General

Re: US soldiers being trained for urban warfare with "mock cities" in USA

Stranger — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 15:23:04 GMT

That's not necessarily true, although I think the general gist of your comment is correct. It used to be that by defeating large field armies you could easily take the cities, since you would only expect resistence from professional soldiers, not local populations. That changed, mostly, during the Second World War (although, you would see large scale city fighting in previous wars, including the Spanish Civil War).

There are two points being argued here. First, the fact that you did not need to fight the local population was a product of the state system. Simply by capturing the local state whole, you could expect that they would control the local population for you as they always had. This is no longer the case. States are wobbly and easily collapse, and thus the local population can start fighting its own fight.

Second, the reason that a lot of WWII fighting took place in cities was that all the major supply routes ran through them. So in this case it was regular battle within cities, not "urban warfare" as we call it today. Once the enemy was pushed out of the city you could count on the local police force to control the populace for you, provided this populace had not fled the city entirely. (WWII armies certainly did not hesitate blowing away an entire building to improve their chances. That is not today's urban warfare manual.) Today's urban warfare was invented in the Lebanon war and is being mastered in Mexico's war.

Re: US soldiers being trained for urban warfare with "mock cities" in USA

FleetCenturion — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:30:53 GMT

Aside from its unusually huge size and price tag, I can't believe this even makes news. It looks more like a fluff piece you would read in Stars & Stripes. The Associated Press has stumbled on this phenomenon about twenty years too late, since mock cities have been a well known fixture at large training facilities since before Desert Storm.

Re: US soldiers being trained for urban warfare with "mock cities" in USA

Jonathan M. F. Catalán — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 08:30:34 GMT

Stranger,

That's not necessarily true, although I think the general gist of your comment is correct. It used to be that by defeating large field armies you could easily take the cities, since you would only expect resistence from professional soldiers, not local populations. That changed, mostly, during the Second World War (although, you would see large scale city fighting in previous wars, including the Spanish Civil War). It became the norm largely because it was ineffective for less well trained, or less well led, militaries to fight large battles on the field, and so resistence was focused where the terrain is far more defensible. Urban warfare is the norm when fighting militaries that are quasi-professional and know that fighting in a city is bound to give them superior results to fighting on the field.

Re: US soldiers being trained for urban warfare with "mock cities" in USA

Stranger — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:34:19 GMT

The rise of urban warfare is actually a proof of the decline of the state. State vs state warfare always sought to capture objectives outside cities by deploying very large armies. That the state is training to fight objectives in dense cities shows that its enemies are no longer other states.

Re: US soldiers being trained for urban warfare with "mock cities" in USA

Jonathan M. F. Catalán — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:20:58 GMT

Yea, this has been going on for a while. I remember a small Arab city for urban warfare training during infantry OSUT.

Re: US soldiers being trained for urban warfare with "mock cities" in USA

Bogart — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 19:50:50 GMT

Nothing new here. The issue is where the cities will be located for the urban fighting: The question being are the cities inside or outside the borders of the USA.

US soldiers being trained for urban warfare with "mock cities" in USA

limitgov — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:37:58 GMT

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41258569/ns/us_news-life/

"A mock city roughly the size of downtown San Diego has risen in a remote Southern California desert to train military forces to fight in urban environments.