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BUTLERVILLE, Ind., June 23, 2008 – The scene in Building 7 at Muscatatuck Urban Training Center here was chilling. Marines from Battalion Landing Team 2/6, 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, move between buildings during training, June 10, 2008, at Muscatatuck Urban Training Center, in Butlerville, Ind. The Marines were using the facility during the 26th MEU's realistic urban training exercise, part of the MEU's predeployment training period. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Aaron J. Rock  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Visitors were greeted by the sounds of a screaming man, covered in blood and missing his legs just...

Mayor to Marines: Leave downtown He says urban exercises scare people By JC REINDL BLADE STAFF WRITER A company of Marine Corps Reservists received a cold send-off from downtown Toledo yesterday by order of Mayor Carty Finkbeiner. The 200 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., planned to spend their weekend engaged in urban patrol exercises on the streets of downtown as well as inside the mostly vacant Madison Building, 607 Madison Ave. Toledo police knew days in advance about their plans for a three-day exercise. Yet somehow the memo never made it to...

The IDF has developed a tiny bulldozer for combat operations inside Palestinian cities, a military publication reported. The little machine is designed for rumbling down narrow roads and paths in the closer quarters of Palestinian cities, where old sections are warrens of crowded alleyways between rundown concrete block buildings. In previous operations, Israeli forces have sent full-size bulldozers ahead of ground troops, causing considerable damage to buildings. The current edition of the soldiers' weekly Bamahaneh carries a picture of the new machine, called "Lioness." It looks like a toy - a vehicle higher than it is wide or long, painted...

IDF Builds Fake Muslim City To Prepare For WarBy SHELLY PAZ The Jerusalem Post The IDF unveiled an Urban Warfare Training Center (UTC) on Monday in a mock city that simulates an Arab town, four months after the second Lebanon war ended. The unit's commanders firmly stated that the city was planned eight years ago and that construction began a year ago. They added that the current pace of the training was two battalions each week. The mock city is located in the southern Tze'elim military base. From a distance, it looks like any Arab urban center. Around 500 structures...

‘Pakistani terror suspect had bomb plans’ SYDNEY: A Pakistani-born man accused of planning terrorist attacks had maps of Australia’s power grid, aerial photographs of defence installations and bomb-making instructions in his possession when he was arrested, a court was told here on Tuesday. Architect Faheem Khalid Lodhi, 34, was also alleged in October 2001 to have acted “in an apparent official capacity” at a training camp in Lahore, operated by the banned terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba. “The camp specialised in urban warfare,” prosecutor Richard Maidment told Sydney’s Central Local Court at the opening of a committal hearing to decide if there...

Panama City, Kuwait City, Mogadishu, Port-au-Prince, Grozny, Sarajevo, Kinshasa, Baghdad. For the past decade, newspaper headlines have proclaimed the news of wars and peacekeeping operations in distant cities, while TV screens have flashed vivid depictions of brutal combat in city streets around the world. Images of dead American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu and beheaded Russian soldiers in Chechnya have provided a marked contrast to the almost sterile video of precision-guided munitions finding their mark against tanks arrayed in the open desert or entering the windows of enemy buildings. However, of all the words and images transmitted...

New Orleans Police Chief Edwin Compass said Friday that hurricane rescue efforts were hampered when relief workers came under attack by the city's criminal element, prompting conditions that resembled "urban warfare." "We have never had an urban warfare battle like this on any front in the history of our nation," Compass told NBC's "Dateline." "You're fighting in buildings that are pitch black with darkness. These individuals have root - the criminal element have looted all the gun shops and gun stores in this city, so they're armed, they're dangerous." Federal Emergency Management Agency Chief Michael Brown, under fire for his...

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Nightfall and rising violence threatened to further disrupt relief efforts Thursday in New Orleans as authorities rescued residents still trapped in the flooded city and evacuated thousands of others living among corpses and human waste. The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, said his agency was attempting to work "under conditions of urban warfare." "Please don't send the National Guard," he said. "Send someone with a bullhorn outside the place that can talk to these people first." He described scenes of lawlessness and desperation, with people simply dragging corpses into corners. "They...

ORLANDO: Responding to an urgent request from warfighters, Lockheed Martin expanded the capabilities of its Predator anti-tank weapon and delivered 400 rounds to the U.S. Marine Corps. The U.S. Marine Corps requested Lockheed Martin to modify the shoulder-fired, short-range Predator anti-tank weapon into a direct-attack urban assault weapon. Renamed the Short-Range Assault Weapon-Multiple Purpose Variant (SRAW-MPV), the new urban assault missile has a multiple-purpose blast warhead, enabling it to defeat a variety of targets such as buildings and bunkers, as well as light-armored vehicles. "The ability of the SRAW team to field the SRAW-MPV in less than six months in...

ORLANDO, FL, May 26, 2005 -- Responding to an urgent request from warfighters, Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] expanded the capabilities of its Predator anti-tank weapon and delivered 400 rounds to the U.S. Marine Corps. The U.S. Marine Corps requested Lockheed Martin to modify the shoulder-fired, short-range Predator anti-tank weapon into a direct-attack urban assault weapon. Renamed the Short-Range Assault Weapon-Multiple Purpose Variant (SRAW-MPV), the new urban assault missile has a multiple-purpose blast warhead, enabling it to defeat a variety of targets such as buildings and bunkers, as well as light-armored vehicles. “The ability of the SRAW team to field the...

As the United States developed its war plan, it was clear that it would have to take Baghdad to have a decisive victory. The armed forces' ability for urban warfare was a seen as a possible weakness, with their difficulties in the past in Mogadishu fresh in the minds of both the armed forces and the Iraqis. From talking to you and a number of people, it seems clear to me the Iraqis were keen to spread confusion about who was a combatant and who was a civilian ... [to] exploit American reluctance to kill civilians. But a lot of...

Enemy insurgents defending Fallujah were formidable because many of them were willing to fight to the death. In general, however, they were an indifferently armed rabble who could inflict casualties because of the nature of urban warfare and U.S. sensibilities. What if our forces find themselves facing well-trained Syrian commandos or Hezbollah guerrillas? Was Fallujah a battle we lost in April 2004, with ruinous results? Or was it a battle we won in November? The answer is yes. If that sounds awkward, it is because Fallujah was an awkward battle without an easy parallel in U.S. military history. It is...

Marines prowl streets of downtown Toledo City hosts urban warfare exercise By ERICA BLAKE BLADE STAFF WRITER Mark Lehmann was absent-mindedly walking down Jefferson Avenue yesterday when he found himself in the middle of a gunfight involving men dressed in camouflage crouched behind mounds of snow. Stunned, the 41-year-old Toledoan stopped in the intersection of Jefferson and Ontario Street for a moment. His presence, however, seemed to go unnoticed by the 20 or so Marines who quickly jumped up and ran past him.

FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 18 - Eight days after the Americans entered the city on foot, a pair of marines wound their way up the darkened innards of a minaret, shot through with holes by an American tank. As the marines inched upward, a burst of gunfire rang down, fired by an insurgent hiding in the top of the tower. The bullets hit the first marine in the face, his blood spattering the marine behind him. The marine in the rear tumbled backward down the stairwell, while Lance Cpl. William Miller, age 22, lay in silence halfway up, mortally wounded. "Miller!"...

Generals think of urban combat the way vampires view garlic. But in Fallujah, Iraq, U.S. forces have rewritten the book on urban military operations, producing what have been, so far, better-than-average results with lower-than-average casualties... As of Friday, the re-taking of Fallujah was achieved at a cost of 51 Americans and five Iraqi dead, and about 425 wounded, of whom about a quarter have been returned to duty. Some 15,000 Marines, soldiers and Iraqi troops were involved in the attack... "That kill ratio would be phenomenal for any battle, but in an urban environment, it's revolutionary," said retired Army Lt....

FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 18 - Eight days after the Americans entered the city on foot, a pair of marines wound their way up the darkened innards of a minaret, shot through with holes by an American tank. As the marines inched upward, a burst of gunfire rang down, fired by an insurgent hiding in the top of the tower. The bullets hit the first marine in the face, his blood spattering the marine behind him. The marine in the rear tumbled backward down the stairwell, while Lance Cpl. William Miller, age 22, lay in silence halfway up, mortally wounded. "Miller!"...

This thread honors the service and sacrifice of our Armed Forces, and reminds us of why we here at home can go about our daily business in peace. Street-to-street is the toughest type of warfare. Air cover is being flown by pilots from the USS John F. Kennedy, as well as the U.S. Air Force from bases in the area.

BAGHDAD -- Two U.S. Army sergeants were awarded one of the highest medals for heroism following fierce fighting against insurgents in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, the U.S. command said Saturday. Sgt. 1st Class Jerry Swope and Staff Sgt. Robert Miltenberger received Silver Star medals for "exceptional valor in combat during Operation Lancer Fury" in April in the Shiite slum. Both men are with the 1st Cavalry Division and were awarded their medals at a ceremony on Thursday. Swope, a platoon sergeant from Richmond, Va., hastily organized a defense as rebels ambushed his unit on April 4. Despite orders...

The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com Warfare in urban centersBy Austin BayPublished July 2, 2004 China's great sixth century B.C. strategist, Gen. Sun Tzu, had a poet's knack for the epigram -- the ability to "write tight" and sneakily sinking the infinitely complex into a single phrase. His "Art of War" is a diamond mine of insight.     "All warfare is based upon deception," Sun Tzu wrote, simultaneously succinct and voluminous. Italy's Renaissance political genius, Niccolo Machiavelli, added: "Though fraud in other activities may be detestable, in the management of war it is laudable and glorious, and he who overcomes the enemy...

Iraqi Counterinsurgency Troops to Target Urban Terrorists By Gerry J. GilmoreAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, June 18, 2004 – Specially trained Iraqi troops will soon deploy into Baghdad to go after city-dwelling terrorists, a senior U.S. military officer told a House panel June 17. An element of the Iraqi Army, the Iraq National Task Force, is "trained and equipped for urban counterinsurgency operations," Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, chief of the Office of Security Transition in Iraq, noted in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. The task force, Petraeus explained from Baghdad via video teleconference, has been in...

Al-Qaeda is changing its tactics. After targeting Western expatriates and security forces in the first phase of its terrorist attacks in the Kingdom, it has now turned its attention to oil companies and could later go for urban guerrilla war as part of its strategy to destabilize the Kingdom, according to a Saudi political scientist. Dr. Abdullah Al-Otaibi, assistant professor of political science at King Saud University, told Arab News the May 1 attack on a petrochemical complex in Yanbu followed by Saturday’s shootout in Alkhobar’s APICORP Compound showed a consistent pattern. Al-Qaeda terrorists “are out to strike against the...

"The worst policy is to attack cities. Attack cities only when there is no alternative." --Sun Tzu, The Art of War It is time for a revolution in our thinking about urban warfare. For too long the American military establishment has been reading the wrong history, preparing for the wrong fight and reclining in the wisdom of the wrong philosophers. Urban warfare is the fight of the future--the very near future--and we are not ready. Our thinking about this subject has been derailed by anachronistic principles that no longer apply. We do not live in Sun Tzu’s world, nor even...

Suicide Pig Warriors! With the threat of fighting breaking out throughout Iraq the Marines have reluctantly announced the introduction of their doomsday urban warfare system - SUICIDE PIG WARRIORS. Trained in secret, sworn to defend the motherland against all threats, they are now ready to go into battle. "ehb, ehb, ehb, let's get it, ehb, ehb, on!"

Fallujah, Iraq(April 7, 2004) -- Marines battling enemy forces in Iraq pushed into the city after several days of violent and deadly clashes. Marines with Company E, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, established a forward base of operations inside Fallujah in order to battle back the foreign terrorists and former regime loyalists holed up in pockets throughout the city. Outside of the walled compound, the distinctive "pop, pop, pop" of AK-47 assault rifles can be heard in the distance. On the rooftops, Marines with M-240G machine guns and M-16A4 service rifles open fire in response to hidden insurgents. "Our mission...

In Fallujah, ‘expect snipers on all minarets’ Marines who sought friendships now face elusive enemies Cris Bouroncle / Getty ImagesA U.S. Marine from the First Battalion, Fifth Marines, watches the industrial area of Fallujah as he protects a civil affairs unit visiting the area on Friday. By Pamela Constable Updated: 12:03 a.m. ET April 10, 2004 FALLUJAH, Iraq - Just a hundred yards beyond the factory walls that surround the Marine base camp, the streets feel as remote and forbidding as the moon -- a hostile moon where every piece of scrap metal could hide a bomb, every abandoned factory...

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - US forces pressed their drive against insurgents in the Sunni Muslim bastion of Fallujah after trying to suspend the operation and allow talks on bringing relief supplies to the battered city. Amid conflicting reports on the state of the offensive from the coalition's Baghdad headquarters and its field commander, US marines prepared to advance on a residential area for possible house-to-house fighting. Intelligence reports said Friday that insurgent snipers were taking positions in mosque minarets in the town west of Baghdad where hundreds have been killed in six days of fighting. "It's going to get worse...

August 4, 2003: August 2, 2003: At least two battalions in the 4th Infantry Division have modified their equipment to help them adjust to urban warfare by mounting .50 caliber M2 heavy machine guns on the back of their Humvees. These vehicles are now nicknamed "Gun-Vees" and resemble the "technicals" used by Somali fighters first encountered by Americans in Mogadishu ten years ago. These up gunned vehicles are especially useful in battling the Islamic fighters in alleys and other tight urban spaces, where tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles cannot maneuver. The modified vehicle also provide an element of surprise, being...

The winds of change are not always obvious. Analysts at the RAND Corporation lay out 10 international-security developments that aren't getting the attention they deserve in this month's issue of The Atlantic magazine: 1. The West Bank Wall 2. A Shrinking Russia 3. The Hindu-Muslim Divide 4. AIDS and African Armies 5. The Tehran-New Delhi Axis 6. Anti-Satellite Attack 7. Defense-Industry Goliaths 8. The Aircraft Carrier Shortage 9. The Indus Water Fight 10. Urban Warfare ...to which we add: 11. China's Race Into the Oil Market; and 12. Europe's looming pension crisis That's an even dozen via our blog post....

The commander of the Israel Defense Forces' Golani Brigade, Colonel Moshe Tamir, gave a lecture to the U.S. Marines this week on the lessons the IDF has learned from the current conflict with the Palestinians. The lecture, which focused particularly on Operation Defensive Shield of April 2002, was part of a conference on urban warfare. As the commander of Golani, Tamir has played a key role in many battles inside Palestinian cities over the last two years. He commanded operations in the Casbahs and refugee camps of Jenin, Nablus, Tul Karm and Gaza City. Golani soldiers (under the command of...

Yellow Smoke: The Future Of Land Warfare For America's Military. By Robert H. Scales Jr. Rowan and Littlefield, $24.95, 179 pages During a Rand conference on urban warfare in 1999, Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales derided the emphasis on urban warfare that was then becoming trendy by reiterating the Army's traditional concept of bypassing cities or laying siege to them. Gen. Scales' schedule did not allow him to stay for questions and answers, but he left behind a firestorm of controversy among officers with recent urban combat experience, including several Russians in the audience. Say what you like about Bob...

Toogood Reports [Tuesday, April 8, 2003; 12:01 a.m. EST]URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/ It will be years before the whole story of the taking of Baghdad comes out. Indeed, according to the Iraqi information minister, "There is no any existence of American solders in Baghdad," so maybe we're not even going to take the city. After all, a few million Americans — most notably staffers at the New York Times — prefer to believe Saddam's people over our own. Some people may believe the war footage we are seeing on TV 24/7 was shot by the U.S. Information Ministry, in India or New...

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's strategy of creating a "series of Mogadishus" in Iraq's southern cities failed because the United States committed overwhelming firepower and political will, unlike in Somalia in 1993, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

WASHINGTON, April 5 (UPI) -- On Saturday, an armored task force from the 3rd Infantry Division started south of Baghdad, pushed through the city and ended its journey at Baghdad International Airport, west of the capital. In the raid, the task force is believed to have killed about 1,000 Iraqi defenders. Apparently, most of those killed were members of the Special Republican Guard. American losses were one killed and six wounded. The results of this raid should not be taken as proof that the capture of Baghdad will be easy. It is, however, a strong indication that it won't be...

The Ugly Time By Ralph Kinney Bennett It is firepower, and firepower that arrives at the right time and place, that counts in modern war. - B.H. Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War, 1944 The pursuit of victory without slaughter is likely to lead to slaughter without victory. - The Duke of Marlborough, 1650-1722 Let's pay tribute to the bravery of some of Iraq's fighting men. Whether out of fear, fanaticism, or the impulse to defend their homeland, some of them have gone to their deaths fighting - futilely - against American and British forces. They have charged M-1 Abrams tanks...

Washington Politics & Policy Desk, 4/2/2003, 5:03 PM HIGHLANDS, N.C., April 2 (UPI) -- This here's the 344th Report ta the Folks Back Home from the (More er Less) Honorable Billybob, cyberCongressman from Western Carolina. This week's column is about logic, facks, n the hist'ry ov Amurican wars includin the Cold War, as applied ta the comin "Battle ov Baghdad." Since ma able assistant, J. Armor, Esq., izza student ov sech thangs, I'll turn this over ta him. The Berlin Solution to the Baghdad ProblemLast week I watched many hours of press conferences in Washington and at the American headquarters...

April 2 — As U.S. troops moved ever closer to Baghdad on Wednesday, their commanders already had hints from Basra and other cities of what to expect: armed resistance from guerrilla bands, many in civilian garb, staging hit and run attacks and firing small arms from concealed positions, with civilians sometimes trapped in the crossfire.U.S. plans for the battle of Baghdad are a closely held secret, but training before the war included drills in mock urban neighborhoods in Kuwait.Urban combat is as old as war itself and it's a nightmare scenario fraught with special perils for any army attempting to...

<p>April 1, 2003 -- SADDAM had a plan. He intended to lure allied forces into the streets of his cities, where ambushes would turn the war into a bloodbath.</p> <p>Unfortunately for Saddam, our troops failed to cooperate: The blood being shed is that of Iraqi terrorists.</p>

The Times Unseemly Eagerness Over Iraqi Terror “Tactics” Alan Cowell finally finds something about the war to get enthused about: Iraqi guerilla warfare against American troops. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27URBA.html?pagewanted=print&position=top For the Times man in London, it’s a change from fretting over British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s future encapsulated in doom-ridden headlines like “For Blair, a Gamble to Avoid Political Disaster.” (Blair’s approval ratings rose once hostilities started and a recent poll showed 55% of the British population approve of his handling of Iraq.) http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/reviews/2003/notw-iraq-poll-3mar-2003.htm In Thursday’s “Urban Warfare: Long a Key Part of an Underdog's Down-to-Earth Arsenal,” Cowell takes a rather unseemly...

Israelis trained US troops in Jenin-style urban warfare By Justin Huggler in Amman 29 March 2003 The American military has been asking the Israeli army for advice on fighting inside cities, and studying fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin last April, unnamed United States and Israeli sources have confirmed. Reports that US troops trained with Israeli forces for street-to-street fighting have been denied. If the US army believes the road to Baghdad lies through Jenin, there is reason for Iraqi civilians to be concerned. During fighting in the Jenin refugee camp last April, more than half the Palestinian...

“They’re going for a Stalingrad siege,” said Air Marshal Brian Burridge, referring to one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War, when more than a million Russians and Germans died during six months of fighting in the streets of the Soviet City of Stalingrad.

Iraq's strategy to thwart a United States-led attack calls for slowing American troops' advance toward Baghdad and then confronting them with the prospect of a bloody street battle in the Iraqi capital, according to American intelligence. To impede American and allied forces, Saddam Hussein's administration has developed plans to blow up dams, destroy bridges and ignite its oil fields, United States Defense Department officials say. They say Iraq may also deny food to Iraqi civilians in the southern parts of the country to try to create a crisis that would saddle advancing allied forces with the responsibility of caring for...

Ground Forces TrainingThe director gave his staff a sequence of commands: "Console one: We have tanks coming down the road. Record with camera nine. Console two: Swing the camera all the way to the left and cover the town's main entrance. Pick up the tank on the right with camera three. Console one: Pan camera 10 to the left toward the soccer field and capture the dismounted squad. That's good. Now pan down." What appears to be a movie director filming a rapidly evolving battle for a soon-to-be-released combat action movie is actually the control station editor at a US...

AUSTRALIA'S elite forces could be among the first to enter a nightmarish urban warfare campaign if a conflict with Iraq takes place on the streets of Baghdad. Australian Special Forces and their American counterparts have been training in specially built mock-town compounds in the Middle East in preparation for close-combat battles. The war grew closer yesterday with US President George Bush warning he was "sick and tired" of Saddam Hussein's "games and deception" and that the dictator's "time is running out". Experts believe pitched house-to-house battles in congested city areas would be the favoured tactic of Hussein's regime in a...

Sorry, it's a PDF link. But looks well worth reading...

[FBIS Editor's Note: The following selections are taken from "Unrestricted Warfare," a book published in China in February 1999 which proposes tactics for developing countries, in particular China, to compensate for their military inferiority vis-à-vis the United States during a high-tech war. The selections include the table of contents, preface, afterword, and biographical information about the authors printed on the cover. The book was written by two PLA senior colonels from the younger generation of Chinese military officers and was published by the PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House in Beijing, suggesting that its release was endorsed by at least...

This article explains 4th Generation Warfare (4GW), one aspect of the new modernization program Rumsfeld and others are touting. What is 4GW? What are the core principles underlying it? How does it connect to Weapons of Mass Destruction? Where can I get a quick, efficient primer? Right here on Winds of Change.

The Pentagon’s evolving responsibilities for homeland defense could accelerate demand for customized vehicles, such as pick-up trucks and SUVs, equipped with advanced sensors, ballistic protection and a wide array of weapons. As the military services discern their specific roles in domestic security, agencies that develop vehicle technologies, such as the Army’s National Automotive Center, see emerging opportunities to bring their technology to the forefront. The NAC is a government organization, but works mostly with commercial automotive and electronics industries, seeking and testing technologies that potentially could have military utility. NAC officials expect that the expanding military involvement in homeland defense...