![]() 9 Adversaries defeated in the field will likely retreat into the nearest city and attempt to regroup, and the U.S. forces who could not be effectively resisted in the field. In an urban battle, LSCO peer adversaries can contest and even dominate domains in an effort to defeat and destroy U.S. 8 For Context: LSCO Adversaries May Prefer Urban Battles Army and allied land forces to replicate the exceptionally low destruction of the 2003 Battle of Baghdad, even when fighting peer adversaries. 7 From a historical perspective, the devastation of Mosul’s urban center was quite normal, but LSCO doctrine expects U.S. 6 American military strategists questioned whether American voters, policy makers, and military leaders would continue to accept such high levels of casualties, collateral damage to infrastructure and the environment, and the concomitant reconstruction expense to U.S. Although both forces achieved their strategic objectives, visual media from Aleppo and the liberation of Mosul reminded the world how destructive urban battles can still be. 5 Most recently, the major battles of the Syrian Civil War and the war against the Islamic State clearly demonstrate that neither the Russian nor American armies can avoid urban battle. Since World War II, sweeping improvements in operational reach, mass urbanization, and the proliferation of irregular warfare increasingly compelled modern armies to fight in cities despite strategists’ aversion to the high casualties and collateral damage that characterize urban combat. Army has a long history with urban warfare, from the Continental army’s 1775 inaugural campaign to besiege British forces in Boston to the 2017 liberation of Mosul from the Islamic State. 3 Buffer states are often organized around one dominant, globally connected large city that contains the only operationally convenient infrastructure for joint logistics (see figure 1 for a map of potential LSCO campaign urban objectives). joint task force (JTF) could campaign to control the capital of a buffer state. 2 Although the scope of LSCO does not include battle for a megacity, a U.S. 1 Large cities may constitute essential LSCO campaign objectives in a limited war to liberate friendly populations, threaten an adversary’s control of its own state, or dislocate an adversary who finds urban battlefields attractive as part of a cost-imposing strategy to deter U.S. Army anticipates large-scale combat operations (LSCO) against a peer adversary to seize or defend a major city in order to control its globally connected, regionally dominant concentrations of power, people, and resources. Army’s updated Field Manual 3-0, Operations, formally reintroduced the context in which the U.S. The 2017 National Security Strategy and the U.S. … Unfortunately, although strategists have advised against it and armies and generals have preferred not to, the nature of war has required armies to attack and defend cities, and victory has required that they do it well. Attacking defended cities has been one of the most difficult and potentially costly military operations. ![]() History instructs that for a variety of reasons, cities have always been targets for attack by adversaries.Ĭities have been the dominant focus of military operations for most of human history, and a fundamental purpose of armies has been defending or attacking cities. Army Task Force 464, part of the 3rd Infantry Division, seized the bridge as part of its campaign to move north toward Baghdad. A car burns on a bridge over the Euphrates River 31 March 2003 in Al Hindiyah, Iraq.
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