John Spencer – Urban Warfare
Released 21 September, 2022
This podcast explores urban warfare through the lens of modern warfare in Ukraine.
Keywords: Britain, Israel, Ukraine, urban warfare, modern warfare
Episode Transcript: “Urban Warfare”
Stephanie Crider (Host)
Decisive Point introduces Conversations on Strategy, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who explore timely issues in national security affairs.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.
Conversations on Strategy welcomes John Spencer. Spencer currently serves as the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, codirector of the Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project podcast. He served over 25 years in the US Army as an infantry soldier, having held the ranks from private to sergeant first class and second lieutenant to major. He also currently serves as a colonel in the California State Guard, assigned to the 40th Infantry Division, California Army National Guard, as the director of urban warfare training. His research focuses on military operations in dense urban areas, megacities, urban, and subterranean warfare.
Welcome to Conversations on Strategy, John. I’m glad you’re here.
(John Spencer)
Thanks for having me.
Host
Let’s talk about urban warfare. The US Army War College Press has published several pieces on this topic over the years. On a recent Urban Warfare Project podcast, you note urban warfare is the hardest. Can you elaborate on that?
(Spencer)
Sure. So I’m pretty adamant out of all the places you could ask military units to try to achieve strategic objectives, the urban operating environment is the hardest.
Because, one, the physical terrain, right, which is complicated and hard in all areas—high elevation, you know, deep jungles—but the actual element of the urban physical terrain, the three-dimensional, the surface, subsurface, rooftops, the canalizing effect of the buildings, and the architecture of the city that reduce our military’s or any military’s ability to do what they want to do, right? So to do maneuver warfare, to use (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance or) ISR and long-range strike capabilities—it doesn’t get negated; it gets degraded in the urban environment. So I think it is the hardest because of that complexity of that physical terrain.
But, by definition, “urban” means there’s people present. By our definition, the US military’s definition, “urban” means that there’s man-made terrain on top of natural terrain. There’s a population, and then there’s infrastructure to support that population. So with the presence of civilians in the operating environment in which militaries will be told to achieve objectives, the presence of civilians means that there will be a limit on the use of force. Because of the law of war, the international humanitarian law, (law of armed conflict or) LOAC, the different names that we use for it—since World War II and even all the way before World War II—most people think that in urban fights, like Stalingrad and, for us, Manila and Seoul—that was just a free range. There’s always a limit on the use of force. So going into it, it’s going to be harder for the military to use their form of warfighting because there’s gonna be limits on the use of force. Of course, there’s the three-block war, where soldiers and commanders will have to be fighting a peer competitor, at the same time dealing with humanitarian approaches and trying to get civilians out of the battle area, trying to save infrastructure. General (Charles) Krulak called it “the three-block war.” And then, of course, we often, when we envision urban warfare in massive operating environments that are urban,
