Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Urban warfare - lessons for the world today, and possibly for our own future too

 

Courtesy of a link provided by an anonymous reader, I was led to the video presentation embedded below.  It's about an hour long, and features Major John Spencer of the US Army's Modern Warfare Institute.  He delivered this talk at the British Army's Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research in 2018.

If you're at all interested in military matters, particularly urban warfare, this is a must-see video.  Think of it particularly in the context of urban unrest, crime and violence such as we're seeing in some US cities right now, which at present is exacerbated by political, ethnic and cultural tensions.  If that poisonous brew gets worse, the situation may well degenerate into military-style urban conflict rather than a purely law enforcement problem.

The actual presentation begins at 5min. 25sec., after the introduction.  If the embedded video doesn't play, you'll find it here on YouTube.



Food for thought, indeed.

Peter


2 comments:

Old NFO said...

Interesting presentation. Thanks for that link!

Ragin' Dave said...

Urban warfare sucks. Doing MOUT training (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) back in the 90's, even when we knew who the OPFOR was and what weapons they had and where they were in a general location, we would take about 50% casualties throughout the exercise.

Defending urban terrain gives a huge bonus to the defenders.

Do not get into urban combat if you have a choice. Period.