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Fighting on urban terrain challenging, not impossible

by Staff Sgt. Marcia Triggs

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Nov. 27, 2002) -- Americans believe that the next conflict will take place on urban terrain, which is the most challenging environment to fight, officials said.

However, doctrine and training over the last decade have increased soldiers' level of preparedness, officials at the Army's Infantry School said at a Pentagon press briefing Nov. 25.

In 1993, 18 Rangers from 3rd Battalion, 75th Regiment, Fort Benning, Ga., were killed in Mogadishu, Somalia, during what they described as a fight against an entire town. Now with an evolving doctrine and training at sites like the fictional Shugart-Gordon, named after two soldiers killed in Mogadishu trying to rescue a down pilot, soldiers can practice for the unexpected, said Col. Paul Melody, the director of the Infantry School Combined Arms and Tactics Directorate, Fort Benning.

In the past, troops fighting in urban terrain had little knowledge of who they were going to fight and what the nature of the terrain was going to be," Melody said. "That's different now, we make a point to know the terrain almost as good as the people that live there. We know what is valuable to defend and what to attack."

Field Manual 34-06.11 Combined Arms Operations in Urban Terrain was approved in March 2001 and can be found at http://www.adtdl.army.mil/cgi-bin/atdl.dll/fm/3-06.11/toc.htm. Just the name change from its predecessor, FM 90-10-1 Infantry's Guide to Military Operations in Urban Terrain, is significant, Melody said.

"If we don't fight in a combined or joint way with our sister services and coalition forces, the level of success decreases," Melody said. "Other significant changes include the depth the manual goes into.

"The first chapter of both manuals is the same. But the current manual analyzes and assesses eight different city patterns and seven different categories of terrain to help us gain insights on the best way to approach the mission to a degree that hadn't existed in the past."

The tasks, conditions and standards in the current manual elaborate on scenarios like how to move a tank or armored vehicle in a town; how to engage a certain part of a building, and when and where to shoot, Melody said. That way units can train and practice before the rubber meets the road, he added.

There are four principles that guide FM 34-06.11 - assess, shape, dominate and transition. Before troops go into an operation, the situation has been assessed, Melody said. To a novelist looking at an urban area he can be misled into thinking that that it is all the same, he said. For someone who sees the terrain for fighting, he realizes that there are a lot of areas that can lead to destruction and attack, he added.

Shape means setting conditions prior to the offensive and defensive meeting, which includes putting civil affairs, information and psychological operations into play, Melody said. Taking away the enemy's options and collapsing their ability to resist or attack is to dominate, and when the focus of the operation changes, Melody said, soldiers can transition from offense or defense to stability and support.

A doctrine that leads to realistic training for a modern fight gives troops an advantage, but it doesn't give them an over-manageable confidence. MOUT training at the Joint Readiness Training Center, Fort Polk La., is designed to produce well-trained soldiers, but it's also a very humbling experience, said Maj. Perry Beissel, the MOUT Team officer-in-charge.

"We don't want units thinking that seizing control of Shugart-Gordon was easy. We want them to know that as much as they think they know about urban warfare, dilemmas such as sleep deprivation, lack of time to prepare can be life threatening," Beissel said.

To increase the level of realism on urban terrain, JRTC places civilians on the mock battlefield.

"It's too easy to land on foreign ground and just level a town," Beissel said. "We don't tell soldiers that under no conditions are civilians not to be harmed. We know that in the course of a battle there will be unavoidable casualties. We needed to use civilians as a way of introducing another level of sophistication and thought processes for leaders and soldiers to think about."

About 4,500 soldiers a month go against JRTC's opposing forces to seize Shugart-Gordon. Part of their mission after taking control of the town is to transition control of the town back to the host nation government.

Training in mock towns is also conducted at Hohenfels, Germany. "Our training and doctrine is unprecedented," Melody said. "However, our young soldiers fighting in Afghanistan have proven that they are aware of the risks over there and they are confident -- not cocky."