US Military Expert: Jenin is Our Future Too

Well, we have all kinds of folks chiming in today. Hawkgirl's thoughts are noted in today's lead item, as are Natalie Solent's.

Then there's the Washinton Post, who displayed a rare gift of timing. At the end of my comprehensive Jenin analysis, I opined that a certain Palestinian girl would get her wish. Both America and the Arab states would indeed go through her experiences - albeit from opposite ends. Military expert Richard Sinnreich says that I'm probably right (Washington Post, May 6, 2002).

Lots of great quotes in this one:

"The same pattern, incidentally, has characterized virtually every U.S. military war game for the past five years. Confronted by overwhelming U.S technological supremacy... "Red" commanders including myself invariably have chosen to concede the open ground in favor of defending in complex terrain, including cities. Equally invariably, "Blue" commanders have found it hard to respond effectively without inflicting just the sort of collateral damage we have witnessed in Jenin...."

Iain, if you have any contacts at Sandhurst, you might want to ask them about this. I'd bet they're seeing a similar pattern.

Richard adds:

"...before aiming our moral outrage at the attacker, currently the Israelis, it is worth asking what moral responsibility attaches to a defender who chooses deliberately to fight in densely populated urban areas shielded by his own noncombatants. On this score, at least, the laws of war, such as they are, are definitive...."

(And the Palestinians broke almost all of them, by their own admissions.)

Sinnreich also notes archly that:

"In equivalent U.S. terms, the Israelis sacrificed hundreds of their own to evade the very charges of atrocity that now are leveled against them -- whereas in Somalia, we ourselves slaughtered civilians by the score to protect a handful of U.S. Rangers."

I saw Black Hawk Down. I read the book. I cheered for America's Rangers every step of the way. This was war. They did what they had to do.

And if British troops should end up in Basra soon, or Baghdad? What then, Mr. Dale? What then....?

JULY 20/05 UPDATE: This page on "Winning city Fights" has a very interesting account of the Israeli experience in Jenin, and what it means re: urban tactics, from someone who fought there. Lots of follow-on thinking, too.

"Armor.

First of all, armor is a necessity, not an option. When faced against a prepared and well armed enemy in MOUT, you don't really have a choice but to use armor (unless you decide to wipe out the city). Light infantry by itself simply doesn't cut it. Ranger-type forces in their Humvees will not do well- to put it mildly - in any urban environment with heavy sniper and machinegun fire. Any the least bit competent and prepared enemy will be able to hold their defenses almost indefinitely, until you either pay with 5-7 of your own for one of his, or bring in the heavy guns and engineering vehicles, bulldozers, etc., Contrary to the popular belief, the most valuable armored asset in a city is not a tank, or an assault gun, or a howitzer. It's a bulldozer, a.k.a. D-9 the "Zionist Monster". They don't call it that for nothing, the thing really is huge and ugly. And it's the most effective weapon by far, its blade is better then 120mm HE and more reliable in brining down walls and buildings, clearing pathways or just shaking - literally - civilian inhabitants out of their dwellings, without worrying too much about mines or booby-traps. Unlike the tank, it can be a lethal or a non-lethal weapon, when you need it. It is also much less vulnerable to mines, because of the higher clearance, and against RPGs it can be equipped with the same ERA as the tank.

In Jenin, our Soldiers could not advance until they brought in the bulldozers, the helicopters - Cobras and Apaches - firing their cannons and missiles, just could not suppress the palestinian fire (I'll write more on the issue of helicopters and 20-30mm guns in general later). The D-9s cleared pathways for the troops and tanks to pass, destroyed buildings where the gunmen remained. Obviously, armor is vulnerable, and as much as it's useful, it also requires a lot of attention. The ratio of infantry to armor is at the very least one level up - battalion of infantry per armored company, and usually should be higher, battalion per platoon.

Combat at night

The night is yours - at night, you have the advantage. You have night vision equipment, you have IR designators, you can move around, point to targets. All your tanks, helicopters, and the rest of your support have night capabilities as well. Moreover, tanks have thermal sights, even better. You can operate at night as well as during the day. However, your enemy can't. In most cases, the enemy will not have a lot of night-vision devices, if any at all. All operations must be carried out at night, if possible. If not -think about it again and do it at night. Since darkness if your friend, it's a good idea to cut electricity supply to keep your enemy in the dark.

Multi-level fighting

Much has been said about breaking through walls, and I'm not going to repeat it. Instead I want to talk about two other things - top floors, and sewers.

Top floors, roofs, etc., are prime locations to control the streets. Both for your own forces and theirs, obviously. Taking the high ground is imperative in any urban operation, the sooner - the better. In some cases, this can even be done by dropping heliborne SF teams on some roofs, but more on this later.

Helicopters

Helicopters are good not only for transport, but to clear the roofs once you move in. Their guns aren't very effective against concrete walls, but at least they can keep the roofs clean. Now while the roofs will be yours, the sewers won't. Sewers provide underground passages and communications for the local guerillas, allowing them to move from block to block, transport ammunition, etc., It's not a good idea to go down there and hunt them. This can be dealt with by either simply collapsing some of the sewers, or flooding them. This is dangerous, because unless the sewage system is restored at some point, it will create a "humanitarian disaster" or in other words, you'll start drowning in it. However, there isn't really any other way to deal with it.

Snipers

You have them, but your enemy has them too. The pals had them, most of our casualties in Jenin who weren't killed in the booby-trapped house, were killed with shots in the head or neck. They're not all just shooting their guns in the air on demonstrations, some of them know how to use them, too. A piece of statistics

In Chechnya, during the day most of sniper shots were concentrated in two areas - head/neck, and the groin. Why groin ? Because it's incapacitating, it takes two people to take care of a wounded Soldier, and it's humiliating.

At night, most shots were in the lower jaw. Which goes to show you the real dangers of smoking. Two problems when encountering sniper fire in a city - First, often there's not enough top protection. They will shoot from the top floors (not from the roofs usually, they're too open), just go ahead and try to open your hatch... without any overhead cover in most cases, you're a good target.

Second, when you rush into the building to get the sniper, chances are the stairway will be booby-trapped, and the sniper gone through an escape rout you don't know about. This is where the tanks come in handy. The main advantage in snipers you'll have is better training, and more night scopes. Also, guerilla-type opponents don't usually have long-range 12.7mm or Lapua rifles, so you might get an advantage in range as well. In order to use it, you have to identify and take control of key locations, like high buildings on intersections that cover the most ground or important streets.

Aerial reconnaissance by UAVs is probably the best way to identify these targets. You have to do it BEFORE you insert your main force into the inner city, special forces and recon should capture such points first and establish sniper position as the main force advances. Timing is very important here - if you do it too soon, they'll be overwhelmed with the local militias, if you do it too late your main force will suffer casualties.

Obstacles

The enemy will without a doubt use obstacles to stop you advance. In city streets, concrete blocks and debris, sandbag barricades, trenchers, or combination of all the above can effectively stop the movement of armor and troops, if they're not assisted by bulldozers and combat engineers. A smart enemy won't try to block all the access routs at once. Instead, using a system of blocked streets he will try to lead you into a pre-defined Minutka square-style kill zone. However not all people realize that obstacles can serve you just as well.

For some reason many people think that urban warfare for the attacker is just breaking through barricades and buildings. This isn't true - you can use exactly the same methods, barricades out of concrete debris, and especially trenchers, to your advantage. The key here is to divide and conquer - first of all, you can establish obstacles around your target city, to prevent the enemy from getting out/getting reinforcements and supplies in. Once inside the city, you can separate between cleared-out zones and combat zones, prevent the movement of militias inside the city. Of course you can't stop them from moving around at all, but trenches for example will do a good job in preventing the movement of cars and trucks, which often have mounted machineguns/RPGs, and transport ammo and explosives. This also won't let them to use "rapid reaction" forces, consisting of a couple of trucks with mounted heavy machineguns or even ZU-23-2, which can form dangerous anti-helicopter and anti-infantry teams.

[Attack] Helicopters

Despite the IAF's performance in recent fighting, helicopters are vulnerable in the city, and not as useful as tanks. A well armed opponent can make the use of helicopters pretty difficult. Even during the combat with palestinians several IAF helicopters were slightly damaged by small arms fire, if they'd have heavy machineguns like DShK or KPVT, or even ZU-23, and more RPGs, they could've downed one or two.

In Mogadishu as we all know they've shot down two Black Hawks, and if they had any minimal tactical training, they could easily shoot more. Basically a helicopter is good as long as it's moving. Rapid insertion, hunting down groups of gunmen, some light fire support. If they start hovering around the same place for too long, they become targets. In terms of fire support, their usefulness is limited. First of all, the gun can't hit crap.

Second, when it can hit, it's not much use against real walls. The missiles aren't terrible effective either. A tank is always better, more accurate and far more effective fire support. The only drawback - it can't hit the top floors and of course not the roofs, here you have to use ADA vehicles such as the IDF had in Ramalla, M113 with Vulcans, and helicopters.

Intelligence.

Three sources of intelligence exist in MOUT - observation, SIGINT, and HUMINT. Observation is done by aerial reconnaissance, most often using drones - UAVs. They can rely information in real time back to the commander, and you can use their photos as maps - this way you at least won't be surprised by a building complex the size of FBI headquarters that's not indicated on your map, or by a crater five streets wide made by your Air Force a year ago. It's also a great help in planning and later, identification of your own forces - you know exactly where they should be, so there's less possibility (but not a guarantee) that you'll start a fight with the second battalion over a street corner. > In short, drones are a great help.

Second is SIGINT, or radio interception. The enemy obviously has to communicate somehow, and you can learn valuable information by monitoring his calls. In a city, the most likely means of communication will be cell phones, and walkie-talkies. These are easy to listen too, so your biggest worry will be a translator who not only knows the language, but the slang they use as well. That you won't have, these people will be in intelligence, not infantry or armor companies, but it would be nice We have it a little easier, because more Soldiers speak Arabic.

Last, but the most important, is HUMINT. It comes in two parts - your own intelligence gathering units, and informant from among the locals. For the first, we have the mista'arvim, or literally "those who turn into Arabs" (see www.isayeret.com/units/larticle.htm for more details), they're very successful, but very busy and usually unavailable.In any case, they're extremely helpful when it comes to infiltration into the local population, and can provide intelligence from "behind enemy lines"(or even from inside enemy lines).

As far as I'm aware, the U.S. Army or marines don't have such units, although the CIA does they won't do your dirty work. Although in a few of years... or maybe a bit more... I'm pretty sure you'll develop something similar.

The second, local informants, are easier to get - catch them, pay them - but aren't trustworthy. Never believe anything he says, unless it's corroborated by another source, or certain physical measures were applied. Unfortunately, such "measures" are forbidden, so you'll have to double check

The thing is, all three of these are also available to your opponent. They don't need UAVs and aerial photography, because they already know the area they're in, but the rest is very easy to get. For observation (and liaison) for example, they can easily employ kids - some 12 year old is going to hang out on the outskirts of the city, you're not going to shoot him, and he'll tell his bigger and better armed friends that you're coming.

Kids can be very attentive to details, especially in these things makes them feel like Soldiers. For HUMINT, the local non-combatants will always be more inclined to help their own, then you. The people you leave behind in cleared areas will be happy to supply information, and possibly weapons, ammunition, to the gunmen you haven't clear out yet.

SIGINT is also not rocket science. The Palestinians are monitoring our cell phones in Gaza for example. If they can do it, anyone can. Just a bunch of random thoughts. In the movie "Black Hawk Down", apparently there's a line (haven't seen it) where a Delta guy tells some Soldier "stay away from the walls, keep to the middle of the street" or something to that effect. If someone tells you something like that, hit the moron in the head with a brick so he'll be medivac'ed and won't do too much damage.

Keep off the middle of the street at all times, stay close to the walls, stay low. If you use flattop M4A1 with an optic as a designated marksman rifle, you'll need a cheekpiece. They'll tell you that you don't need it, but in fact you do. Chances are, you'll have to improvise it - better think about it before and not after. Flashlights are useful if you're doing house-to-house, dark basements, stuff like that. If you're not a fancy SF type and you don't have an underbarrel flashlight that comes with your rifle, you can tape one to your handguards. It actually holds better then you'd think, and pretty useful sometimes."

I recommend the rest of the page as well.

See also...

• Parameters (Spring 1996) - Ralph Peters: "Our Soldiers, Their Cities"