Urban Warfare Project

Explore the chaos of the 2006 Battle of Ramadi, where American forces faced significant insurgencies and a crumbling infrastructure. Discover the critical alliances formed between U.S. officers and Iraqi tribal leaders that redefined counterinsurgency strategies. Hear about the innovative tactics employed by Navy SEAL teams in the fight, contrasting their success with earlier destructive approaches seen in Fallujah. This discussion also highlights how these strategies laid the groundwork for stability in a city once deemed the deadliest in Iraq.

Why are subterranean environments so uniquely challenging for military forces? And why is underground warfare occurring increasingly frequently? Dr. Daphne Richemond-Barak—author of the book Underground Warfare and creator of the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare—joins this episode to discuss these and other questions about the subterranean dimension of urban warfare.

In this episode, John Spencer is joined by Lt. Gen. James Rainey. He is the commander of the US Army's Combined Arms Center, and in 2004, he was the battalion commander of 2nd Battalion, 7th Calvary Regiment during the Second Battle of Fallujah. Lt. Gen. Rainey discusses the context, planning, and execution of the battle, and shares his thoughts on the unique challenges of conducting high-intensity combat in dense urban terrain and what missions the Army may be required to conduct in cities in the future.

As the chair of urban warfare studies at MWI, John Spencer spends a lot of time thinking about the gaps between the tasks that soldiers will be required to perform in urban environments and the capabilities currently available to them. This episode features a discussion about twelve of those capabilities that he particularly would like to see the US military integrate—it's the twelve days of urban warfare Christmas.

In this episode, John Spencer is joined by Alex Giles. He is the chief commercial officer for ICENI Labs, science and technology research that recently won a competition—the "Seeing into the Unknown: Situational Awareness in Dense Urban Environments Online Challenge"—organized by the US National Security Innovation Network. The ICENI Labs Team Tercio’s solution involved a system of technologies, including their "sense through the wall" radar technology to build a three-dimensional volumetric local map of interior spaces, to create visual representations of the dismounted battlespace to enable real-time situational awareness in urban environments.

This episode takes a slight departure from the format typical of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast. John Spencer—the podcast's regular host and a leading expert on the subject of urban warfare—joins as the guest to take a comprehensive look at the subject of urban warfare. The conversation explores why it's so challenging, why the US military struggles with those challenges, and what steps can be taken to overcome them.

Like many military functions, the challenges of explosive ordnance disposal are compounded by urban terrain. This episode explorse those challenges. Host John Spencer is joined by Master Sgt. Michael Kidd an experienced leader in Army EOD with over sixteen years of service.

In this episode, John Spencer is joined by Dr. Deane Baker, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales, Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He specializes in the ethics of armed conflict. He discusses his research on military ethics and how ethical dilemmas present themselves on the battlefield. In particular, he explains why urban warfare creates a context that generates unique ethical concerns—concerns that remain unresolved and are of interest to both warfighters and ethicists.

This episode features a conversation with Col. Joseph Hilbert, who recently completed a two-year assignment as the commander of the Operations Group at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center—one of three US Army combat training centers, and the only one based outside the United States. JMRC is unique in the multinational composition of units it supports and its particular focus on Europe. Col. Hilbert discusses JMRC's special attributes, some of the challenges of multinational interoperability, and the urban aspects of the center and the training that US units—along with those of allies and partners—undergo there.

This is a special episode of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast. The Association of the United States Army hosts a podcasts called Army Matters, which regularly brings together a select group of thought leaders to discuss a topic of pressing interest to the Army. One recent conversation was focused on the subject of urban warfare. John Spencer, MWI's chair of urban warfare studies and host of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast, was invited to take part, along with Dr. Russell Glenn and retired Col. Patrick Mahaney. AUSA was generous enough to allow us to publish the conversation here, as well. It's a fascinating conversation with three remarkably accomplished individuals who have each contributed significantly to the way the Army conceptualizes the challenges associated with urban warfare.