Urban Warfare Project

What do engineers bring to urban operations? How do the basic capabilities resident in engineer units—like those in the US Army—enable maneuver forces to achieve their objectives when operating in cities? For commanders, what are the most important considerations to account for when employing engineers in combined arms operations, and what effects can they expect from specific engineer tactics and equipment? This episode examines those questions and more as John Spencer is joined by Lieutenant Colonel John Chambers, an engineer commander in the 1st Infantry Division.

John Spencer is joined on this episode by retired General David Petraeus. He served thirty-seven years in the US Army, culminating his career with six consecutive commands as a general officer, including five in combat. He served as the commander of coalition forces in Iraq during the troop surge there, commander of US Central Command, and commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan. Following his retirement from the Army, he served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He earned a PhD from Princeton University and is the coauthor of the recent book Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine. He brings both scholarship and deep, firsthand experience fighting enemy forces in urban ares to this conversation.

In this episode, guest host Jayson Geroux is joined by retired Lieutenant Colonel Louis DiMarco, a professor of military history at the United States Army Command and General Staff College. Dr. DiMarco is the author of the influential 2012 book Concrete Hell: Urban Warfare from Stalingrad to Iraq. In the conversation, he discusses how he became interested in urban warfare and describes the urban warfare history course he developed and continues to teach at the Command and General Staff College. He also highlights a number of historical urban battles while also noting the themes that have consistently featured throughout urban operations history.

Many will be familiar with the major facts about the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel. Over 1,200 people were killed and another 240 kidnapped and brought to Gaza as hostages. But what do we know about the specific sites—more than twenty in total—that the attackers selected as targets? What about the specific tactics they employed? And since many of the sites targeted were in built-up, inhabited areas, what lessons on urban warfare can be extracted from the attacks? John Spencer explores those questions and more, based on firsthand research, in this episode.

In this episode, John Spencer is joined by retired Colonel Kevin Felix. He served 30 years in the US Army, with his last assignment as chief of Army Capabilities and Integration Center's Future Warfare Division. He describes the Army’s different approaches for thinking about and studying the future of warfare, including major efforts beginning in 2014 to focus on global urbanization, including by incorporating it into wargames like Unified Quest. The discussion highlights the complex challenge of predicting the future, developing warfighting concepts informed by those predictions, and ultimately making decisions about what the future of warfare will require of the US Army.

During the 2022 Battle of Mariupol, approximately three thousand Ukrainian defenders, vastly outnumbered by Russian forces, were quickly surrounded in a steel plant with their backs to the Sea of Azov and little hope of anyone coming to their rescue. Running out of ammunition, short of medicine, and with casualties mounting, they were in desperate need of resupply. A bold plan was conceived, which would involve risky helicopter flights to the besieged defenders. In this episode, John Spencer is joined by retired Colonel Liam Collins. Together, they discuss their research in Ukraine and what they learned about these resupply operations during the battle.

Over several dozen episodes, the Urban Warfare Project Podcast has explored many of the unique challenges of urban warfare. But what is urban warfare, exactly? The simple answer is that it's simply combat that takes place in the man-made terrain of cities. But going deeper, what are the variety of urban patterns and urban functions, for example, and how do they influence the conduct of military operations? What about building types and construction materials? And how do all of these variables inform the way militaries conceptualize urban environments? These questions and others form the foundation of our understanding of urban warfare and are addressed in this special episode.

When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February, one of their first targets was the city of Mariupol. The battle that followed is an epic story of resistance in which a very small number of Ukrainian fighters defended the city for over eighty days against a Russian force five to eight times their size, preventing the Russians from diverting to other parts of Ukraine. In this episode, John Spencer is joined by Aiden Aslin, a British citizen who took part in that battle and was captured by Russian forces there in April 2022. His experiences offers a unique view of how the Battle of Mariupol unfolded, and the details of his captivity as a Russian prison of war for over five months offer a glimpse into an often unseen aspect of the war.

Iraq, Syria, Nagorno-Karbakh, Ukraine, and now Israel. The past year has seen no shortage of urban warfare. In this holiday-themed episode of the Urban Warfare project, Colonel (CA) John Spencer is joined by two urban warfare scholars to talk about the unique capabilities, ideas, and initiatives they hope Santa will bring. Major Jayson Geroux is a member of the First Canadian Division Headquarters and Mr. Stuart Lyle is the urban operations research lead for the UK-based Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. From urban operations training and education to unique equipment designed specifically for the challenges of urban environments, the discussion highlights what is necessary for militaries to improve their preparedness for urban warfare.

In this episode Dr. Charles Knight joings John Spencer to discuss the Battle of Marawi. A senior lecturer in terrorism, asymmetric conflict, and urban operations at Charles Sturt University and a senior researcher at the University of New South Wales, Dr. Knight has researched and and written about the 2017 battle, in which the Philippine Army fought against Islamic State fighters over the course of five months. With the two sides fighting through the streets, alleys, and buildings of Marawi, it was one of the biggest and most high-intensity urban battles of the modern era.

The laws of war govern the initiation and conduct of armed conflict. What can be legitimately targeted? What constitutes a war crime? The laws of war provide answers to these questions and others. They apply everywhere, but there are unique considerations in certain environments—especially in cities. The hostilities in Gaza over the past several weeks offer a case in point. To examine the laws of war and their application in urban areas, and to specifically explore the case of Gaza, John Spencer is joined in this episode by General Charles Dunlap, a retired major general and former deputy judge advocate general of the US Air Force who is now a professor of the practice of law and executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics, and National Security at Duke Law School.

In this episode, John Spencer is joined by Dr. Deane Baker, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales, Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He specializes in the ethics of armed conflict, and he joins the podcast to discuss his research on military ethics and how ethical dilemmas present themselves on the battlefield. In particular, he explains why urban warfare creates a context that generates unique ethical concerns—concerns that remain unresolved and are of interest to both warfighters and ethicists.

Almost immediately after Hamas launched its brutal set of terrorist attacks in Israel, it became clear that the Israel Defense Forces would respond militarily. That meant a campaign against Hamas targets in Gaza. Because of Gaza's heavily urban terrain and the specific location of Hamas military forces, the fight has occurred—and will continue to occur—in deeply challenging environments for military forces, places where the law of armed conflict's provisions aimed at protecting civilians must be followed. To understand the specific measures in place to do so, John Spencer is joined on this episode by Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces. He describes the range of mechanisms adopted by Israeli forces to minimize incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian property in urban warfare.

If the Israel Defense Forces conduct a ground campaign in Gaza, the threat of Hamas tunnels will be one of the most significant challenges to contend with. But how many of these tunnels are there? What can Israeli forces do about the tunnels when they encounter them? Can they seal them? Can they destroy them with bunker-buster munitions or other explosives? The answers to these questions are not simple. In this episode, John Spencer welcomes Dr. Daphne Richemond-Barak back to the show. She is a professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy at Reichman University, author of the book Underground Warfare, and creator of the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare.

On October 7, when the militant group Hamas launched a large-scale set of coordinated attacks against Israel, the tragic result was the deadliest day in the country's history. In this episode, host John Spencer is joined by Dr. Jacob Stoil, the chair of applied history at the Modern War Institute and an associate professor of military history at the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies. Together, they trace the Israel Defense Forces' initial response and contextualize the massive mobilization of three hundred thousand military reservists. This sets the stage for the discussion to explore an important question: If Israel launches a ground campaign into Gaza, what can they expect to encounter?

What incentives do armed actors have to operate in subterranean environments? What are some of the unique challenges that underground spaces pose to military forces? And why is underground warfare occurring increasingly frequently? To explore those questions and other features of conflict in the exceptional terrain of the subterranean, this episode features a conversation with Dr. Daphne Richemond-Barak, an assistant professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy, head of the international law desk of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at IDC Herzliya, and author of the book Underground Warfare.

On February 24, 2022, when Russian forces invaded Ukraine, they quickly targeted several key cities. One of those was the industrial hub of Mariupol. For three months, Ukrainian forces defending the city held out, until they were told to surrender on May 20. While thousands were taken into captivity, many whom are still being held as prisoners of wars, at least one civilian fighter, a man named Gennadiy, survived and remained in the city. In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer tells the story of the man who fought the Russian invaders at the Battle of Mariupol, was captured and tortured, resisted, escaped, and survived in the rubble of the city for nine months, before he was rescued in an operation by Ukrainian special operations forces.

How does Ukraine’s military balance the need to train its forces and fight in a major land war at the same time? In short, any way it can. That includes training led by a number of organizations created and staffed by foreigners in Ukraine, among whom are a number of military veterans from the United States. In this episode, John Spencer speaks to one of those them. Retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Erik Kramer is the cofounder and director of the Ukraine Defense Support Group. He describes his work training the Ukrainian Armed Forces and explains how he has modified the training based on unit needs and the evolution of the war—specifically, the challenges Ukrainian soldiers face on the urban battlefield.

In this episode, John Spencer is joined by Stuart Lyle. The urban operations lead for the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, he describes a series of research studies and events that led to the creation of a new type of unit called Phalanx. Optimized for the unique challenges of urban warfare, the British Army is currently experimenting with the new unit. He also explains the historical trends that influenced the form Phalanx would take and details the specific changes made to company-sized infantry units to enhance their performance on the modern urban battlefield.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year, a series of battles have taken place for control of cities—Kherson, Mariupol, Kharkiv, and many more. Each of those fights have shared a common characteristic—the presence of civilians—that also represents one of the greatest challenges in urban warfare. Specifically, how can a military force protect noncombatants while it seeks to accomplish its objectives in a city? To explore this question, John Spencer is joined on this episode by Sahr Muhammedally from the Center for Civilians in Conflict, a nongovernmental organization that seeks to convince parties to armed conflicts to recognize the dignity and rights of civilians.