Conversations on Strategy Podcast – Ep 8 – John Spencer – Urban Warfare

21st Century Warfare, Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, collapse, Doha Accord, Grand Strategy, international relations, Military Change and Transformation, Military Strategy and Policy, Pakistan, Security force assistance, Statecraft, strategy, Strategy and Policy, Taliban, Ukraine, War and Society

Keywords: urban warfare, Ukraine, Afghanistan, modern warfare, Military Strategy, 21st Century warfare

Episode Transcript: “Urban Warfare”

Stephanie Crider Host

Decisive Point introduces Conversations on Strategy, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who explore timely issues in national security affairs.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

Conversations on Strategy welcomes John Spencer. Spencer currently serves as the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, codirector of the Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project podcast. He served over 25 years in the US Army as an infantry soldier, having held the ranks from private to sergeant first class and second lieutenant to major. He also currently serves as a colonel in the California State Guard, assigned to the 40th Infantry Division, California Army National Guard, as the director of urban warfare training. His research focuses on military operations in dense urban areas, megacities, urban, and subterranean warfare.

Welcome to Conversations on Strategy, John. I’m glad you’re here.

John Spencer

Thanks for having me.

Host

Let’s talk about urban warfare. The US Army War College Press has published several pieces on this topic over the years. On a recent Urban Warfare Project podcast, you note urban warfare is the hardest. Can you elaborate on that?

Spencer

Sure. So I’m pretty adamant out of all the places you could ask military units to try to achieve strategic objectives, the urban operating environment is the hardest.

Because, one, the physical terrain, right, which is complicated and hard in all areas—high elevation, you know, deep jungles—but the actual element of the urban physical terrain, the three-dimensional, the surface, subsurface, rooftops, the canalizing effect of the buildings, and the architecture of the city that reduce our military’s or any military’s ability to do what they want to do, right? So to do maneuver warfare, to use (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance or) ISR and long-range strike capabilities—it doesn’t get negated; it gets degraded in the urban environment. So I think it is the hardest because of that complexity of that physical terrain.

But, by definition, “urban” means there’s people present. By our definition, the US military’s definition, “urban” means that there’s man-made terrain on top of natural terrain. There’s a population, and then there’s infrastructure to support that population. So with the presence of civilians in the operating environment in which militaries will be told to achieve objectives, the presence of civilians means that there will be a limit on the use of force. Because of the law of war, the international humanitarian law, (law of armed conflict or) LOAC, the different names that we use for it—since World War II and even all the way before World War II—most people think that in urban fights, like Stalingrad and, for us, Manila and Seoul—that was just a free range. There’s always a limit on the use of force. So going into it, it’s going to be harder for the military to use their form of warfighting because there’s gonna be limits on the use of force. Of course, there’s the three-block war, where soldiers and commanders will have to be fighting a peer competitor, at the same time dealing with humanitarian approaches and trying to get civilians out of the battle area, trying to save infrastructure. General (Charles) Krulak called it “the three-block war.” And then, of course, we often, when we envision urban warfare in massive operating environments that are urban, we think the civilians are just a hurdle or a concern to protect them. But, you know, modern warfare and old warfare—I mean, the population can be either a challenge, they can be supportive of the military’s objective and actually take part. Of course, they lose their civilian status to become combatants at that point but . . . or they can be completely nonsupportive and be going against what you’re trying to do. And that just complicates it, makes it harder. Right?

Next—and I think it’s hard to put, like, which one of these is really the hardest—but the information domain. I call this “the First Battle of Fallujah effect,” although—yeah, that was 2004. The level of the information domain in the application of military power in urban environments is the hardest. The fight for the truth, the ability to hide—it becomes, literally . . . like, one of the primal warfighting functions is to fight in this information domain, as no military unit in the operating environments is gonna be very challenged to hide. All actions will be viewed because every civilian is a camera, an uplink to the global community. There’s so many sensors, and we’ve seen this on the modern battlefield . . . is I can watch live combat as we speak. I can tune in to most cities in Ukraine, and I can actually watch. In war, we talk about these three populations, right: the military, the political apparatus, and the populations. Well, in the urban terrain, those all collide into what we call a “tactical compression,” where the strategic and tactical become one because of the information domain.

I could go on for a while because this is my thing. I think the complexity of the urban terrain . . . unlike other areas like mountainous or Arctic warfare, when we asked militaries to conduct operations in urban environments, the complexity, as in the cause and effect of our actions . . . in the urban terrain, just presenting a military force changes the environment in unknown ways.

There’s very few cities—and there are some, and there’s been some great writings . . . every city is different. And that’s the challenge of understanding urban environments.

The commanders and the political leaders have to understand the risk in second-order effects of the operations. Well, in the urban train, sometimes that’s near impossible. That’s literally the definition of complexity, is “I can’t tell the second- and third-order effects of touching the system on the global supply chain, on the global economic factors, on the regional factors.”

Those are just some of the highlights. I know that it’s a podcast and you want me to be brief, but I honestly believe that it’s the hardest place on Earth you could ask militaries to try to achieve political objectives.

Host

We’re obviously not the only people thinking about urban warfare. How do other countries like England and Israel look at and train for urban warfare?

Spencer

Sure. So I’ve actually spent a lot of time in England with the British Army, and, of course, I just got back from the NATO Headquarters (Allied) Rapid Reaction Corps conference on urban warfare. So there’re not really a lot of differences between the US and the (United Kingdom or) UK model. But I think, interestingly, what the UK or England has done is that they have embraced that this should be a primary area of training focus and preparations. So they actually put out a mandate saying, “We used to do 80-percent rural and 20-percent urban preparations.” Now they put out a mandate that states all units in the British Army will do 50-percent urban, 50 percent rural. You know, sometimes, that’s just words, but that’s actually translating into budget priorities and how they spend their time.

So for me, that was really important. They’ve made major changes at their major training areas like Copehill Downs (Copehill Down), major investments in synthetic and physical training and distributed training. I think it’s really translating. There’s not a different way they approach it. They know combined arms maneuver is the most powerful form of maneuver. But in the urban terrain, you have to prioritize preparing for this hardest environment.

Now the Israeli model—there are a lot of differences, just because it’s a different army. It’s not an expeditionary military like, uh, NATO members—you know, NATO partners. So that does actually cause changes in the approach. Plus, they know their likely environments they’re going to deploy into.

But spending a lot of time with the Israeli military and security forces, there are differences on how—even their equipment. Because they actually, in their urban warfare experience, will then make immediate changes. And that’s kind of their power of their ability to adapt their technologies. So when they go into a contested urban environment, they will come in with a much more armorized force: a bulldozer in the lead, infantry compartment in their tank so the infantry can get inside of it, an active protection system on all their tanks.

And not saying that we don’t have these things, but they’re very deliberate in their approach to going into a completely nonpermissive urban environment. Because that’s their assumption if they’re going in, again, because they have different—whether it’s (doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, and facilities or) DOTMLPF or what of their force design—they can do things like have heavier equipment, have purpose-driven units designed for underground warfare, things like that. So there’s definitely some differences in both models, but there’s also some similarities.

Host

Would any of their methods or theories be useful for American forces?

Spencer

So, absolutely. One of the challenges with urban warfare for us—especially the US military—is we don’t view it as a special task. We train offense/defense in all other military tasks, and we say the environment is a condition, and we’ll make minor changes. But look where we spend our time. We spend our time in the desert, in the woods, and that does translate into military capability. So absolutely, as, especially, the UK really pushes the envelope on “Fifty percent of my time is gonna be spent preparing for the urban environment. I’m gonna change doctrine—really, the whole DOTMLPF spectrum.” They’re on the forefront, in my opinion. And those lessons will translate to the US military. There is a lot of synergy going on between the two. But they’re really pushing.

And then in the Israeli model—I think, absolutely, based on their mission sets and their environments, when they adapt to it, I would say, they’re probably at the forefront of the world in the use of information operations when it’s a known urban operating environment. So they have units that are established to do that, their acceptability of risk fighting in the information domain.

The problem we get into, especially at the strategic and operational level, is that we think that we’re going to control information when we have to view it as a high a priority as actual fighting. Because we are fighting in the information domain. When Israel goes into the urban environments and does an urban operation, it’s at the top of their priorities for the commander is the fighting in that information domain—and, especially, in things like (Operation) Guardian of the Walls in 2021, where they really showed how they’re advancing the ball on that.

Host

Ukraine and urban warfare: What are the important takeaways so far?

Spencer

Oh, man. So there’s so much that’s going to be learned. I just got back myself from Kyiv, trying to understand the battle of Kyiv, which was . . . we have to take that, as a military, as the most decisive battle in modern era. Russia invaded Ukraine with the intent, the strategic objective of overthrowing the Ukraine political apparatus and taking the whole country. They had to penetrate the capital city. That’s nothing new, right? Like us in Baghdad, Kabul, you name it. But they were stopped by a much smaller military armed by understanding their urban environment better than the opponent. There’s so many lessons that we’re gonna take from just that one battle, when Russia, the second biggest military, was stopped by literally a brigade, and then 10s of thousands of civilians.

It wasn’t that the Russians weren’t prepared to fight in urban terrain; they weren’t prepared to understand the requirements of doing large-scale combat operations on force projection, logistical needs that the urban environment puts to a test. So that’s the interesting aspect of Ukraine is that urban warfare will put your operational concepts; your doctrine; your ideals of ends, ways, and means to the ultimate test. It really does.

But each one of these urban battles out of Ukraine are different, right? So Kyiv was a different fight than the battle of Mariupol, where time is important to militaries, and a small force . . . again, using the urban terrain features, all elements from information domain to the infrastructure already present were able to hold off 20,000 Russians for 80 days.

Operationally and strategically, when you have a political objective you’re trying to achieve, if you can grind your opponent to a halt like that using the urban terrain, that’s powerful. This is evolving, so there’s so many lessons. And, like, Syeverodonets’k, and what urban terrain is most important?

Of course, the capital city—that’s a strategic operation that has to be studied. But in my words—and Ukraine shows it—is that all roads lead to urban. “The main goal in warfare is to destroy your enemy’s military” is not true. And modern war puts that to the test. The battles of Ukraine are context, of course, but all roads lead to urban. The idea that you’re going to enter an operating environment and not at least have to secure your logistical lines through urban terrain—it’s just not reality. There’s a long list. I’ve taken a lot. The guy I went to Ukraine with, we’ll have a report on the battle of Kyiv, specifically. Which really does put to question ideals at the strategic level about, like, total defense, where your civilian population is going to rise up. But how do you do that? How do you resource it? What are the legal considerations when you turn civilians into combatants? And there’s a lot of lessons here.

Host

Looking forward to hearing more about those once you get it all put together. So you mentioned your trip to Ukraine and the battle of Kyiv a couple of times. You want to share any highlights of your trip with us?

Spencer

Sure. So I think if you lay down Russia’s objective, its strategic objective, and then lay down its operational plan . . . which can be argued that they spread themselves too thin. They didn’t adhere to the elements of operational art. You know, they didn’t mass on the critical objective, which was Kyiv. But they did come hard. They did implement a joint forcible-entry objective, inserting paratroopers into an airfield that were then not backed up by enough forces, and they were defeated.

They ran into not complications in fighting another military; they ran into complications of things like mobility and countermobility in the urban terrain.

The battle of Kyiv didn’t happen, really, in the urban areas that people think about when they think about urban terrain. It happened in the peri-urban. Because Ukraine immediately blew 300 bridges. So we talk about, you know, wet-gap crossings. But if you have 300 wet-gap crossings to do, that’s gonna have strategic implications for your military power if you’re not able to do that.

So there’s a lot of lessons here in, like, ancient siege warfare. Kyiv had to just close the castle gates. They dropped all the bridges. They flooded rivers, which was very interesting. They flooded three major rivers to take away all the avenues of approach that Russia wanted to have, right? That’s what we do, right? We have a primary massive avenue of approach, and we have other ones. And they were coming hard, but Kyiv was able, through years of planning, to understand their city to where they could make it really hard to get into the city.

Because it wasn’t about destroying the Russian military; they’re never going to do that. They had to buy time. They had to prioritize strategic capabilities like TB2 drones and the limited artillery they had as they fought seven different city fights. But there’s also elements of . . . again, this is about terrain denial. Ukraine was on the defense. And they showed that . . . (Carl von) Clausewitz said that defense is the strongest form of war. Now, it’s not your politically strongest form. But I think there is lessons in Ukraine, especially the battle of Kyiv, when you have to be prepared for defensive operations.

We, as in the West, can’t always be the attacker. All warfare includes both offense and defense, and some of that’s the large-scale combat operational defenses. Like the city of Chernihiv. If the city of Chernihiv in Ukraine had not held, Kyiv might have fallen because they would not have been able to fight the way they were fighting because there’s another major axis of advance. But the first Ukrainian guard division (1st Division of the National Guard of Ukraine) held all Russians from advancing south of Chernihiv.

I know that the war college and other people will study this in depth. But I think we can’t wait. Some of these lessons are almost immediate to translation to the way we think about massive theater operations. You’re not going to avoid and bypass urban areas. Maybe a few, but it’s going to have implications on strategic capabilities.

Host

Before we go, give me your final thoughts.

Spencer

So my final thoughts is that when I ask military people about urban terrain, they think about clearing buildings. Urban warfare is not an infantry fight. It will put joint combined arms maneuver to the test. And it is the people that can bring it all together at the point of need that can succeed. But we need to think about urban warfare like it is defined: the actual city, the people in the city, and the infrastructure and how that incorporates into our joint combined arms fights.

Host

Thank you so much. I appreciate your time, your insight, all of it. This was really good.

Spencer

No—thank you.

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