US Army-Marines Urban fighting defects

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LESSONS LEARNED IN RECENT URBAN COMABT
EXCERSIES AND THE SHORTCOMINGS OF THE BEST US ARMY UNITS

(EXCERPTS FROM wsj AND OTHER SOURCES)

TO SEE why, look no further than the 980 Marines under the command of Lt. Col.
Michael Belcher here. In June they went through an experimental five-week training
regimen in urban warfare, designed to lower the terrible casualty rates common in block-
to-block fighting. This month, those same Marines were put to the test in a grueling four
days of simulated urban combat, up against foes who had been coached in the hit-and-run
tactics of guerrilla fighters.
“We need to prove to our enemies that we have the skills to defeat them in the city,
and over the next 96 hours we will,” barked Col. Belcher to his men as the exercise
began, his eyes hidden behind wraparound Oakley sunglasses.
The Marines, however, were also about to discover the high costs of urban warfare
that often await even the best-trained troops.

CLAY BULLETS
Behind Col. Belcher stood the remains of the long-shuttered George Air Force Base,
nicknamed “al-George” by the Marines after an imaginary Middle Eastern city. Inside,
perched on rooftops and hiding behind sandbag bunkers, were the “enemy fighters,”
played by 160 Marine reservists. People hired from an employment agency helped
populate the city with “civilians.” Both fighting forces were armed with simulated
grenades and artillery rounds, plus rifles shooting clay bullets that leave just a small welt.

For decades the U.S. military had a simple policy on urban fighting:
Avoid it. Cities diminish America’s huge technological advantages. Satellites and
surveillance planes can’t see inside buildings or down sewer tunnels where fighters may
lurk. Moreover, urban battlefields are full of civilians-hard to distinguish for certain from
combatants, and easily caught in the crossfire. Few things can alienate an ally more
quickly than photos of dead women and children.
But two events persuaded the Marine Corps it couldn’t simply bypass urban warfare.
The first was the 1993 debacle in Somalia, when Army Rangers sent to capture a hostile
warlord got into a nightlong firefight in Mogadishu that killed 18 Americans, including
one dragged afterward through the streets. A year later, the U.S. watched as Chechen
rebels inside the city of Grozny managed to destroy 102 of 120 Russian tanks sent after
them.
And now Iraq. “I know you all have been reading the papers and watching the news,”
Col. Belcher told his Marines before he sent them into mock battle. “The next time you
do this it might be for real.”

URBAN PLANNING
Mr. Hussein has recently moved batteries of surface-to-air missiles from the desert
into Baghdad, a signal that if attacked he plans to fight U.S. troops in the city instead of
the open desert, say defense intelligence officials. His elite Republican Guard, which

before the Gulf War trained mostly in open terrain, also has stepped up its urban training,
defense officials say.
Initially, the Marine Corps looked for a technological solution to urban battlefields. It
experimented with remote-controlled surveillance vehicles and thermal sights to spot
fighters in darkened rooms. But those measures wouldn’t lower casualty rates, war games
showed. So the Marines focused on training. For instance, they began to teach troops
running down hallways to stay away from the sides, because bullets tend to ricochet and
travel along walls. Marines also had to get used to facing fire from above and below
instead of head-on.
In small-scale experiments, a month of urban-warfare training seemed to cut casualty
rates to 15%, about half of what’s common in house-to-house fighting. But the Marine
Corps couldn’t be sure its training worked without testing it in a sprawling urban
complex, where men could easily get lost and confused. George Air Force Base, with
about 1,000 abandoned buildings packed into a half-mile square, is just such a place.
As the sun rose over al-George one morning this month, the nearly 1,000 Marines
blinked away the last good night’s sleep they would have in four days. For the rest of the
exercise they would be lucky to get more than a couple of hours of sleep each day, and
that would come on a filthy floor covered with broken glass and spent shell casings.

Key to the fight were 135 Marines from Lima Company, under the command
of Capt. George Schreffler, a stocky 31-year-old who has wanted to be a Marine since he
was 10 years old and wrote a letter to a recruiter. He still has the letter the Marines sent
him in reply.
Lima Company’s job was to fight from the southern edge of the city to the north,
dislodging the rebels from their bunkers inside a thicket of one- and two-story
cinderblock apartment houses. Once they reached the northern edge, their job would be to
clear a landing zone for about 150 helicopter-borne Marines from India Company, who
would swoop in to finish off the exposed enemy fighters. A third unit, Kilo Company,
would attack from the west, acting as a decoy to divert the foes’ attention. The rest of the
troops would evacuate casualties, treat the wounded and make sure fuel, food and water
got to the troops.
“You’re my right cross,” the tall, lean Col. Belcher told Lima Company. “Put the
enemy back on his heels so India Company can knock them out.”
U.S. forces usually prefer to fight after dark because they have superior night-vision
technology. But in cities nighttime fighting can mean chaos and “fratricide”-men
inadvertently killing fellow troops. So Lima Company aimed to clear the landing zone by
4 p.m., giving the follow-on forces three hours of daylight to kill the enemy before
darkness brought them a chance to regroup.
Like most Marine companies, Capt. Schreffler’s consisted of three platoons, each led
by a lieutenant. Each platoon, in turn, had three squads of 10 to 15 men led by a corporal,
a young enlisted man. If all went as planned, Lima Company’s three platoons would
reach the northern landing zone at the same time.
Minutes before the fight began, Capt. Schreffler’s biggest concern was that one
platoon, commanded by Lt. Stanton Lee, wouldn’t reach the landing area in time. In
practice runs, Lt. Lee had been cautious and methodical. “Be aggressive,” the captain told
him. “Your blood should be up!”

At 11 a.m. the battle started. The Marines hopped from their armored vehicles and
ran toward a line of low-slung buildings on the city’s edge.
Suddenly 70 people, screaming for protection, came running at them. “Don’t shoot!”
Lt. Lee screamed. “Civilians!”

LOST TROOPS
Amid the confusion, one of his squad leaders, Cpl. David Jennings, lost track of his
men, half of whom ran into the wrong building. The 20-year-old Cpl. Jennings quickly
collected his lost charges and returned with them, only to discover that Lt. Lee and the
rest of the platoon had moved out without them.
Cpl. Jennings and his 10-man squad were on their own. On an open battlefield,
young squad leaders like him can usually maintain eye contact with senior officers. Often
they communicate with hand signals. In cities, the many buildings and walls make that
impossible.
Thirty minutes passed before Lt. Lee even realized that Cpl. Jennings’s squad had
fallen behind. Frantically, the lieutenant began calling for Cpl. Jennings, who, because of
his baby-face looks, had been saddled with the unfortunate radio call sign “Pedophile.”
“Pedophile! Pedophile! Where are you, Pedophile?” Lt. Lee yelled into the radio. No
answer. It’s a common problem. Military radios, designed for fighting in open terrain,
don’t work nearly as well in cities full of obstructions.
The lieutenant gave up trying to raise his squad leader. “We’re getting bogged down
again,” he said. “Let’s go.”
To advance to the next cluster of buildings, Lt. Lee’s platoon needed to kill a
machine-gunner in a small building. Lt. Lee grabbed a 19-year-old lance corporal armed
with an antitank rocket and ordered him to take out the gunner’s nest. It was a risky
maneuver. They were inside a building, and antitank rockets, like many basic infantry
weapons, can’t be fired inside a building. The tremendous fiery back-blast could kill the
triggerman.
So the lance corporal had to venture outside, making himself an easy target. Hoisting
the heavy rocket on his shoulder, he dashed to a nearby courtyard. He was lining up his
shot when Lt. Lee noticed the rocket was pointed at the wrong building. As Lt. Lee ran
out to correct the lance corporal, the reservists playing the role of enemy guerrillas
opened fire with their clay bullets, “killing” both Marines.
With its leader dead, Lt. Lee’s platoon fell apart. A half-dozen more members were
soon knocked off when they bunched up outside the entrance to an apartment house. A
mock enemy sniper picked off seven others. By 2 p.m., only nine members of the 35-man
platoon remained alive, all of them members of Cpl. Jennings’s squad. The other two
platoons in Capt. Schreffler’s company also suffered heavy losses.

The captain radioed Col. Belcher and told him his Marines weren’t going to clear the
northern helicopter landing zone in time. Col. Belcher retooled the plan. Instead of
landing the India Company reinforcements in the north, he decided they would touch
down in a courtyard in the southernmost part of the city, which Capt. Schreffler’s men
had already overrun. The airborne reinforcements then would push north through a
corridor cleared by what was left of Capt. Schreffler’s Lima Company, walking and
riding in Humvees.

The pressure remained on Cpl. Jennings to reach the northern edge by 4 p.m.
Operating on their own, the once-lost squad was beginning to work as a team, moving in
a choreographed advance. First two men sprinted about 10 yards, then took cover behind
a wall. As they ran, two others laid down a blast of covering fire. Then it was those two
men’s turn to sprint, as their partners provided the covering fire.
Instead of circling a building to get to the door, the squad smashed through windows.
Four hours into the battle, their uniforms were torn and their hands streaked with blood.
Sweat cut tiny wavy channels through the grime on their faces. Many were dizzy from
heat and dehydration.
Around 3 p.m., exhausted, they flopped down inside a house about 200 yards short of
their objective, a cluster of five buildings up ahead. “Where’s our machine-gunner?” Cpl.
Jennings asked, looking for a Marine attached to the platoon.
“He’s dead. Everyone’s dead,” replied another Marine.
Cpl. Jennings’s eight Marines and one medic, a Navy corpsman, concluded they
simply didn’t have enough men to take the remaining five buildings. They decided to
hold their ground and wait for reinforcements.
Suddenly, Lt. Paul Gillikin, Lima Company’s second in command, stormed into the
small house where Cpl. Jennings and his men had taken cover. Lt. Gillikin actually had
been “killed” several hours earlier. But he couldn’t stand to see Cpl. Jennings and his
fellow Marines give up. He grabbed a machine gun left behind by a dead Marine and set
it up. Then he ordered Cpl. Jennings to get on the radio and call one of Lima Company’s
M1A1 tanks, a 72-ton behemoth that can flatten almost anything. Cpl. Jennings had never
worked with a tank-a job that usually falls to a far more senior officer-and it hadn’t
occurred to him to call one in.
When the tank arrived, it used its main gun in mock destruction of three houses
where the enemy had taken refuge. With the help of their machine gun, Cpl. Jennings and
his men then stormed the remaining two buildings.
Once they reached their final objective, a small cluster of houses on the northern
fringe of “al-George,” Cpl. Jennings ordered his squad to take up defensive positions. “I
don’t want to come in and see you on your ass asleep,” he yelled. The men nodded, and
then collapsed. Cpl. Jennings didn’t check on them. Instead he radioed his new position
to Capt. Schreffler. Then he fell to the floor in exhaustion himself.
Thirty minutes later, the reinforcements from India Company arrived, racing through
the house in pursuit of the fleeing enemy. Cpl. Jennings and his men tore into a cold
dinner and then spent the night on a dirty floor, anxiously awaiting a nighttime ambush
that never came. The next day they shifted into peacekeeping duty, a chore that kept them
awake and on edge for most of two more days.

LESSONS LEARNED
The Marine Corps says it has already learned some lessons from the mock assault.
One is that even young Marines, such as Cpl. Jennings, need to be trained with tanks.
Another is that platoons fighting inside cities could benefit from the presence of a senior
enlisted man whose job would be to pass on intelligence from higher headquarters.
A few cautions for any future combat inside a city also stand out. In urban terrain,
with its maze of alleys, even the most basic plans are difficult to pull off. The Marines
lost 142 men in their last major urban battle, the 1968 Hue City battle in Vietnam.

The experiment showed that even the ablest Marines can get bogged down if they
face a dug-in and determined enemy. In the Gulf War, U.S. ground forces routed the
Iraqis in a mere 100 hours, after air power had softened them up. A ground war in the
streets of Iraq’s capital city could take much longer.
Finally, the assault on “al-George” made clear that attacking cities without having a
big numerical advantage is a risky endeavor. More-hawkish members of the Bush
administration have suggested that a U.S. force of 80,000 would be enough to defeat Mr.
Hussein’s 400,000-member army and 100,000-strong Republican Guard. They’re
counting on the army being dispirited and the rest of the force turning on Mr. Hussein at
some point in the fighting.
In the assault on “al-George,” however, it took 980 Marines to roust just 160 rebels
from urban terrain. And despite wielding a 6-to-1 advantage, the Marine force still took
about 100 casualties.
The 22 August issue of the Wall Street Journal features an excellent article by Greg Jaffe
on a recent United States Marine Corps urban warfare exercise held at the former George
Air Force Base. Located 60 minutes from Los Angeles in Victorville, the old air base has
about 1,000 abandoned buildings packed into a half-mile square area. This part of the
base has been christened "al-George", after an imaginary Middle Eastern city.

The five-week long MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) experiment, which
started in June, ultimately pitted a 980-marine Infantry Battalion against 160 Marine
reservists in a four-day long exercise. The event apparently proved to be a rude
awakening. Despite wielding a 6-to-1 advantage, the Marine force still took about 100
casualties. But like any exercise win-or-lose, the real value comes in the "Lessons
Learned". Oddly enough, in an era where all of the "experts" are looking towards light
armored vehicles as America's battlefield salvation, one USMC epiphany is that young
Marines need to learn to work with tanks.

In the last few years urban warfare has taken center stage in both Army and Marine
training circles, hopefully in time to prevent another Mogadishu-style event. Since there
are indicators that Iraq's Republican Guard has stepped up it's own urban warfare
training, the Lessons Learned at al-George might soon be put to proof on the battlefield. -
Adam Geibel

August 28, 2002; Israeli Tips From Street Fighting in the West Bank

@ Tanks are a necessity, unless you want to take very high infantry losses (5-7 of your
troops for every enemy soldier).

@ The most useful armored vehicle was the D-9 armored bulldozer. This beast is large
enough, and powerful enough, to plow through buildings, or to shake buildings to set off
booby traps or force civilians (and sometimes fighters) to clear out. You’ve got to protect
the D-9 with infantry, as it is not invulnerable to anti-tank weapons.

@ The ratio of infantry to armor vehicles should vary from 30 to 100 infantrymen per
tank.

@ It’s better to fight at night, as US and Israeli forces have better night fighting
equipment and train to use it. This includes the night vision gear on your tanks and
armored vehicles. By cutting off the electricity in the enemy held city, you have a
significant advantage that should be used.

@ Grab the high ground, meaning the roofs and top floors of buildings. About all
helicopters are good for is to use their guns to clear the enemy off roofs, and to land your
troops up there.

@ Deal with the underground. The sewers will be used by the enemy to move around.
You will have to blow up portions of the sewer system. It’s not worth the casualties to go
down and fight in the sewers.

@ Snipers are the biggest problem, followed by machine-guns and booby traps. The
troops have to learn to stay under cover at all times. And if they smoke at night, don’t do
it anywhere that an enemy sniper can get a shot at you. Most snipers will be in the upper
stories of buildings (but not the roofs where your helicopters can get at them.) A smart
foe will booby trap the ground floor entrance and arrange for another escape route, so that
if you send troops into the building, the sniper will escape and your guys will run into the
trip wires and explosives. The antidote for this is to take the high ground first and use
your own snipers to take out the enemy snipers. This is where night operations are
essential. The sniper cannot hit what he can’t see, and enemy snipers will have a lot fewer
clear shots at night. When you do encounter a sniper, take how out with your own
sSeptember 6, 2002; You can expect a huge fight inside at least one major Iraqi city as
part of the upcoming US invasion of Iraq. The Republican Guard has switched its
training to mostly urban scenarios, and Iraq has relocated key heavy weapons inside
cities. The US has previously avoided city fighting due to its complexities, high
casualties, and effects that neutralize many key US weapons. Some recently-learned
lessons from Army and Marine wargames:

@ New equipment doesn't reduce casualties, but a month or more of intense city-fight
training will cut them in half. Even that reduced rate amounts to 15% of the engaged US
infantry per day.

@ Units easily become lost and separated in cities, and their radios (designed for open
country) are less than effective at bringing units back together.

@ The wholesale loss of an entire generation of E-5s during the Clinton years will hurt
the US Army and Marines in city fighting. While platoons have good lieutenants and
good platoon sergeants, as well as good soldiers, what is missing is the core of highly
trained and skilled squad and team leaders. Many soldiers in those positions were hastily
promoted to fill vacancies and need intensive training in how to act as independent unit
leaders.

@ The US military has gotten away from having "any soldier with a radio" trained to call
in artillery fire, leaving this to the "high priests of artillery" (forward observers with their
super-neat Tacfire computers). This was a mistake. In city fighting, it is hard to get into
position and every leader needs to know how to call in supporting fires.

@ Relatively few US infantry troops are trained to work directly with tanks in a city-
fighting scenario. Every squad leader should have had training in how to do this, but few
of them actually have received it.

@ While the US military has prided itself for a decade on the slogan "we own the night",
commanders want to avoid night fighting in cities because it is even more confusing and
likely to produce fratricide casualties.

@ Troops easily get bogged down dealing with barricaded enemy positions. All plans
should be worked out one step at a time and assume that every step will involve delays as
some units have to deal with these "tough nut to crack" positions.

@ It would help facilitate the collection and use of intelligence if every platoon included
an extra sergeant with his own radio who did nothing but radio his observations to the
battalion intelligence officer (S-2) and received processed "next building to either side"
information back from him. In both Army and Marine battalions, the S-2 does not have
his own radios or have anyone who reports only to him on what he needs to know.

@ Firepower is needed on the front line, and that means a 7.62mm machinegun that can
hammer through walls and barriers. The 5.56mm squad automatic weapons just cannot do