.
But in each of those conflicts, the essence remains the same, all the way back to Sun Tzu.l and further. Strategically, you must know yourself and know your enemy. Tactically (for example) when defending you must have all round defence, mutual support and defence in depth. Ensure that your machine guns can cover each others fronts. If your wire obstacle isn't covered by fire then it's not really an obstacle. Etc...
The techniques change, but the essence, or the principles, remain unchanged. Defence in depth, development of, and concentration on the Schwerpunkt (gotta love the Germans) in the attack, and other such things are timeless. To ignore or disparage them is fatal.
You are not wrong in your comments V900 and it appears you are basing much of your logic off of the Ukraine conflict. Some of these lessons and TTPs might apply in Ukraine but that does not necessarily mean they will apply everywhere. Take your comments and apply them to the World War I battlefield, do they apply? Yes and interestingly they are right on target. Ukraine and Russia currently find themselves in a stalemate characterized by a battlefield where weapon range and effectiveness greatly overmatches the capacity for mobility and maneuver and the only means of protection is often heavy entrenchment. The harsh words you quoted to your officer in the example were probably the exact words of many subordinates in WWI when they were told to go "over the top" and charge across no-mans-land through machine gun fire. Furthermore, the solutions you describe (dispersion, infiltration tactics, tunneling/subterrainian) were exactly the solutions that often worked in world war I. However, the reason why the Stosstruppen or the allied tunnels didn't win the war was because these solutions were not scalable to achieve a breakthrough at the operational level and with respect, your solutions fall into the same trap. You might be able to win an engagement using your tactics but you couldn't win the Battle of Aachen, let alone Stalingrad. So once again, good thinking but examining history shows that other smart people came up with your same solutions to similar problems but they were doomed to have limited success. Your calculus is accurate on a WWI/Ukraine type of battlefield but would it apply in World War II? Every conflict is different. Drones might operate very differently in the next war. Finally, on a separate note, your ultimate suggestion of "Ideally you’ll either FAB the building or drone out any defenders" is essentially making the exact same point that both our article and LSWCHP made, just using different weapons. So in truth you're not actually disagreeing with us.
As you can see from our response above we agree that saying that units can no longer survive on the battlefield against drones might be an exaggeration. Second, you pose a valid question to V900. If V900 is arguing AGAINST your and our suggestion of NOT entering a building but rather engaging the building at range, shouldn't he be arguing FOR entering in the building? His exact counterargument seems unclear at this point. We will address some of this in his comments below.
Thank you again for the comments V900. You have strong opinions and are clearly looking for fight. We respect that since we are fighters too. Whether we're sparring in the dojo, conducting force-on-force in the field, or debating in this forum we all get better through tough competition so we're sure you won't be offended if we take the gloves off to go a few rounds with you! :) First, we do agree that drones have changed the nature of small unit engagement in some important ways but we will get back to that later. Second, your question "at what distance" seems strange and arbitrary, especially in an urban environment when engagement ranges are inherently short. We're not sure what your point is bringing up distances of 20m, 50m and 100m. All of those ranges would be considered "close range" in any sort of direct-fire engagement and and are well below the effective ranges of nearly every infantry weapon except a pistol. Therefore we don't see how unit lethality (and corresponding vulnerability) changes much with distance until you extend out to longer ranges. Feel free to elaborate on your point if we are missing something. Finally, are you suggesting that an infantry company with 100+ troops occupying a 3-story stone building equipped with dozens of machine guns, grenade launchers, rocket launchers and other heavy weapons would be "killed by drones" before they could employ any of those weapons against an enemy occupied building across the street? How many drones would that take and how many FPV operators would need to be sitting somewhere controlling them? We would think it would be much quicker, easier and cheaper to use the techniques LSWCHP described in his post than to try to fly multiple drones through all the windows of the building. Or were you thinking of using drones to interdict the infantry company during the approach march or chase down the infantry formations in the street? All possible but once again how many drones and operators would that take and that's just to destroy one company? In the battle of Aachen (let alone Stalingrad) there were approximately 8 U.S. divisions engaged in urban combat. How many drones would it take to destroy 8 divisions before they had a chance to deploy their weapons? Thus, we would suggest that your arguments might apply to small unit actions but are less relevant to the high-intensity, large-scale scenario upon which this article is based. We would argue that drones can change large-scale battles but not so much in the way you described. Finally, you say that the "killzone" ("engagement range" might be a better descriptor since killzone relates to ambushes) is measured in kilometers. This is nothing new. Artillery has almost always been the number-1 killer on the modern battlefield and it has been able to engage at ranges not in "kilometers" but in "tens-of-kilometers" since WWI. Drones do change things (we will get to that later) but the difference has little to do with engagement range. That's our counter to your comments. Now... feel free to hit back! That is how we all learn.
As for drones vs artillery, a real big difference that drones make, is the total surveillance of the battlefield. Any target is immediately spotted for artillery and it’s virtually impossible to surprise the opponent with for example an armored attack. They’ll see the buildup 20-30 km away and will see them approach long before they’re even within firing range.
“In the battle of Aachen (let alone Stalingrad) there were approximately 8 U.S. divisions engaged in urban combat. How many drones would it take to destroy 8 divisions before they had a chance to deploy their weapons?”
That’s a fair question, but I don’t think we live in a time where battles of that size are realistic.
For political/sociological reasons. Mobilizing that kind of manpower would be too expensive, and there’d be mass protests.
I agree that a modern Aachen or Stalingrad would look much different. They very weapon systems we are discussing in this thread would force units to disperse much more than they did and it would place limitations on the volume of forces that could engage in one area. However, in terms of numbers, I don't think cost or political will would last long as limitations. That may come in to play now but they were saying the same things prior to WWII and we were able to change our mindset fairly quickly. As far as the "transparent battlefield" points you make above we address some of those in other comments. You are right that the recon factor is perhaps the most important but new technologies and tactics might change that calculus as well. We thought we had recon/information dominance during the RMA and the Gulf War but we didn't really. The Russians created the reconnaisance-strike-complex decades ago and they're just realizing how to actually achieve the concept now with today's technology. New masking and jamming technologies will likely disrupt the equation again.
Drones have fundamentally changed the battlescape, combined with loitering munitions, because again: Look at Ukraine.
You used to have the line of contact with risk of immediate death but a kilometer or two behind it, you’d be relatively safe.
(Baring the occasional artillery attack.)
If you look at Ukraine, all that has completely changed. Anywhere within 5 km of the line of contact is essentially a killzone/grey zone.
Soldiers can only move there in small groups of up to 4-5 because any larger group is too vulnerable and easy to spot.
Behind that 5 km zone, you have another zone of 15 km or so where moving in vehicles is extremely hazardous. It makes result and reinforcement very difficult.
Hence, your traditional company of 100-200 men is useless, too hard to keep supplied and act like a drone/loitering munitions magnet.
The best way to move forward is to throw out what “we know”.
And indeed, Russia didn’t start to really succeed until they did just that. The tactics they use now serve them well, but they had to basically throw out the rule book.
We agree that current tactics need a complete overhaul but many fundamentals still remain the same. There are also historical paralells for this, look at what the Wehrmacht had to do in 1944 once the allies achieved total air superiority? Much of the same things you discuss above. Dispersion, masking and deception will all be key to surviving in the next war. You should check out some of the writings of one of our WMI fellows COL (ret) John Antal. He echoes many of the points you have made and offers some good ideas for potential solutions. https://a.co/d/fhJQRIh
Thank you for the outstanding insights as always LSWCHP. The approach you took to urban warfare in a high-intensity conventional war are spot on. Given the era you operated in much of your tactics, techniques and procedures likely came from the hard-earned lessons on WWII. If you didn't have the chance to learn from WWII vets directly (I would guess there were still some around in senior positions), the people who trained you were almost certainly their students. We had to unlearn much of that when we were essentially doing "police work" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both sets of tactics are valid but are just designed for entirely different operational environments. However, now we need to RE-LEARN many of the tactics from your generation and people with your experience can help with that. Great comments once again and we look forward to your feedback on future articles.
BEWARE: Verboten. The reference to Ukraine is of a centuries old campaign of Genocide. There is zero war inside Ukraine. The western Mind often resides in minor periodicities. Yes, minor squabbles like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq's, Afghanistan, etc.
Not a single combatant that went to Vietnam, Korea, Iraq was bred to abduct Vietnamese, Koreans for Human trafficking/slavery. If so, where are those documented films/photographs?
But the ancient Muscovy families bred to butcher and mass abduct Ukrainians. Bi-annual sex-slave caravans expedited into Ukraine's hinterland to mass abduct little Ukrainian boys for depravation then sale to the prime Ruuzzkie client, the very demanding muslim Ottoman empire slave buyer. Huge numbers of boys were needed as castration was a high death occurrence. Likewise, The most gold for the tsars GNP came from perfect little Ukrainian girls. "Lolita" packages were demanded to be perfect as the muslim standards for the official harem paid huge weight in gold.
As site administrators, it may be difficult to "educate" soldiers of the past 75 years that this 2025 Genocide is a inner need to return to Muscovy families genetic roots born in legal Genocide and slavery. The first thing that Putin's "Little Green Groomer" military did in 2014 was trade "Lolita: packages with local insurgents paid by the NAZI-like FSB. Local ruuzzkie butchers knew exactly where "Lolita" packages lived and basement butchery solved the parental problem. The locals traded for ammo/vehicles/heavy guns etc as the packages were air shipped to very needy russian language instructors and table top dance instructing ruzzkie style.
The language since 2014 must not use the word war. It is a cultural Genocide of Ukrainians, that all acknowledge eventually with some education.
The USA has a real mental barrier. If it is stated that the Ukrainian Fathers of 1616 fought this identical Muscovy ethic family Cabal and won in 1616, well, that requires a knowledge of centuries of Kremlin sent ruuzzkie deviants sent to legally mass degrade and mass abduct little Ukrainian children for sale for muslim gold. That was five hundred years back. There was zero concept of the USA as a nation, only colonies with hatred of the French or Spanish.
That the POTUS Obama Democrat Cabal of 2008-14 unilaterally, covertly, green lit the re-start of this 1000 year old Genocide is also a large topic, not so much as your focus.
Yes, Ukrainian children in 2014 knew that their sisters, mothers would be mass abducted for human trafficking. That was a prime ancient goal of these Muscovy Kremlin ruuzzkies. In 2022 Ukrainian kids ran out with their drones to help their friend and neighbours locate armour + tanks loaded with orc level butchers direct out of Moscow.
That is where your organization + articles should start. The innovative spirit of Cossack children who swiftly evolved in asymmetric spatial dimensions dragging the ancient military of the WEST with them. The existential dilemma of a repeat of a 1000 years of ruuzzkie Kremlin butchery was on every child's moral mind scape. The ruuzzkie low level orcs obliged with instant degradation and butchery to/of Ukrainians. Twelve years later, hundreds of thousands of grown-up kids try to survive in the meat grinder front line the vicious betrayal of 1994 US Budapest blather.
That the PRC CCP Xi regime has a LONG GAME with its covert funding of kremlin vassal Putin should fill your articles. Debate in your pages of the start date of WW3 is intrinsic to the concepts of Urban warfare that Ukrainian Children have lived the past 12 years.
The worry: Located inside the USA, the cognitive + moral ability of your group leaders to transcend that limitation is to be determined. Periodicity seems your enemy. The MAGA POTUS may make decisions that devastate those millions of fighting Ukrainians that live out the daily urban Genocide attacks and the meat grinder front trenches of the Genocide line. Poof, like independent state of Karpathian Ukraine of March 16, 1939, WW2 immediately started and zap, 30-40 percent of Karpathian Ukraine were butchered or on the way to the Gulag. Who in the USA even wants to understand urban warfare of this nation? A hundred dollars to the best article that describes the reasons the component WEST ignored the death of this nation and then the restoration after the formal end of WW3. -30-
Thank you for your very long and detailed comment sir. We're not sure how to respond except to say that our team and extended network have made great efforts to support Ukraine from the beginning of the conflict. Thank you again for sharing your thoughts.
I think the best example of high intensity combat in the modern era is the Ukraine vs Russian war. Hopefully in a later article you could break down what this war looks like. Perhaps the USA and everyone else are carefully observing the tactics used in this war to prepare for war against equal opponents.
Thank you for the comment Clement. You are correct. The Ukraine conflict offers some of the best lessons and data for modern high-intensity urban combat. Much of our analysis and tactical best-practices are drawn from experience in that conflict. We are glad you found this article useful and yes, you can expect more details and specifics in future articles. Thank you again for contributing and we look forward to hearing more of your thoughts in the future.
Gents, this came up in my feed recently, and I have to admit that crusty as I am, I shed a tear for this poor, brave warrior, and I was reminded of your essay.
I think that had he been trained to fight in urban terrain as I was, he might not have suffered so much, and he might still be with us today.
On this topic, I think an urban combat grenade would be a useful weapon. A small frag for tossing into rooms that is more than a flash-bang, but less potent than a "proper" grenade. I gather that the Russians have such low powered grenades, and I think they are a very good idea.
Such an absolutely tragic and heartbreaking story indeed. Thank you for sharing LSWCHP. Also, we agree that the "offensive grenade" (like the old British No. 69) is a very useful tool. Many other grenades in history like the German Stielhandgranate also had smaller blast radii and less fragmentation. Excellent points as always.
Great to hear Don. Conventional urban warfare is a similar experience to where Rommel found himself in World War I, fighting small unit actions in the mountains where cross-unit coordination and communication was difficult. All of the principles you preach like mission command and maneuver warfare are particularly critical in such environment since units at the smallest level often need to be able to think, operate and take the initiative in the absence of orders. Units that don't practice mission command cannot succeed in urban warfare without sustaining a massive amount of casualties. We look forward to your insights in the introduction.
“How will high intensity urban combat be different in future conflicts?”
That’s easy, there wont be any.
The US army (nor marines for that matter) don’t recruit the kind of human material that would tolerate and survive it. American soldiers are used to Burger King and Dairy Queen in the safety of their bases. Not crawl through no man’s land waiting for a drone for kilometers, or to live in a dugout or bunker for weeks.
And regardless: Any conflict won’t last long enough for serious high intensity urban combat because:
A: The massive public and political pressure once the number of dead aren’t a handful a week like in Iraq, but hundreds a day.
B: Units won’t serve and will simply refuse orders. It’s one thing entirely to fight for your home and risk death on such a massive scale.
It’s another thing entirely to be sent thousands of miles away from home, whether Ukraine or Taiwan, to intervene in a conflict that only makes sense to politicians, and live the kind of nightmare modern warfare has become.
"In many cases, units will want to avoid going into a room or building at all and instead use firepower to neutralize threats from a distance."
This brought a smile to my face. What you've described is what I'd call "old-fashioned, but good". :-)
Because my service (Australian infantry) was pre-Iraq, pre-GWOT etc, we never trained in any of the subtleties of room clearing that you've described in other articles, and which I've never really understood.
When training for fighting through urban terrain (which I admit we didn't do a lot of) we kept it simple, aka WW2 style. Structures were generally to be prepared via M-79 rounds through windows from a distance, grenades and automatic fire through doors and walls up close, and then entry if necessary. M72 and Carl Gustav were also options for heavier structures.
The idea of entering a building or a room in a building without first preparing it with fire makes me shudder. The old school method is expensive in munitions, particularly grenades, and destructive, but I think it beats the hell out of being first through the door into a room full of enemy.
I'll clarify also that I'm talking about fighting through enemy occupied defensive positions in urban terrain. Patrolling into a "peaceful" village full of civilians and possibly not-so-civilians is a different matter altogether.
Thanks for a very interesting piece on what is an important and necessary paradigm shift. I'm looking forward to the follow-up articles.
Room clearing is Hostage Rescue. Not war.
Be not seduced, the Bitch is Ruinous.
I'm not sure what you're getting at.
Room clearing is sometimes Hostage Rescue, under very specific circumstances. Under other circumstances, which I think have been more common throughout history, it's done as I've described.
At Stalingrad, for example, there were no hostages and lots of rooms were cleared with fire.
It’s the last choice , unless hostage rescue- and our stack, etc is from hostage rescue.
Don’t bunch up went the way of political correctness. Cuz room clearing and ROE-JAG
What I am getting at is what is in that room or building to justify our casualties? And yes getting at the room clearing we were taught in the 2000s came from Hostage Rescue, a few years ago the SOF community online had a conversations about this along with us regular troops; it was a mistake.
Costly lesson.
OTOH Urban warfare- MOUT for instance is throw grenade first then hose room. However if tank or artillery is available even better. That’s if it’s even necessary to enter into urban combat at all.
From Sun Tzu to the Soviets and we ourselves it was considered wise to avoid cities and urban combat unless absolutely necessary. If the firepower is available and it can’t be bypassed;
level it with fires.
With regard to Stalingrad if one wishes to throw a million men away- a great example. Von Paulus was foolish to feed his armor and infantry into an urban meat grinder and the Soviets were happy to oblige as this favored them- Von Paulus trapped his army in a pointless meat grinder while the Soviets built up their army on his flanks; Operation Uranus followed.
A mistake by the Germans favored the Soviets, however they and the Germans still led with grenades, firepower and hosing the room.
Room clearing tactics we used weren’t MOUT, not that people messed around long with rules, etc.
Hope I clarified.
Yeah thanks. I come from an MOUT background, so that's really all I know about. That other way of doing things was never my line of work.
Well it has its place, but ROE, JAG and let’s not kid ourselves PR got involved.
There’s no pretty way to do these things, but safe far away pearl clutching played well on TV.
Cheers
Great discussion gentlemen and we apologize for arriving late. It seems like we are all agreeing and the initial misunderstanding was a question of semantics. Long Warred, if you look at the original article we essentially make your exact same points and many of LSWCHP's earlier comments in this thread echo them too. In COIN, where the hearts and minds of the local population is the "key terrain" MOUT has to be executed in a way similar to CT hostage rescue. However, in conventional war MOUT changes completely but many folks don't get that so that's why we wrote the article. We agree with you, and we expect LSWCHP agrees too, that if is not absolutely necessary to enter and clear a room you should not attempt to. However, even in conventional MOUT there are still cases when you must enter and clear a room but as you say (and as we point out int the article) you can be much more liberal in your application of grenades and fire than you can be in COIN. Thank you again for the comments gentlemen and feel free to offer additional insights.
"In many cases, units will want to avoid going into a room or building at all and instead use firepower to neutralize threats from a distance."
This is rather naive, and shows that the author fundamentally doesn’t understand the changes in warfare.
At what distance? 20m? 50m? 100m? They’ll be dead even before they get out the LAW or grenade launcher.
The killzone in modern urban combat is in kilometers due to drones.
Ok. If you were the leader of a unit engaged in MOUT, and you were tasked with taking control of a structure, how would you (a) approach the structure (b) perform entry and (c) clear the structure after entry?
Just saying "You can't do anything on the battlfield these days because drones" doesn't cut it.
How I’d do it? I’d tell my officer to go fuck off and do it himself, because I’m not risking my life for some shithole country thousands of miles away.
Warfare has changed, it’s not not IEDs and farmers with AKs anymore.
If you really want to do it, you’d need to do it the way that Russians do it.
And throw away most of the rulebook that exists, including how units are organized. The NCO model and squads? Dead.
First of all, you need to break up the squad into smaller groups. No vehicles within 10-15 km from the front, because that’s where the killzone starts.
You move at night or preferably when it rains or there’s fog. 2-3 men at a time.
Move from building to building, basement to basement.
Ideally you’ll either FAB the building or drone out any defenders.
People have been saying "warfare has changed" since the first guy used a rock to kill his opponent instead of his fists and teeth. Warfare has not changed.
Drones, for example, are a minor technical innovation that will shortly be rendered ineffective by counter-drone tech.
You are profoundly ill-informed.
“Hurr durr! We will just come up with counter drone tech!”
That’s what they’ve been saying for four years, yet drones have always remained steps ahead of the means to counter them.
Especially since most of the steps are systems that costs tens of thousands of dollars against a 200$ drone.
Hurr Durr? Seriously? You wrote Hurr Durr on an internet forum?
My apologies to the WMI team for cluttering up their comments section with this nonsense.
Your comment on the price difference between drones and the weapons they kill is very valid. However, the same argument was made comparing the price of AT-3 missiles to Israeli tanks in the 1973 war and was equally valid then. More importantly, your other argument of suggesting drones cannot or will not be countered is very difficult to support considering every military innovation in history has been countered and its effectiveness marginalized or negated. The gun, the machine gun, the tank, the airplane, the bomber, the guided missile, the ICBM, all of these weapons initially seemed unstoppable or un-killable but they have all proven vulnerable to very effective counters. Your claim that drones have operated virtually unopposed for years is not unusual in warfare. Sometimes a weapon will dominate the battlefield for many years but that dominance never lasts. Your comments about drones are echos of Stanley Baldwin's 1932 speech to parliament where he asserted "The bomber will always get through." Well, maybe in 1932 he was right but, the brave airmen who participated in the Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission on 17 August 1943 would likely disagree with him. Drones will be countered one day and there will be another dominant weapon on the battlefield. We welcome your counterpoints and discussion.
LSWCHP we fundamentally agree with your point. However, we would not go so far as to say "warfare has not changed." In our opinion, it does indeed change but the fundamental principles and concepts of warfare that remain constant. Also, individual domains of warfare change very little. If you look at infantry combat since the invention of smokeless powder the fundamental tactics and principles have remained remarkably consistent. The same goes for other domains of warfare. However, each new domain adds an additional "layer" to the equation. Drones and new EW technologies add an additional layer that is essentially an extension and intensification of the changes introduced by PGMs starting in the 70s. So we agree with you but we wanted to add a few additional points to the discussion. However, your key point in our view is that counter-drone technology WILL evolve and this era of the invincible drone will end.
Again: It’s not just drones: It’s the combination of loitering munitions, drones and 24-7 battlefield awareness.
(Though granted: Part of the kind of warfare we see right now, is because of the unique circumstances of the Donbas. Hilly terrain, densely built and one side that had over a decade to build defensive structures.)
I concur. When I said that war hasn't changed, I meant what you replied with. War definitely changes. The flintlock era was different to the the American Civil war era, which was different to WW1 etc.
But in each of those conflicts, the essence remains the same, all the way back to Sun Tzu.l and further. Strategically, you must know yourself and know your enemy. Tactically (for example) when defending you must have all round defence, mutual support and defence in depth. Ensure that your machine guns can cover each others fronts. If your wire obstacle isn't covered by fire then it's not really an obstacle. Etc...
The techniques change, but the essence, or the principles, remain unchanged. Defence in depth, development of, and concentration on the Schwerpunkt (gotta love the Germans) in the attack, and other such things are timeless. To ignore or disparage them is fatal.
You are not wrong in your comments V900 and it appears you are basing much of your logic off of the Ukraine conflict. Some of these lessons and TTPs might apply in Ukraine but that does not necessarily mean they will apply everywhere. Take your comments and apply them to the World War I battlefield, do they apply? Yes and interestingly they are right on target. Ukraine and Russia currently find themselves in a stalemate characterized by a battlefield where weapon range and effectiveness greatly overmatches the capacity for mobility and maneuver and the only means of protection is often heavy entrenchment. The harsh words you quoted to your officer in the example were probably the exact words of many subordinates in WWI when they were told to go "over the top" and charge across no-mans-land through machine gun fire. Furthermore, the solutions you describe (dispersion, infiltration tactics, tunneling/subterrainian) were exactly the solutions that often worked in world war I. However, the reason why the Stosstruppen or the allied tunnels didn't win the war was because these solutions were not scalable to achieve a breakthrough at the operational level and with respect, your solutions fall into the same trap. You might be able to win an engagement using your tactics but you couldn't win the Battle of Aachen, let alone Stalingrad. So once again, good thinking but examining history shows that other smart people came up with your same solutions to similar problems but they were doomed to have limited success. Your calculus is accurate on a WWI/Ukraine type of battlefield but would it apply in World War II? Every conflict is different. Drones might operate very differently in the next war. Finally, on a separate note, your ultimate suggestion of "Ideally you’ll either FAB the building or drone out any defenders" is essentially making the exact same point that both our article and LSWCHP made, just using different weapons. So in truth you're not actually disagreeing with us.
As you can see from our response above we agree that saying that units can no longer survive on the battlefield against drones might be an exaggeration. Second, you pose a valid question to V900. If V900 is arguing AGAINST your and our suggestion of NOT entering a building but rather engaging the building at range, shouldn't he be arguing FOR entering in the building? His exact counterargument seems unclear at this point. We will address some of this in his comments below.
Thank you again for the comments V900. You have strong opinions and are clearly looking for fight. We respect that since we are fighters too. Whether we're sparring in the dojo, conducting force-on-force in the field, or debating in this forum we all get better through tough competition so we're sure you won't be offended if we take the gloves off to go a few rounds with you! :) First, we do agree that drones have changed the nature of small unit engagement in some important ways but we will get back to that later. Second, your question "at what distance" seems strange and arbitrary, especially in an urban environment when engagement ranges are inherently short. We're not sure what your point is bringing up distances of 20m, 50m and 100m. All of those ranges would be considered "close range" in any sort of direct-fire engagement and and are well below the effective ranges of nearly every infantry weapon except a pistol. Therefore we don't see how unit lethality (and corresponding vulnerability) changes much with distance until you extend out to longer ranges. Feel free to elaborate on your point if we are missing something. Finally, are you suggesting that an infantry company with 100+ troops occupying a 3-story stone building equipped with dozens of machine guns, grenade launchers, rocket launchers and other heavy weapons would be "killed by drones" before they could employ any of those weapons against an enemy occupied building across the street? How many drones would that take and how many FPV operators would need to be sitting somewhere controlling them? We would think it would be much quicker, easier and cheaper to use the techniques LSWCHP described in his post than to try to fly multiple drones through all the windows of the building. Or were you thinking of using drones to interdict the infantry company during the approach march or chase down the infantry formations in the street? All possible but once again how many drones and operators would that take and that's just to destroy one company? In the battle of Aachen (let alone Stalingrad) there were approximately 8 U.S. divisions engaged in urban combat. How many drones would it take to destroy 8 divisions before they had a chance to deploy their weapons? Thus, we would suggest that your arguments might apply to small unit actions but are less relevant to the high-intensity, large-scale scenario upon which this article is based. We would argue that drones can change large-scale battles but not so much in the way you described. Finally, you say that the "killzone" ("engagement range" might be a better descriptor since killzone relates to ambushes) is measured in kilometers. This is nothing new. Artillery has almost always been the number-1 killer on the modern battlefield and it has been able to engage at ranges not in "kilometers" but in "tens-of-kilometers" since WWI. Drones do change things (we will get to that later) but the difference has little to do with engagement range. That's our counter to your comments. Now... feel free to hit back! That is how we all learn.
As for drones vs artillery, a real big difference that drones make, is the total surveillance of the battlefield. Any target is immediately spotted for artillery and it’s virtually impossible to surprise the opponent with for example an armored attack. They’ll see the buildup 20-30 km away and will see them approach long before they’re even within firing range.
“In the battle of Aachen (let alone Stalingrad) there were approximately 8 U.S. divisions engaged in urban combat. How many drones would it take to destroy 8 divisions before they had a chance to deploy their weapons?”
That’s a fair question, but I don’t think we live in a time where battles of that size are realistic.
For political/sociological reasons. Mobilizing that kind of manpower would be too expensive, and there’d be mass protests.
I agree that a modern Aachen or Stalingrad would look much different. They very weapon systems we are discussing in this thread would force units to disperse much more than they did and it would place limitations on the volume of forces that could engage in one area. However, in terms of numbers, I don't think cost or political will would last long as limitations. That may come in to play now but they were saying the same things prior to WWII and we were able to change our mindset fairly quickly. As far as the "transparent battlefield" points you make above we address some of those in other comments. You are right that the recon factor is perhaps the most important but new technologies and tactics might change that calculus as well. We thought we had recon/information dominance during the RMA and the Gulf War but we didn't really. The Russians created the reconnaisance-strike-complex decades ago and they're just realizing how to actually achieve the concept now with today's technology. New masking and jamming technologies will likely disrupt the equation again.
Drones have fundamentally changed the battlescape, combined with loitering munitions, because again: Look at Ukraine.
You used to have the line of contact with risk of immediate death but a kilometer or two behind it, you’d be relatively safe.
(Baring the occasional artillery attack.)
If you look at Ukraine, all that has completely changed. Anywhere within 5 km of the line of contact is essentially a killzone/grey zone.
Soldiers can only move there in small groups of up to 4-5 because any larger group is too vulnerable and easy to spot.
Behind that 5 km zone, you have another zone of 15 km or so where moving in vehicles is extremely hazardous. It makes result and reinforcement very difficult.
Hence, your traditional company of 100-200 men is useless, too hard to keep supplied and act like a drone/loitering munitions magnet.
The best way to move forward is to throw out what “we know”.
And indeed, Russia didn’t start to really succeed until they did just that. The tactics they use now serve them well, but they had to basically throw out the rule book.
We agree that current tactics need a complete overhaul but many fundamentals still remain the same. There are also historical paralells for this, look at what the Wehrmacht had to do in 1944 once the allies achieved total air superiority? Much of the same things you discuss above. Dispersion, masking and deception will all be key to surviving in the next war. You should check out some of the writings of one of our WMI fellows COL (ret) John Antal. He echoes many of the points you have made and offers some good ideas for potential solutions. https://a.co/d/fhJQRIh
Thank you for the outstanding insights as always LSWCHP. The approach you took to urban warfare in a high-intensity conventional war are spot on. Given the era you operated in much of your tactics, techniques and procedures likely came from the hard-earned lessons on WWII. If you didn't have the chance to learn from WWII vets directly (I would guess there were still some around in senior positions), the people who trained you were almost certainly their students. We had to unlearn much of that when we were essentially doing "police work" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both sets of tactics are valid but are just designed for entirely different operational environments. However, now we need to RE-LEARN many of the tactics from your generation and people with your experience can help with that. Great comments once again and we look forward to your feedback on future articles.
Combat Studies Institute’s urban warfare anthology “Block by Block” has some great TTPs, especially the chapter on Aachen, “Knock ‘em all down.”
BEWARE: Verboten. The reference to Ukraine is of a centuries old campaign of Genocide. There is zero war inside Ukraine. The western Mind often resides in minor periodicities. Yes, minor squabbles like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq's, Afghanistan, etc.
Not a single combatant that went to Vietnam, Korea, Iraq was bred to abduct Vietnamese, Koreans for Human trafficking/slavery. If so, where are those documented films/photographs?
But the ancient Muscovy families bred to butcher and mass abduct Ukrainians. Bi-annual sex-slave caravans expedited into Ukraine's hinterland to mass abduct little Ukrainian boys for depravation then sale to the prime Ruuzzkie client, the very demanding muslim Ottoman empire slave buyer. Huge numbers of boys were needed as castration was a high death occurrence. Likewise, The most gold for the tsars GNP came from perfect little Ukrainian girls. "Lolita" packages were demanded to be perfect as the muslim standards for the official harem paid huge weight in gold.
As site administrators, it may be difficult to "educate" soldiers of the past 75 years that this 2025 Genocide is a inner need to return to Muscovy families genetic roots born in legal Genocide and slavery. The first thing that Putin's "Little Green Groomer" military did in 2014 was trade "Lolita: packages with local insurgents paid by the NAZI-like FSB. Local ruuzzkie butchers knew exactly where "Lolita" packages lived and basement butchery solved the parental problem. The locals traded for ammo/vehicles/heavy guns etc as the packages were air shipped to very needy russian language instructors and table top dance instructing ruzzkie style.
The language since 2014 must not use the word war. It is a cultural Genocide of Ukrainians, that all acknowledge eventually with some education.
The USA has a real mental barrier. If it is stated that the Ukrainian Fathers of 1616 fought this identical Muscovy ethic family Cabal and won in 1616, well, that requires a knowledge of centuries of Kremlin sent ruuzzkie deviants sent to legally mass degrade and mass abduct little Ukrainian children for sale for muslim gold. That was five hundred years back. There was zero concept of the USA as a nation, only colonies with hatred of the French or Spanish.
That the POTUS Obama Democrat Cabal of 2008-14 unilaterally, covertly, green lit the re-start of this 1000 year old Genocide is also a large topic, not so much as your focus.
Yes, Ukrainian children in 2014 knew that their sisters, mothers would be mass abducted for human trafficking. That was a prime ancient goal of these Muscovy Kremlin ruuzzkies. In 2022 Ukrainian kids ran out with their drones to help their friend and neighbours locate armour + tanks loaded with orc level butchers direct out of Moscow.
That is where your organization + articles should start. The innovative spirit of Cossack children who swiftly evolved in asymmetric spatial dimensions dragging the ancient military of the WEST with them. The existential dilemma of a repeat of a 1000 years of ruuzzkie Kremlin butchery was on every child's moral mind scape. The ruuzzkie low level orcs obliged with instant degradation and butchery to/of Ukrainians. Twelve years later, hundreds of thousands of grown-up kids try to survive in the meat grinder front line the vicious betrayal of 1994 US Budapest blather.
That the PRC CCP Xi regime has a LONG GAME with its covert funding of kremlin vassal Putin should fill your articles. Debate in your pages of the start date of WW3 is intrinsic to the concepts of Urban warfare that Ukrainian Children have lived the past 12 years.
The worry: Located inside the USA, the cognitive + moral ability of your group leaders to transcend that limitation is to be determined. Periodicity seems your enemy. The MAGA POTUS may make decisions that devastate those millions of fighting Ukrainians that live out the daily urban Genocide attacks and the meat grinder front trenches of the Genocide line. Poof, like independent state of Karpathian Ukraine of March 16, 1939, WW2 immediately started and zap, 30-40 percent of Karpathian Ukraine were butchered or on the way to the Gulag. Who in the USA even wants to understand urban warfare of this nation? A hundred dollars to the best article that describes the reasons the component WEST ignored the death of this nation and then the restoration after the formal end of WW3. -30-
Thank you for your very long and detailed comment sir. We're not sure how to respond except to say that our team and extended network have made great efforts to support Ukraine from the beginning of the conflict. Thank you again for sharing your thoughts.
I think the best example of high intensity combat in the modern era is the Ukraine vs Russian war. Hopefully in a later article you could break down what this war looks like. Perhaps the USA and everyone else are carefully observing the tactics used in this war to prepare for war against equal opponents.
Thank you for the comment Clement. You are correct. The Ukraine conflict offers some of the best lessons and data for modern high-intensity urban combat. Much of our analysis and tactical best-practices are drawn from experience in that conflict. We are glad you found this article useful and yes, you can expect more details and specifics in future articles. Thank you again for contributing and we look forward to hearing more of your thoughts in the future.
Gents, this came up in my feed recently, and I have to admit that crusty as I am, I shed a tear for this poor, brave warrior, and I was reminded of your essay.
https://www.reddit.com/r/navy/comments/1ocmq6d/on_april_6_2007_navy_seal_mike_day_was_shot_27/#:~:text=ATI_Official-,On%20April%206%2C%202007%2C%20Navy%20SEAL%20Mike%20Day%20was%20shot,an%20advocate%20for%20wounded%20veterans.
I think that had he been trained to fight in urban terrain as I was, he might not have suffered so much, and he might still be with us today.
On this topic, I think an urban combat grenade would be a useful weapon. A small frag for tossing into rooms that is more than a flash-bang, but less potent than a "proper" grenade. I gather that the Russians have such low powered grenades, and I think they are a very good idea.
Such an absolutely tragic and heartbreaking story indeed. Thank you for sharing LSWCHP. Also, we agree that the "offensive grenade" (like the old British No. 69) is a very useful tool. Many other grenades in history like the German Stielhandgranate also had smaller blast radii and less fragmentation. Excellent points as always.
I will do an introduction to this in the next two days. DV
Great to hear Don. Conventional urban warfare is a similar experience to where Rommel found himself in World War I, fighting small unit actions in the mountains where cross-unit coordination and communication was difficult. All of the principles you preach like mission command and maneuver warfare are particularly critical in such environment since units at the smallest level often need to be able to think, operate and take the initiative in the absence of orders. Units that don't practice mission command cannot succeed in urban warfare without sustaining a massive amount of casualties. We look forward to your insights in the introduction.
“How will high intensity urban combat be different in future conflicts?”
That’s easy, there wont be any.
The US army (nor marines for that matter) don’t recruit the kind of human material that would tolerate and survive it. American soldiers are used to Burger King and Dairy Queen in the safety of their bases. Not crawl through no man’s land waiting for a drone for kilometers, or to live in a dugout or bunker for weeks.
And regardless: Any conflict won’t last long enough for serious high intensity urban combat because:
A: The massive public and political pressure once the number of dead aren’t a handful a week like in Iraq, but hundreds a day.
B: Units won’t serve and will simply refuse orders. It’s one thing entirely to fight for your home and risk death on such a massive scale.
It’s another thing entirely to be sent thousands of miles away from home, whether Ukraine or Taiwan, to intervene in a conflict that only makes sense to politicians, and live the kind of nightmare modern warfare has become.