Is the claim that taking a city is much harder than other types of defended terrain true? Or is urban warfare no more difficult for the attacker than other types of terrain?
Urban terrain does not favor the defender more so than other terrain (rolling or rugged). In fact, it appears less.
And in a follow-up post, the author looks at the Quantified Judgment Model:
As can be seen, there is not a lot of difference between Rolling-mixed to Urban to Rugged-Mixed. Clearly there is an advantage to defending in urban terrain, but no more so than other good defensive non-urban terrain.
Yet fighting for a city absolutely takes time and seems to really pile up casualties.
Armies have preferred to avoid cities when they can. But the expansion of urban footprints seemingly makes it too difficult to bypass these urban areas. The whole "mega-city" craze is built on the need to develop weapons, organizations, and tactics to fight through these presumed casualty sponges:
I'm all on board mapping the Human Terrain of potential conflict zones, including in cities.
But I'm against embracing the mission of fighting in such mega-cities as opposed to being capable of operating within them to achieve narrow objectives when we must to gain the objective of the broader campaign. Cities are army sponges that could suck in more and more of our Army, distracting it from achieving the campaign objective. Germany's Sixth Army learned all about that.
I'm worried we'll gain the ability to pacify cities and be drawn into such meat grinders--they have massive underground terrain, too, you know--simply because we can do the job rather than because we should.
Don't be mesmerized by the bright lights of the big cities. Be capable of fighting within cities rather than assuming that means being capable of fighting for the cities.
I've long been wary of urban warfare. Yet the data says urban terrain isn't actually much more favorable to defenders? How is that possible?
Could it be that urban terrain is simply much more dense than other terrain you have to fight through?
Assume a ridge or hill provides the same (or even greater) defensive advantage as a city block. But if a defender of a ridge or hill has to fall back, they may need to retreat 5,000 yards to the next defensive high ground position. But a defender in a city block just needs to retreat across the street. Doesn't that make cities more time consuming and expensive in lives to take?
That might make sense. If you have to fall back 100 miles to the next river to hold off the enemy, you won't do as well killing the enemy and slowing them down than if you only have to fall back 100 feet. Again and again.
Quantity of defensive positions may have a quality all its own.
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