Infantry: Urban Warfare Updated
freestar
March 21, 2023: Urban (city and town) combat in Ukraine has revealed additional factors that were not noted in recent (2020) updates of MOUT (Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain). Ukraine operations so far have revealed aspects of urban combat that had not been experienced before and now had to be added to the long list of things to deal with. First of all, there was not a lot of bypassing cities and towns in Ukraine. Both sides found themselves forced to defend or fight for control of key towns that were essential to maintaining supply lines. Both sides never had enough artillery ammunition and aircraft bombs to simply level a contested urban area. There are also important differences between Russian and Ukrainian troops. The Ukrainians are better trained and have higher morale than the Russians. The Ukrainians are defending their home land while the Russians are invaders and use a lot of reluctant troops, including convicts and mercenaries. When the Ukrainians go on the offensive they can surround towns and starve their less-motivated opponents into surrendering. When defending a town, the Ukrainians conduct a more effective defense that keeps Ukrainian casualties down and increases Russian losses. Experience so far shows that the Russians lost six or seven times more troops than the Ukrainians in these situations. Worse, the Russian progress is very slow and the Ukrainians see this as a way to weaken Russian ability to continue the war. Those heavy casualties make it even more difficult for the Russians to obtain new troops. Urban warfare in Ukraine may be considered a unique situation, but that is often the case in any period of sustained urban fighting. Ukraine’s NATO allies are updating their approach to urban warfare because of the experience in Ukraine.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htinf/articles/20230321.aspx
