"Urban Combat, take two" Topic

I'm looking for suggestions and/or recommendations about urban combat.

Beyond skirmish (1 figure = 1 troop) at any scale, what would be the most interesting scale for urban combat?

I'd like to know what stand scale (type of unit per stand), unit scale (how many stands make up a unit) and mini scale folks who've tried this have preferred.

I'm leaning towards at least a squad sized stand, company sized unit and 1/285th scale.

Am I going too small here?

(Sorry, had an odd computer burp when I first posted this.)

I use Force On Force my troops have magnetic bases so if mounted on a base I can remove casualties. FonF is a platoon level game in which the 4 Man fire team is the Unit of action 30 or more minnies to the platoon ,vehicles are treated as seperate teams.
There is also CWC,FFOT,many many games out there…Mikey

Trouble with at 1.285th scale with squad sized stands the game can quickly drag into lots of fiddly moving and resolving countless fire fights, where luck with the dice is paramount. WRG's decision to subdivide sections into elements (gun and rifle teams) made that a certainty, though great fro our 6mm Vietnam games.

I think Command decisions platoon stands, made urban combat more abstract, but more realistic. As often a deadlock could be broken by reinforcement, or clever use of order chits.

A lot depends on the ground scale you plan to use. A built-up area can soak up an astonishing number of troops, and you need a whole platoon to attack any but the smallest building. Lines of sight are very short, and so urban terrain offers lots of infiltration routes, making life very hard for a static defender.

By all means try a section a stand -- I think it's a nice scale -- but use a ground scale that means each building represents an actual building, rather than, as is the usualt convention, a whole block.

All the best,

John.

Its going to depend on scale as John Salt said.

In my experience the focus drops down to fire team level with platoon leaders micromanaging assets. The reason for this is the largest element you want in a hallway or room is a fire team anything larger and most of the men are doing nothing. Safety is another issue you don't want most of your men wiped out with a single grenade in a hallway or room. The bulk of the platoon provides security and suppression while blocking escape routes or reinforcement routes.

I would add urban warfare will produce large numbers of casualties for the attackers if the defenders are even remotely competent. In training I have seen fire teams used up like ammunition.

In 1/300th squad size works well with two stands per squad (effectively 'fireteams') and I have used a variety of rules, freebies like 'Moderns' from Panzer 8, FUBAR, commercial sets like F on F, Arc of Fire and even Rapid fire-(designed at company level for 10 figures per unit but transfers to 'stands' and 'bases' easily)….
Sci- fi based but the KR16 version of FUBAR from Angel Barracks is one of the most user friendly sets I've used recently- also irons out a bug or two in the original FUBAR set….
Terrain scale should be as above ( 1 building model / actual building) with a ground scale that doesn't seem to outlandish, with enough terrain etc movement is the only 'scale' and that can be dependent on time per move…all abstracts so suit to please!

Dragon Gunner wrote:

I would add urban warfare will produce large numbers of casualties for the attackers if the defenders are even remotely competent. In training I have seen fire teams used up like ammunition.

In training, yes. But in training, as currently undertaken, the troop densities are unusually high compared to what you would find in real life -- even the biggest urban training area is tiny compared to a medium-sized town. This means that the "urban canyons" that would (with a competent attacker) be inflitration routes in real life become killing areas in the exercise. And in the exercise, the attacker isn't allowed to do what a real attacker would do if he couldn't bypass, namely, rubble the area with fire from the sky.

Historical analysis (independent studies by Dave Rowland in the UK and the Dupuy Institute in the US) shows that, contrary to long-standing received wisdom, urban terrain does not favour the defender.

All the best,

John.

John D Salt,
Not sure the Russians in Chechnia would agree with you. Towns ate really, really big. Trying to find a few defeners in a mass is not that easy. High angle fireingAA guns guns the Russiand took in helped. Urban areas are difficult to deal with. In reality both sides are going to have to be flexible and maneouver from place to place and atackers and defenders need to keep supply routes open. I think you haver to at least pretend to play small. In our game NG we cheat horribly and fight sort of 1 to 1 houses that are really 25 houses. It works but even then a credible collection of houses is really over ten. That's mainly so the defender sits behind the first row so cannot be shot at generally from the outside. Even at that its a long battle of maneouver. Playing that at company level is a bit pointless as really it becomes a series of disconnected games. If you want to do big battles just role the dice with a fair bias to the defender but expect the battle to take hours, days and even months. In our own game a realy interesting game came to a halt for a whole evening while the Grunts fought for the town as the armour could not bypass it. Really I am not sure how you make a big built up area an interesting game. Realy it boils down to platoon level or less. Larger and the simplifications make it uninteresting.

Fire teams at 1/300th is doable but you get very little resolved, unless you are looking at small scale. A Soviet company with supporting assets, in the WRG Modern Rules, would mean 18 bases, plus 10 vehicles. NATO companies were more, with a section, often comprising a rifle team, gun team and MAW/ATGW stand and dedicated platoon and company elements making well over 30 different bases, not including any vehicles.

Even allowing a fire team first tactic, still involved time consuming rolling of dice, with hours spent over a street. I found it better to abstract the ground scale and game an entire assault, than just the opening rounds. The larger ground scale and units means infiltration, bypassing and calling in support are doable.

As for urban areas, in Stalingrad it robbed the Germans of their greatest asset, command and control, so, under certain conditions, I'd dispute those findings.

@John Salt

I agree the largest MOUT site I ever trained at was about three square city blocks, the largest building was three stories high. Yes troop density was pretty high but not unreasonable (i.e. one company defending 3 city blocks)

In regards to rubble / destroy buildings with bombardment we trained like that was not an option but it would be preferable to entering the buildings.

I disagree that defenders are at a disadvantage.

I'm not sure that any scale larger than 1:1 is really all that tactically interesting.

As far as what gaming scale, well, I play Infinity in 28mm and everything else in 15mm.

With 28mm minis, a 4x6 battlefield is 72x108m (at my nominal 1"=5'/1.5m ground scale). Unless you do some serious range telescoping, that's not really playable. Most soldiers I know can throw a grenade at least half the table width!

15mm is better. A 4x6 battlefield is 120x180m at 1:100 groundscale. Obviously, if you have a bigger table, 15mm urban ops become much more feasible. A 6x8 table is 180x240m.

If it wasn't for the fiddliness of individually based 6mm, I think 1:300 groundscale is your best bet. That makes a 4x6 table 400y/m by 600 y/m.

I would not want to go higher than FoW-style basing, with fireteams and/or weapon teams on a single base. Well, I might go to stand=squad if we're talking WW1 or WW2 gaming, but that's as high as I'd go.

By the time you get to Stand=platoon scale, you're really losing the features that makes urban gaming tactically different from fighting in the woods or fighting in the desert.

Another thought be sure to include smoke grenades in your chosen rule set. It gives the assault team a reasonable chance to cross a street and live against a prepared defense. (speaking from peace time training exercises)

"15mm is better. A 4x6 battlefield is 120x180m at 1:100 groundscale. Obviously, if you have a bigger table, 15mm urban ops become much more feasible. A 6x8 table is 180x240m."- Lion

This is a prime reason to game in 15mm.

Personally if you really want to spend a lot of time in urban operations you want 25/28 mm. While we have had some solutions for 12mm for say 14 to 20 houses, if you want to play big scale urban with 3 even 4 story buildings then to me you need 1/72. Getting hands down credibly spaced buildings to put figures on the right floor with a 3 story building gets to be a hassle which deteracts from the game. Spreading the buildinds wider generally make the game un-realistic as the ranges in the gaps soon get large. As an attacker you would not go across a large plaza unless you were confident you could get an armoured vehicle their withot undue risk. So that is not a good place to fight even if access as a wargamers iis easier.

For WWII I would look at Chain of Command and 15mm figures. The ground scale and figure scale are a near 1 to 1 match. Each player controls roughly a platoon in a normal game though it can be stretched to 2 or 3 platoons per side but will creak a bit.

If looking at squad level or above then consider using 6mm with IABSM, once agian the figure scale and ground scale are near perfect matches or Fireball Forward with 15mm figs. In FF a 1.5 by 1 inch base with 3 figures on it represents a squad and a building usually equals a block. Doing the same thing with IABSM would work as well (using 3 or 4 figs on a 1.5 by 1 inch base that is).

Lots of interesting information, thanks, guys!

I think I need to do more research, but I'd really like to stay with a stand = a squad.

Then, of course, I'll have to take a deeper look at the figure scale – I'm fairly certain I don't want to go larger than 15mm.

The MOUT site at Fort Bragg as John Salt would say there are no "urban canyons". I included this photo because this is typical of what most gamers will put on a table in 15mm and call it a city. In 28 mm you are struggling to get one block on the table.

Just looking at that photo is bringing back all kinds of memories. If you want to simulate urban canyons allow the attacker to pick the table edge he wants to attack from that is a dilemma I saw one company commander face.

I remember the planning that went into these operations. Some of the buildings were declared impossible to defend ( the ones on the outer edges). I must admit that would depend on the scenario conditions. The building at the top of the photo was declared the Alamo when the attacker could only approach from the bottom of the photo

While attacking we would pick one building at a time, isolate it from reinforcement or retreat and systematically clear it. A training operation could take the better part of a day.

Lots of memories…

If possible I would use buildings with multiple levels. As the defender you have to decide, do I retreat up stairs or vacate the building if I am about to lose it? If you go upstairs you are trapped. If you attempt to vacate the building there is a good chance you will get shot dead as soon as you leave.

The training site also had a sewer system underneath it that went unused after several men suffocated when a smoke grenade was deployed in the sewer

Very interesting photo Dragon Gunner.

Several things spring to mind.

The streets are quite wide. Many streets even today do not allow two cars to pass even while mounting the sidewalks – if they exist.

Most of the buildings are pretty low 2 story houses. 3-4 is more common in 'cities'.

The city plan is also very 'rectilinear'. Curves and odd angles also are quite common in 'old world' countries.

All in all it reminds me of Squad Leader boards – did those designers never have a clue what real towns and countryside look like?

That said, I'm sure training on that MOUT center saved a lot of lives in real life – for it's limitations.

@Skarper

We used to wonder about the layout also. We also felt there should have been more clutter like parking lots full of cars, trash bins and shrubs.

I think the streets take into account a yard, sidewalk or parking spaces and a two lane road.

The first time you get shot from across the street because you were standing up in a BACK room and the OPFOR could see you through an open window and a door in a hall is a powerful learning experience. ( We used MILES laser tag at this training site)

One more thought before I go to work, if done right on the table top MOUT operations should play out like a game of chess. Certain buildings have to be taken to gain advantage or position over other buildings.

Copehill Down, built for the British Army, looks like a far more realistic layout and density.

It does look more European for sure.

I agree on the Chess effect. I can see an attack getting withing 50m of the objective only for the commanders to realize they needed to take building X before and now they can't!

From what I understand a major problem for the attacker is re-infiltration to cleared areas down covered ways, tunnels or over rooftops. A few snipers that are missed or sneak back in can wreak havoc and necessitate long delays.

But it is wrong to think urban combat favors the defender unduly. I think it favors the prepared defender over the naiive or impatient attacker massively. But I can see how a well organised attack can isolate and bite off a few defenders at a time and proper equipment and training can limit losses.

The link here is of a very small village in the UK that has not grown too much for many years.
link

It is of at least tactical interest as it sits between a relatively large main road and a UK river (UK rivers are not that big). You can see that all in all its very dence and an very large nunber of buidings. Using even this small village road pattern over the correct ground scale. IWe picked it as a candidate site for a secnario and inspected some sections on foof. The area we modelled is at gound scale, the on table roads too wide and the buildings too big. Even so required 18 buildings to represent the village. This gives just an idea why trying to represent even a small town become impractical on a wargames table and why real towns can take months to take.

I feel its always neccessary to looks at the real world. Too often we are too quick to argue what we see on a wargames table and not what it represents. A table top wargame will never get it right but it is important to understand in whoevers rules you use, what the approximations are. MG does miss the fact that real multi level games need troops with ladders and tanks/Guns to breach walls. Our game cheats and does not do this. We recognise it as being in error but its considered an adequate compromise for speed of play and the game is complex enough as it is. It would be easy to make the rules do this without too much effort but it would be an even longer game and start to take even wargames "days" to play. Like Draggon Gunner eluded even a few buildings takes lots of time.

Copehill Down looks magnificent and I would agree much more European. I would also agree more realistic. I would loved to have had a chance to train there.

The studies I alluded to are:

"The Effect of Combat Degradation on the Urban Battle", David Rowland, J Opl Res Soc 42[7] 1991

and

"Measuring the Effect of Combat in Cities", Phase I, The Dupuy Institute, 2002

I can't find a free copy of the Rowland paper, but it is available from
tinyurl.com/k287n7h
and a good library will hold a set of Journals of the OR Society. I believe (though I don't have my copy to hand) that Rowland summarises these results in his book "Stress of Battle".

The Dupuy Institute paper is available from DTIC or from tinyurl.com/lpc9y4c

The results in both cases are as clear as one can expect from any historical analysis -- attackers in urban terrain tend to have a more favourable loss/exchange ratio, suffer fewer proportional and absolute losses, and have higher chances of success, that they would against the same defenders in open country. They do, however, tend to have slower advance rates, largely thanks to rubbling.

Is there any comparable evidence showing that urban terrain represents a particular handicap to the attacker, or is this merely received opinion?

As Josh Billings had it, it's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's those thing you know that ain't so.

All the best,

John.

The streets are quite wide. Many streets even today do not allow two cars to pass even while mounting the sidewalks – if they exist.

Looks a whole lot like a US city to me. 25 feet from the edge of the street to the front of the house is the current building code in my home city (population 300,000)

Most of the buildings are pretty low 2 story houses. 3-4 is more common in 'cities'.

Again, houses in the US are rarely 3 stories tall. Most are 'merely' 2 stories or split level. The house I grew up in is a single story with a finished basement.

The city plan is also very 'rectilinear'. Curves and odd angles also are quite common in 'old world' countries.

But recilinear blocks are common in the US in the older cities. The subdivisions usually have twisty roads.

"Is there any comparable evidence showing that urban terrain represents a particular handicap to the attacker, or is this merely received opinion?"- John Salt

Opinion.

I don't put much stock in studies I have seen to many biased ones with selective data bashing to prove a point while preventing any counter argument.

All the best

Scott

Is the study really suggesting, 6th Army would have been stopped by the rag tag mix of half units that confronted them in September 42, if it were not for the terrain they occupied? Are they suggesting workers militia units, or the defenders of Pavlov's House, or the Grain elevator, could have inflicted more casualties, if they had been fighting in open terrain?

The restricted terrain, facing the Germans, negated their advantages in mechanised mobility, command and control and conversely aided the tactically pedestrian and rigid Soviets.

In a more modern context, would the USMC's casualty rate in Fallujah been higher if the insurgents had fought them in a non-urban setting. Or the IDF's, if the PLO had solely contested the area around, but not including Beirut? Having worked with veterans from the latter conflict, I find it hard to believe. Most of their stories revolved around the short engagement distances, which negated so many of their advantages, both in C&C, tactics and most heavy weapons systems.

@ John Salt

My opinion is earned with experience (non combat I admit). I would like to conduct a study of my own. How about you lead a fire team of these men that compiled the studies you referenced and attack up a defended stair case of a 3rd floor apartment building. You could all wear MILES gear and I can compile statistics on casualties inflicted versus lost.

Dragon Gunner, the second study goes into quite a bit of detail about how it was done, I suggest reading it before dismissing it. One VERY important item I saw from just a cursory glance though, and this could easily sway the outcome significantly, was that the battle for Normandy was included in the non-urban portion of the analysis. As we all know the Hedgerow battles were just as much an impediment to an attacker as any terrain in the history of warfare.

@dynaman8789

Could you address Milites last post?

Nope, I don't have a dog in this fight…

I'll hop in to add my two cents, though they're probably worth only a haypenny…

The US military certainly expects and experiences heavier casualties when fighting in urban areas; you can google various Marine and Army doctrinal publications, with the primaries being "Maneuver Warfare" vs. "Military Operations in Urban Terrain."

To be fair, they won't give you a study or statistical analysis of previous fighting as the documents above, but rather they outline differences in tactics, density, ratios, logistics differences, CASEVAC, individual and unit replacement, etc… These differences are built off the idea that maneuver warfare, where theoretically your casualties are kept to a minimum because of tenets such as "flowing where they aren't," "attacking weakness to disrupt combat capability vs. elimination," "reinforcing success," etc…, will require far less manpower in terms of troop density and will suffer far less casualties than the attritional warfare of MOUT.

"In training, yes. But in training, as currently undertaken, the troop densities are unusually high compared to what you would find in real life -- even the biggest urban training area is tiny compared to a medium-sized town."

I humbly disagree, if I'm taking your point correctly, which I think is that there would be less attacker casualties because the attackers would be spread out more and 'infiltrate' in a hostile city.

It takes three to four times as many men to take and hold ground in a city, unless you want to keep refighting over the same stuff you took yesterday. Troop density is significantly higher in urban terrain and we train exactly as we fight, the only difference being we didn't have MOUT facilities large enough to fight whole battalions and regiments. You can use up a whole company just clearing a single, large apartment building.

"This means that the "urban canyons" that would (with a competent attacker) be inflitration routes in real life become killing areas in the exercise."

Okay, ouch, I suppose we're not competent attackers. I may not understand what you mean by "urban canyons," but here's what it means to me: the nature of the urban landscape is such that you generally find yourself in a fishbowl, potentially surrounded on all sides and on multiple levels.

The urban environment is three dimensional and requires each element to maintain 360 degree coverage at all times, which is entirely different from any other combat environment, and, even without casualties being a factor, requires a much higher troop density relative to holding the same amount of ground in a different environment.

Because of the nature of countless, endless linear danger areas, there is no such thing as a company, or even platoon 'element' in MOUT. A company quickly becomes a series of amoeba-like elements (most likely fire teams), which each have to have men looking 360 degrees, high, medium, and low. Again, no other type of combat environment features this. This significantly degrades combat power; an element is only putting one quarter of its available firepower to any given sector.

Once you get above fireteam level, it's worse, because a fight is going on outside in the street, but one of the squad's three fire teams is in a house, clearing it. The team in the house better not dare to play around with the fight in the street, less they have someone crawl up their butts, and by the time they're done clearing the house, the fight in the street has probably already been decided.

Other aspects to discuss with the 'urban canyon' are, because of the limitless number of killzones, a very small number of hostiles can tie down relatively large numbers of friendlies very easily, and for significant amounts of time. As an attacker, one of your few advantages is violence of action, but I can tell you that you lose some of that. The action has to be slow and deliberate to make sure you didn't miss one single bad guy (and leave him behind you), and it's physically exhausting as you're constantly climbing over walls, busting down doors, blowing stuff up, getting onto and off of roofs, etc… There are a lot of non-battle casualties, or maybe a better way to say it is, casualties not caused by enemy fire, but rather guys breaking ankles, legs, backs, arms while climbing, crawling, and breaking stuff.

So, my (probably hard to follow) point with this is that unit density is extremely high because it takes a battalion to hold what a company could normally cover, not to mention RAS-types for resupply and CASEVAC. Furthermore, the "urban canyon" is not an opportunity to infiltrate, it's more kill zones than you can count.

"And in the exercise, the attacker isn't allowed to do what a real attacker would do if he couldn't bypass, namely, rubble the area with fire from the sky."

There are two issues with this. The first, and more simple reason why casualties are higher in MOUT, is because supporting fires are not as effective in urban areas as they are in other areas. That's just a fact of life; it's harder to spot targets, it's harder to bring fires to bear.

Even in the age of smart weapons, just because you can see an enemy position in a building doesn't mean you can get ordnance onto it due to the fact of all the other buildings around it.

The last part of the 'conventional' reasons is that supporting fires are much less effective in urban settings; you're not catching troops in the open, they're sitting under thick, often reinforced roofs, behind thick walls; our 1,000 pound bombs, TOWs/Javelins, and 120mm rounds don't have as big an effect on sturdy houses, much less apartment buildings, as you might think. So, this means grunts are going in to dig the bad guys out, which is where the casualties come in.

To the last part, about 'rubbling,' first we must assume that by-passing the town wasn't an option, or we wouldn't be having this discussion. Then we get to the issue that, since WWII, rules of engagement have dramatically limited our (US) use of supporting fires in urban areas. So, back to the grunts digging out the bad guys, which equals much heavier casualties than in non-urban terrain.

The vast majority of 'street-fighting' isn't street fighting at all, it's clearing empty rooms that seems to go on for an eternity. I can tell you that, if you use 'real' tactics, wargaming MOUT can be pretty boring. In the middle of the night a company rushes two platoons a couple blocks forward, establishes squad-sized strongpoints at the corners, and chills for a couple hours. When the sun comes up, every other knucklehead in the company sets to clearing the 8 million buildings between the old line and the new one established last night. Biggest worries are snipers, the occasional mortar/arty/rocket lobbed in, and booby-traps, none of which are fun on the table.

Mostly the actual firefights spring up when bad guys outside the box challenge the strongpoints, trying to support the guys trapped in the box that are now trying to escape. Or when vehicles arrive, i.e, resupply, CASEVAC, reporters coming up, whatever; everyone wants to take a potshot at a vehicle, but that's not really a fight you want to play out on the table either.

Getting at the high casualties issue, just looking at the above scenario, with a guy falling off a wall or through a roof, a guy hit by a sniper, a couple hit by an IED, that's quite a few casualties, and you look at doing that everyday for a month.

Then you get to the stuff we like to wargame, which is when the enemy decides to make a stand. So, the next block looks just like every other block, but they've got every wall and roof reinforced, they've got arms and ammo cached, they've got comms established, covered lines of communication to move between positions, and IEDs strung all over the place. We're talking about over a klick in length and maybe half a klick deep. So, you roll with your night infiltration (as above), but ultimately you get to a point where you've got to cross that street, and there's no hiding it.

Fighting in the desert, the jungle, the mountains, nothing even comes close. As wargamers we like to talk about terrain, and how the table is perfectly flat, but in reality there are a multitude of dips and gullies and folds and mounds to be used by the infantry. High velocity automatic weapons at less 100m in a city street means there's no dips or folds…

I'm sure I've rambled quite a bit; I hope someone finds this of interest, I'm feeling kind of douchey about having written it…

V/R,
Jack

*clap* *clap*

Very well stated, Jack. An excellent post.

One thing I'd add is that the WW2 experience suggests that even when you CAN "rubble the city", it doesn't really change things much, except to make it even *harder* to clear out. Stalingrad is the prime example.

I don't have any special knowledge of this topic but this is what I think.

Sure – the attackers suffer heavily in urban combat and it takes forever to advance.

BUT – I think the defenders also suffer excessive losses. It is harder to run away and harder to know when you have to.

It's perhaps symptomatic of the US military's casualty phobia that a handful of KIA/WIA is considered heavy. Even one is too many of course especially if the mission has no real value. But that is another topic.

In an urban setting the attacker cannot use air/artillery and long range fire power to full effect but neither can the defender. The US has been fighting 'asymmetric' combat for so long it's used to being the only kid on the block with the big toys.

Re 6th Army in Stalingrad – well they had no special urban combat training and actually not that much combat experience since the Soviets had not been able to resist their advance in an organized manner. Enormous losses were suffered trying to rush to the Volga and these were made up by sending in the rear echelon types – many of whom had only basic infantry training.

"I think the defenders also suffer excessive losses. It is harder to run away and harder to know when you have to."

To take heavy casualties he has to be fixed, and if he gets fixed he's not at the top of his game, or he doesn't care about getting away. This is assuming he's had time to prepare a defense, and that there is somewhere to run to, i.e., the whole city hasn't been isolated.

"It's perhaps symptomatic of the US military's casualty phobia that a handful of KIA/WIA is considered heavy."

Where is this coming from? Granted, if we're talking about post-WWII, there haven't been any divisions and corps being thrown into the meat grinder a la Stalingrad. So, for me, 'heavy' is a measure against how much you invested. I can tell you about a rifle company of just under 200 men losing 53 in 10 days (that's not including walking wounded). I'm not a mathematician, but that's roughly 25%, which qualifies as heavy for me.

"In an urban setting the attacker cannot use air/artillery and long range fire power to full effect but neither can the defender."
That's not necessarily true. On the one hand, a lot of times you have the approach to worry about, meaning the defender is in the city and the attacker is not, making the approach a killing ground for the defender, as well as wreaking havoc with support troops once the attacker has got a foothold.

In the city itself, presuming the defender is planning a defense in depth, he can walk the ground to pre-register targets and figure out how to work the angles in advance, identify dead ground to be covered by other means/weapons. Not a 100% solution, but 100% better than what's available to the attacker.

"The US has been fighting 'asymmetric' combat for so long it's used to being the only kid on the block with the big toys."

What does this have to do with anything, other than trying to provoke some sort of response?

"Re 6th Army in Stalingrad – well they had no special urban combat training…"

True.

"and actually not that much combat experience since the Soviets had not been able to resist their advance in an organized manner."

I've never heard of a unit that performed in combat not being counted as 'experienced' based on the quality of the opposition it faced. That's like saying the Germans in the west weren't experienced because the French flopped and the Brits left town, or the Japanese weren't experienced because Singapore, Hong Kong, Guam, Indonesia, Sumatra, Burma, and Pearl Harbor didn't put up much of a fight.

"Enormous losses were suffered trying to rush to the Volga and these were made up by sending in the rear echelon types – many of whom had only basic infantry training."

I suppose that's possible; I don't know, but I'd never heard that the German forces in Stalingrad weren't front-line fighting forces.

Jack

What Jack said, here here :)

I'm not trying to be provocative though I suppose it could be taken that way. I think what I wrote about the US has at least an element of truth.

25% is a lot of casualties but over 10 days it is 2.5% per day – which by WW2 standards is pretty light. 25% in a single attack would be a common loss rate for WW2. Though I do appreciate that even one is too many if it's you or your family member/friend.

It is infantile to expect to fight without casualties though I tend to think it is US public opinion/media spin to blame rather than the military itself. They spend their lives planning and training for war and know what it means.

The same people who bang the drum and demand something be done are the first to make a fuss when someone gets killed.

I'm not denigrating the modern US military but at the same time you have to accept that it is involved in very different conflicts than WW2, Korea or even Vietnam. Therefore comparisons are difficult to make.

I think it is valid to look at the opposition when rating a unit's experience. Like in sports the top team in the second division usually has to play catch up when they get promoted to the top division. So too with the German 6th Army. What fighting they'd done on the way to Stalingrad paled into insignificance when they got there. It would also have been a very different kind of combat.

There is quite a lot about the myth of the Japanese 'supermen' too. The Japanese certainly displayed courage later on but never much tactical ability from what I can make out.

"I'm not trying to be provocative though I suppose it could be taken that way. I think what I wrote about the US has at least an element of truth."

Fair enough.

"25% in a single attack would be a common loss rate for WW2."

I suppose we need to get someone in here with empirical data, but I disagree. We might think this because of action comics, war movies, and our wargames, but I disagree. This is not to say it (or worse) never happened, and using my example, the losses aren't spread evenly amongst days (there are days of heavy fighting, and there are days of light fighting, or maybe nothing happened in your sector that day, etc…), but to say 25% casualties amongst attacker or defender was 'common,' it doesn't work out.

Certainly there are things to be clarified, such as, what do you mean by an attack? Is it a single event, or do you mean 'the attack to take village X,' which was a series of 10 fights over six days? If the latter, we're right in line with what I mentioned earlier. If the former, we've moved way off base, at least for Yanks and Brits in WWII. You didn't charge across the field at 0600, take 25% casualties, do it again at 1000, take 25% casualties, then take the farmhouse at 1600, again with 25% casualties.

Aside from reading casualty reports and sitreps from units in WWII, anecdotal stuff having family at Normandy, Ardennes, Bougainville, an Okinawa, having family friends and others at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Pelelieu, and Iwo Jima, over a 60 to 120 day campaign they suffered casualties that we can't even fathom (agreeing with you regarding the current environment), i.e., 300% casualties, but even with that ridiculous number you're well below 25% per fight. I unit that has 25% casualties is no longer combat effective; it can hold ground in a pinch, but it's not pressing forward. At that stage you don't have enough guys to hump the stuff you need to fight, much less fight.

"…in very different conflicts than WW2, Korea or even Vietnam. Therefore comparisons are difficult to make."

Again, I have to disagree (I'm not normally this disagreeable!). I would assume house to house fighting using rifles, machine guns, and hand grenades is pretty universal. We could argue all day about comparisons between the level of 'competition,' but I'm really not up for it.

"I think it is valid to look at the opposition when rating a unit's experience. Like in sports the top team in the second division usually has to play catch up when they get promoted to the top division. So too with the German 6th Army. What fighting they'd done on the way to Stalingrad paled into insignificance when they got there. It would also have been a very different kind of combat."

Would it shock you if I disagreed? I think it's easy for us to sit in our living rooms and discuss the relative martial abilities of this fighting force vs. that fighting force, and I'm not even saying that some relative differences can't be worked out. But, I will say that I never encountered that concept in the military; a win is a win, a loss is a loss.

Furthermore, I would say that I'm a big believer in the idea that it's about men, as opposed to equipment. So, at the macro level, this fighting force might be rated high because of great tactical doctrine, fantastic training, the best guns, the most ammo, the fastest transport, the best logistics, and another force might be rated poorly because it sucks with regard to all those categories.

But when it comes down to 'these sixty guys have to go dig those twenty guys out of that village/forest,' all that kind of goes out the window, fighting men are fighting men. Again, this is not to say there are no qualitative differences, only that they are much smaller at the micro level. That is my opinion anyway. With regards to wargaming, that's why I like gaming at lower echelons; it tends to give both sides a chance to win, as opposed to those higher echelon games where there is no conceivable way a USSR rifle division is standing up to a German panzer division in 1941, etc…

"It would also have been a very different kind of combat."

Absolutely. But having been shot at is having been shot at. You may not be an expert (whatever that means) at MOUT, but having been shot at will aid greatly in you figuring it out.

"There is quite a lot about the myth of the Japanese 'supermen' too. The Japanese certainly displayed courage later on but never much tactical ability from what I can make out."

I don't disagree with you here. We can make fun of their tactics, doctrine, organization, weapons, etc…, but they sure won a whole lot of fights. They whooped our butts a lot at the beginning of the war, and then made us pay a heavy price for every victory for the rest of the war.

So, I wouldn't say (as a silly example), the units that faced them aren't as experienced/good as the units that faced off against an SS Pz Division, but they're better than the guys that went at the Italians in Sicily. You're either a combat-tested unit or your not. Whether you've been winning or losing effects morale, not proficiency (though, if you've been losing, proficiency in some manner of your tasks may be an issue).

V/R,
Jack

I don't expect we'll agree about the fundamentals here. Like I say I have no special inside knowledge or even much from reading about it. Mine is just the opinion of a wargamer. No more no less.

There were a lot of battles in WW2 were a unit suffered 25% or more in a single day of fighting – not just the Soviets.

For something to be common it needn't be the majority just easily found. You can find much higher rates of losses but indeed the typical rate in a serious engagement might be 10%. Most squads would lose a man – some might lose more some none. If you spread this out across a Battalion when only 2-3 platoons really got into action and the rest had supporting roles – then it's much less.

I suspect the company that lost 25% over 10 days was not typical. Many companies in the same operation probably only lost a few men over the same time period.

I must stress though we don't agree I appreciate your point of view. It's pointless having a discussion if everyone agrees!

Another thought / memory…

One of the things we were learned very quickly is exposing yourself in a window or door is asking to be shot. Instead you stand off to the side of the window and back about 3 feet aiming down the street at a sharp angle. You never square off and face the building directly across the street. You are providing cover for the guys down the street, they are providing cover for you from their angle. If done correctly the OPFOR will see almost nothing.

Now from the attackers perspective when the defenders have established interlocking fields of fire as mentioned above…

You know you are in trouble when you crouch below a window sill, pull up your shaving mirror to get a view across the street and see nothing. You begin to wonder did they forfeit these buildings? The LT orders an assault team to cross the street and they are shot dead halfway across. No one has any idea what killed them or where it came from.

"I don't expect we'll agree about the fundamentals here. Like I say I have no special inside knowledge or even much from reading about it. Mine is just the opinion of a wargamer. No more no less."

Here, here! Just an interesting conversation about how to play with our toys.

"I suspect the company that lost 25% over 10 days was not typical. Many companies in the same operation probably only lost a few men over the same time period."

I'd say the company losing 25% in 10 days was common for that particular operation (elements of five battalions, approximately 10 rifle companies, elements of five weapons companies, a tank company, and a track company), but much, much higher than anything seen during the remainder of the tour. Casualties were relatively even throughout the companies and battalions, if not individual platoons, for the reasons you mentioned.

"I must stress though we don't agree I appreciate your point of view. It's pointless having a discussion if everyone agrees!"

Amen brother. I really appreciate that Skarper, as I really enjoy talking about playing with toys, with small incursions into the 'real life' stuff that influences how we play. I apologize if I was a bit sensitive above, I've been involved in a few threads that got real contentious real quick. I need to understand that not everyone has such rude manners as me ;)

Dragon Gunner – "No one has any idea what killed them or where it came from." This is exactly the issue with MOUT. In 'normal' terrain, be it relatively open desert or relatively close jungle, you may get surprised, but it's relatively easy to figure out what just happened and a general direction it's coming from.

In the 'urban canyon' discussed above, it could have come from anywhere, and because of the acoustics and the magnitude of potential enemy positions means it's more difficult to identify the enemy, as well as necessitates 360 high-low coverage, seriously degrading your combat power.

Like you said, a whole lotta "what the hell just happened?" "I dunno." "Okay, let me lean out and see if I can see something this way, and you lean out and see if you can see something that way." You lean out and see nothing but 35 houses with six windows each, every one of which could hold a bad guy… What's the plan? Somebody's gotta figure out where that @#$% is!

V/R,
Jack

Dynaman8789 wrote:

I suggest reading it before dismissing it.

Quite so.

As far as I can see, nobody who is enagaged in disagreeing so strenuously with these papers has bothered to read either of them before expressing their disagreement.

It is annoying that there seems to be no free version of the Rowland paper. I believe that I am making fair use of my copy by supplying the following extract from it:

"The ‘counter-intuitive' nature of the results must require comment. Two factors relating to combat data, aside from the conventional expectation of defence advantage in combat, are:

(a) In studying historical urban combat it is clear that the main accounts are provided by the attackers; their concern is with their own casualties; the number of enemy captured and defence casualties in damaged buildings are of secondary concern to the attackers.

(b) For reasons which will now be apparent, if a defence counter-attack occurs as part of the battle, the attacker can suffer very heavy ‘missing' casualties; these cases can add disproportionately to the attackers' folklore of bloody attacks in urban areas if there is no clear expectation of the effect of a counter-attack in attack casualties.

In seeking to justify these findings to doubters, it has been helpful to search famous case histories in a new light. The exhortations of someone with experience – in particular given the well-known successful defence of Stalingrad in 1942 – the comments of the Russian commander General V. Chuikov were as follows:

"Experience showed that the storm groups and the strong points were the most important facets of our defence. The Army beat off enemy attacks, itself attacked, made bold sallies and took the initiative out of the enemy's hands. The power of our troops lay in the fact that, while defending themselves, they attacked the whole time…
It became clear in the early stages of the battle for the city that the only way to make the enemy abandon his wild plans was by active defence; to defend while attacking.""

Just Jack wrote:

[I wrote]
"In training, yes. But in training, as currently undertaken, the troop densities are unusually high compared to what you would find in real life -- even the biggest urban training area is tiny compared to a medium-sized town."

I humbly disagree, if I'm taking your point correctly, which I think is that there would be less attacker casualties because the attackers would be spread out more and 'infiltrate' in a hostile city.

You have misunderstood the point I was making; but have nonetheless hit upon the reason why attacking in urban terrain is historically easier and safer than in rural terrain.

The reason urban terrain swallows up troops at a terrifying rate is that it is very highly compartmentalized. There is no disagreement on this point; as you yourself say

It takes three to four times as many men to take and hold ground in a city

…because expected LOS length is that much shorter. This is why attackers can infiltrate past defenders more easily -- it takes a lot more defenders to cover any given frontage. You say

Furthermore, the "urban canyon" is not an opportunity to infiltrate, it's more kill zones than you can count.

but it should be fairly obvious that it is not the *number* of kill-zones that enables a defender to hold off shedloads of attackers, but the *extent* of them. A single well-placed MG in open country might be able to dominate a klick or more. No chance of that in the city. Unless you have enough MGs to cover all those infinite teeny-weeny kill zones, there are going to be routes for the attacker to encircle and disrupt the defence. And -- to get back to my point about the training problem -- with tiny urban training areas, and with people justifiably wanting to get as many people as possible to get the training benefit, the typical exercise may well stuff sufficient troops into an area that all those kill zones can be covered. It's really not going to happen in real life, though. Which is what I meant when I said that the troop densities in training would be higher than in real life -- dense enough to fill up all the compartments in the terrain.

As you say:

Because of the nature of countless, endless linear danger areas, there is no such thing as a company, or even platoon 'element' in MOUT. A company quickly becomes a series of amoeba-like elements (most likely fire teams)

That's as neat an expression as I've seen of the phenomenon remarked upon by Rowland that modern direct-fire battles do not occur as an exchange of fire spread equally between two extended arrays of shooters-cum-targets (as the Lanchester equations describe combat), but instead break up into a whole mess of tiny little few-on-few fights. The closer (more compartmentalised) the terrain, the greater this tendency.

Troop density is significantly higher in urban terrain and we train exactly as we fight, the only difference being we didn't have MOUT facilities large enough to fight whole battalions and regiments.

You don't train *exactly* as you fight. The Army wants their training area pretty much intact when you've finished with it, they cannot afford to pay the number of extras that would be needed to reflect the real number of civilians wandering about even a tiny town, and no urban training area in the world comes close to matching the astonishing degree of clutter human habitation produces in terms of vehicles, street furniture, and piles of crap. All these make the short-LOS, highly-compartmentalised nature of the terrain even worse than it already is.

To nail down another couple of points just for thoroughness:

The first, and more simple reason why casualties are higher in MOUT, is because supporting fires are not as effective in urban areas as they are in other areas.

In all "big people's war" almost since indirect fire was invented, indirect fire causes the bulk of casualties on both sides. It seems odd to argue that casualties are increased because the best casualty-producing system has its effectiveness reduced. Sure, the attacker needs IF to suppress the attacker while the blokes approach the defences. But in open country you will have to lift the fire when they get to 200m or so. In a city, I expect you could normally get within 200m of any defender with no supporting fire at all.

And, returning to our amoebas:

…which each have to have men looking 360 degrees, high, medium, and low. Again, no other type of combat environment features this. This significantly degrades combat power; an element is only putting one quarter of its available firepower to any given sector.

360-degree security is a requirement in all environments. I know people quickly tend to forget this in training, and I have never known a wargame reflect this fact other than Arty Conliffe's "Crossfire", but the point was made most forcibly in Swinton's "Defence of Duffer's Drift", and you don't get much more open terrain than the veldt of South Africa.

And finally, a spot more empirical data:

Skarper wrote:
"25% in a single attack would be a common loss rate for WW2."

I suppose we need to get someone in here with empirical data, but I disagree. We might think this because of action comics, war movies, and our wargames, but I disagree.

The following figures are from WO 291/1169, "An Analysis of Infantry Rates of Advance in Battle", a 1952 paper based on WW2 experience. These casualty figures are based on a sample of 217 company- and battlaion-sized attacks in Italy and in NW Europe. Resistance was categorised as "Slight" or "Heavy", and attacks divided into short (1 hour) and long (3 hour) attacks. The following table gives the figures from the report for numbers of casualties suffered per company.

			1 hour			3 hours
 		min	ave	max	min	ave	max
Slight		 0	2	4	1	3	8
% full str	 0	1.67	3.33	0.83	2.5	6.67
Heavy		 9	17	32	10	24	57
% full str	 7.5	14.17	26.67	8.33	20	47.5

The lines "% full str" I have calculated as percentage losses, assuming a full strength of 120 for each company. I doubt that many companies went into action that strong -- in fact it might be more reasonable to assume an average strength of 100, and take the plain numbers of casualties as percentage figures. Still, even on the conservative assumption of 120 men per coy, the average losses for a 3-hour attack against strong resistance come out at 20%. So, while 25% casualties is undoubtedly severe, it's not much more than the average expected loss in a 3-hour fight against stiff opposition.

I have hardly been able to find any figures for loss rates in single infantry attacks in open terrain since 1945. However, if we assume a full strength of 600 for a battalion, the the KIA and WIA figures from Hugh Bicheno's excellent "The Razor's Edge" on the Falklands War would give the following percentage rates:

42 Cdo [Mt Harriet]                    4.17%
45 Cdo [Two Sisters]                   5.83%
2 Para [Goose Green, Wireless Ridge]   9.5%
3 Para [Longdon]                       12.67%
2 Scots Gds [Tumbledown]               7.83%

…obviously they would be higher if one assumed all casualties occurred in the rifle companies.

All the best,

John.

It's perhaps symptomatic of the US military's casualty phobia that a handful of KIA/WIA is considered heavy.

A unit that has taken 33% casualties is utterly combat ineffective. The other 2/3rds of the unit is taking care of the wounded and cannot move from where they are. Most games really don't deal with this very well, often having the first morale check for casualties happening at 25%!

Being Casualty-averse is what happens when you have a democracy and fail to make any military commitment "their war" in the mind of the population.
=====

There was another comment about how any unit in an urban area can only direct 1/4 of it's firepower into any given sector due to the need to watch 360deg, high, medium, and low.

I think that's a useful data point for higher-level games, not so sure it really matters for smaller games.

John,

Good Lord! Okay, I'll do my best.

So regarding the first portion, I'm not sure I'm following. The basis for our discussion is that, all things being equal, an 'attacker' (so we're on the same page, my definition: the force choosing to move from outside an urban area into an urban in order to engage an enemy currently occupying said urban area) will suffer greater losses than the defender, and you're saying you have two studies that show defender actually suffers greater casualties (proportionately) than the attacker.

I don't think I'm understanding the point you're trying to make with counterattacks, and this:
"It became clear in the early stages of the battle for the city that the only way to make the enemy abandon his wild plans was by active defence; to defend while attacking."

An active defense is still a defense, and his judicious use of counterattacks will serve to cause greater casualties upon the attacker. This is aided by the fact the defender has walked the ground, established registered bases of fire/fields of fire, on-call targets/target reference points, has identified or created covered routes to rally points, assembly areas, and jump-off points, etc…

You could argue that the defender arguably has those same advantages regardless of terrain, and I would somewhat agree, but nowhere are the opportunities afforded each side as disparate as in MOUT. For example, reconnaissance is conducted prior to an attack to aid in doing all the things I listed above as 'defender advantages.' The issue often times with MOUT is there is no real reconnaissance; you can't get that info unless you get into the city, and the only way to get in there is to fight your way in there.

Once in the city, there's no hiding for the attacker; the defender knows how much ground he's ceded, and while he may fall his MLR back far enough to be out of contact with the attacker, he generally would have OPs out to keep an eye on things.

So, if the argument is that a some/a lot of the attacker's casualties come as part of counterattacks, I agree, but we're still saying the attacker is taking heavier casualties, I think? I'm not sure what to make of this:

"(a) In studying historical urban combat it is clear that the main accounts are provided by the attackers; their concern is with their own casualties; the number of enemy captured and defence casualties in damaged buildings are of secondary concern to the attackers."

I'll agree each side is generally more concerned with their own vice enemy casualties. I'm starting to think this has gone astray as we're not all clear about what each other is trying to say. Here's my best stab at what I'm trying to get across: the basic situation is that I have a regiment and you have a battalion. You are going to lose and you are going to lose 100% of your forces because my job is to eliminate your battalion.

So, if I can catch your battalion in the open I will eliminate it with negligible casualties to myself; we can move through desert to jungle to savannah to hedgrows to fortified hilltop to city; the closer the terrain gets, the more restricted (and predictable) my maneuver will be and the less effective my advantages of initiative and supporting fires will be (even if we both are technologically equals, not just for the US vs insurgent concept). The closer the terrain gets, the more casualties I will expect to take (and, with history as a guide, the more I will experience), with fighting in a city being the pinnacle of 'close' terrain.

Hopefully all that makes sense.

"…the reason why attacking in urban terrain is historically easier and safer than in rural terrain…urban terrain swallows up troops at a terrifying rate is that it is very highly compartmentalized…expected LOS length is that much shorter. This is why attackers can infiltrate past defenders more easily -- it takes a lot more defenders to cover any given frontage."

Forgive me, for brevity's sake I'm combining some statements to what I believe is the crux of the matter. I think I understand what you're saying, but here's where we have a big difference in opinion: LOS length is not shorter, it's plenty long and plenty available. If you're in the desert, you generally know 'the enemy is that way, and the friendlies are that way.' And if there is a hill on the enemy side, you figure they have someone there taking a look at you. In a city, all you know is 'the friendlies are right here (the ones I can see), and the enemy is expected to be everywhere else.' And there's not one hill offering observation, there's a thousand of them. And it's a lot easier to see a guy trying to hide himself on a hill than it is to see a guy sitting against the back wall of the building, 25 feet through the shadows from the window he's watching you through.

So, a few guys with excellent fields of observation and means of communication will allow the enemy to use active defense, that is small groups of men with a predominance of automatic weapons, to sit behind the MLR then move to counter the attacker's advance. These groups will take up covered and concealed positions and not engage the attacker until he's in a vulnerable state (crossing a street) and at very close range (less 100m).

I can tell you that some of the better successes by attackers in recent MOUT engagements occurred when the attacker threw caution (and probably common sense) to the wind, formed more traditional (according to maneuver warfare) spearheads, and drove very quickly past enemy strongpoints and into their rear areas, catching their reserves in the open before they could react. Of course, several times these tactics resulted in particularly atrocious casualties as the spearheads are relatively easy to cut off once the fog of war (friendlies losing contact with each other, very common in MOUT) sets in.

"…the *number* of kill-zones that enables a defender to hold off shedloads of attackers, but the *extent* of them. A single well-placed MG in open country might be able to dominate a klick or more. No chance of that in the city. Unless you have enough MGs to cover all those infinite teeny-weeny kill zones, there are going to be routes for the attacker to encircle and disrupt the defence."

This all gets back to the mobile or active defense in depth concept. I agree with you regarding the limited effectiveness of a machine gun in an urban area, but the city is a cornucopia of kill zones available to the active defense with automatic weapons (SMGs and SAWs/LMGs, or modern assault rifles) more than making up the distance, so long as the enemy doesn't engage too soon.

"The Army wants their training area pretty much intact when you've finished with it,…"

Poin taken, but we've already discussed ROE that forbid the attacker using anything larger than grenades (as an example), and the fact that 'rubbling,' as in Stalingrad and Monte Cassino, didn't do much to upset the defense of those positions.

Regarding your point about 'extras' as civilians, are we talking about peace-keeping/peace-making/stabilization operations, or are we talking about high intensity street-fighting? Large numbers of civilians have never really been a factor in the historic street fights, and (I hate to say it) the ones that were there weren't given much attention by either side.

"…no urban training area in the world comes close to matching the astonishing degree of clutter human habitation produces in terms of vehicles, street furniture, and piles of crap."

I agree wholeheartedly, but I think you overestimate the value/impact of the human detritus. All those dumpsters, couches, washing machines, cars, tires, street barriers, transmissions, etc…, don't hide men moving down a street, and they don't stop bullets either. All it really does is give you a chance to turn an ankle over, cut your arm/hand up (when you grab broken glass or a nail), or flop into some garbage juice.

I take your point about training densities vs 'real-life' densities, but I can tell you that my experience was that you had even more friendlies around in real-life than you did in training. In training you crammed in your rifle company; in real life, there's your company, elements of two other rifle companies, elements of weapons company, H&S company, there are sniper, R&S, and SOF elements in the same space, you have the whole logistics side of things, the medical side of things, really way too many people in such a small area.

Regarding the defender, his density is lower, but it's because in training he's occupying a line, whereas in real life he's occupying a few OPs then surging guys (reserves) to pre-prepped positions to spite your advance.

"That's as neat an expression as I've seen of the phenomenon remarked upon by Rowland…"

Why thank you. Every now and again I accidentally stumble upon something profound. If only I could figure out a way to make money on it ;)

"In all "big people's war" almost since indirect fire was invented, indirect fire causes the bulk of casualties on both sides. It seems odd to argue that casualties are increased because the best casualty-producing system has its effectiveness reduced."

Ah, I'm so glad you brought this up, because this does seem odd to a lot of people. The concept here is back to maneuver warfare, schwerpunkt, whatever you want to call it, but essentially the way every army since the ending of WWI has sought to win wars: not by destroying the enemy, but by destroying his will/capability to fight. This naturally leads to less casualties than otherwise would be the case.

In our wargames we tend to focus on the 'different,' because the 'normal' is boring. The lamest example usually rolled out is the 'hurry up and wait' model, i.e., "the average soldier sat on his butt for XX days for every 1 day he actually fought the enemy, so you wouldn't want to have a wargame about the XX days, would you?" As I said, it kind of gets at the issue, but it's pretty lame and doesn't explain our predicament with supporting fires.

In maneuver warfare, if you plant your flag on that hill, I'm not storming up the hill to knock it down. I'm going to call supporting fires on the hill to keep you from interfering with me while I stay in my vehicles, drive around you, disrupt your command, control, communications, and logistics, until you lose the will to fight and surrender yourselves. If you look at the end of WWI to now, this is why you see all these battles where 5,000 enemy were killed, but 200,000 enemy were captured. Voila, that's the magic (and goal) of maneuver warfare.

So, air and arty caused all the casualties because there never was an contact between opposing infantry and armor. It's rarely that 'clean' in real life, but I think it illustrates the concept rather well.

Now, as wargamers, we don't focus on that, because it's pretty boring on the tabletop. But, of course, that doesn't work in every situation, so there are going to be times where we cannot (or a bull-headed general decides we will not) bypass this enemy position. Normandy is a great example of all this; maneuver warfare at a grand level with the landings occurring on the Contentin Peninsula, as opposed to going into the enemy's teeth at Cherbourg. Operationally some difficulties once the landing was pulled off, bogged down in the hedegrows due to the Germans at least using a little bit of maneuver warfare (in the form of mobile defense) themselves, but the whole point of that was to take on enemy strength in order to create the necessary space to get back to maneuver warfare.

In any case, it is in the situations that something can't be by-passed that the friendly grunts take casualties. So, the idea that supporting fires cause most of the casualties is not so much an issue of their supremacy, it's a testament to the fact that generals are trying to use the rifle, machine gun, and grenade as infrequently as possible, but those are the actions that lead to degradation of their forces.

As anecdotal evidence to support air and arty's lack of decisiveness in attritional warfare, look at the tonnage of ordnance dropped on Stalingrad and Iwo Jima (and a hundred more); neither one of those were exactly a walkover. Maneuver warfare says they both should have been by-passed, but Hitler's obsession on the one hand, and the need for a place to land crippled bombers on the other, dictated men had to be committed.

"360-degree security is a requirement in all environments. I know people quickly tend to forget this in training,…"

I have to disagree, but I think we're only off by degrees. In 'normal' situations a force must maintain 360, but not every element. Because of the fragmented nature of MOUT, there is no force, so each element must maintain a 360, which is an absolute disaster for economy of force.

As a quick example, you're a rifle battalion commander in Normandy in 1944. You've recently come across the beaches, but you're a dozen miles inland now. You know the enemy is generally in front of you, and friendlies are to your flanks and behind you, because you're in contact with them. You have two rifle companies and weapons company in the line, with your third rifle company in reserve. You do not have your flanks refused because they are tied in with friendly elements; you might have your reserve rifle company facing the rear, but probably don't. You do not, nor is it necessary to have, a 360 perimeter, but you do have a reserve company available and responsible for 360 security, that is, an element to react to threats to your flanks/rear. Thus, three quarters of your combat power are focused to the know threat of the enemy across from you.

In MOUT, this is not possible. In MOUT, every element of men that is not in physical contact with another element must have active coverage to 360 degrees. If you have a forty-man platoon (somehow) all sitting on top of each other, they are in a 360; if you have a 12-man squad, they are in a 360; and if you end up in 4-man teams, they are in a 360. In each case the element is losing fully 3/4 of its combat power (more or less if you take into account the particular weapons they hold; you end up swapping a rifle with a SAW covering a non-active sector in order to get it into the fight).

You'd like to keep the elements as big as possible in order to maximize that 25%, i.e., 25% of a platoon is putting a whole lot more rounds out than 25% of a fireteam, but it's not practical because of the compartmentalization. You're not going to have your whole platoon cross a street at the same time, or search a house, so the elements get separated and thus have to maintain their own 360. As I'm sure is obvious, this feature of urban combat leads to more casualties than you would expect in similar situations in other environments.

"So, while 25% casualties is undoubtedly severe, it's not much more than the average expected loss in a 3-hour fight against stiff opposition."

Okay, but we need some further 'campaign' context as well. For example, we made a company attack on hill 123, lasted 3 hours against stiff opposition, took 25% casualties. We spent the next two days atop the hill as the battalion took an operational pause to straighten its lines. The next day the battalion was on the move and we assumed the reserve position (because of our significant losses). After two days on the march we caught up to the enemy's new MLR, battalion went into the attack, with us in reserve. Companies B and C both took 25% casualties, and now the battalion was pulled out of the line to rest and refit (which ends up either getting replacements or being consolidated into less or smaller companies before returning to action).

Unless we're saying they made attacks at 0600, 1000, 1500, and 2100, suffered 25% casualties each time, and now cease to exist as a fighting formation. Again, you always hear about military disasters which swallowed up units whole, but that's not what leaders are trying to accomplish, and generally, they pull the unit (or the unit pulls itself!) out of the line not too far after hitting 25% casualties.

On the personnel/morale side, it's kind of sobering to look around and every fourth guy is gone, and on the strictly military side, a unit down 25% isn't one you can count on very much in terms of usefulness. Again, we've all heard these types of stories because they're rare, they're different, and generally point to a tremendous amount of personal heroism on the part of the members of those destroyed units.

Whew! Even after writing all that, I'm sure I neglected to answer some of your points, and/or forgot to bring up something I wanted to interject. But I'll see your long post and raise you one! In any case, I appreciate the dialog, take care.

V/R,
Jack

Lion,

"A unit that has taken 33% casualties is utterly combat ineffective."

Absolutely. With regard to gaming, to me casualties aren't casualties, but also represent the sick, lame, and lazy, as well as the guys getting them to the rear, handling resupply, dealing with malfunctioning weapons, etc…, so it doesn't bother me as much anymore.

"There was another comment about how any unit in an urban area can only direct 1/4 of it's firepower into any given sector due to the need to watch 360deg, high, medium, and low. I think that's a useful data point for higher-level games, not so sure it really matters for smaller games."

That was me. Maybe I'm not following you, but I'd say it's more important the lower the echelon you play at. Please see the thread I just posted for an explanation as to why it's more important in skirmish/platoon-level than battalion and higher level.

V/R,
Jack

A machine gun can dominate from a km away, until it reveals its position and is neutralised by a long range weapon system. In MOUT, that weapon system often has to get far closer, exposing itself to far more threats.

I'll repeat my query, would the IDF veterans, I worked with, have had a tougher time taking on the PLO on the open battlefield or in BUA's. I know what they would say, I'd just like someone to put forward a cogent argument as differentiating between a static defence and an active one, to make ones point is IMHO academically tendentious). Either that, or I misunderstood the reference to Storm Groups, wish I had access to KCL's excellent war studies library once more, sigh.

As for the quality of the troops in Sixth Army, the unit by unit breakdown suggests a high proportion were veteran units. As for training, after the initial fighting the Germans trained up pioneer assault troops, specialised in fighting in such environments. Trouble was, so did the Russians.

"I'll repeat my query"- Milites

Please John Salt answer his query.