A Professor and a Soldier Walk into a Room: New Perspectives on Future Urban Conflict
Soldier wearing gas mask.
by Dr. Russell W. Glenn and Dr. Louis A. DiMarco
Land Warfare Paper 170 / August 2025
In Brief
History has firmly established the difficulty of urban combat and urban operations more broadly. Undertakings in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere in the 21st century only reinforce observations from more distant historical experiences in this regard.
Urban three-dimensionality is a notable factor in the extent of these challenges. No other environment so ubiquitously melds above-, below- and on-ground complexities that at once offer both opportunities and hindrances to maneuver, command and control, logistics, survivability—in short, to virtually every principle of war and battlefield operating system.
This Land Warfare Paper contemplates what the future—both immediately and farther afield—offers in the way of exacerbating these challenges and meeting those extant and others yet to present themselves.
Ukraine has seen dramatic advances in offensive weaponry (e.g., unmanned aerial, maritime and ground vehicles) and setbacks in soldier, equipment and infrastructure survivability. At the same time, Ukraine is taking active steps toward its recovery from war even as its conflict continues, arguably to an extent never before seen.
A less recognized field of competition inherent in the rise of unmanned systems’ employment is that seeking to disrupt their control. We posit that system autonomy will be key to gaining the upper hand in this competition—autonomy that, when fully realized, will allow these capabilities to refuel, rearm and otherwise perform with no human interaction.
To these evolving challenges we add recognition of the difficulty of conducting urban operations while minimizing loss of innocents’ lives: those who live and work in today’s villages, towns and cities. Often relegated to consideration only in terms of rules of engagement, the time has arguably come to contemplate giving noncombatant survival and post-conflict welfare priority when planning and conducting urban combat operations.
https://www.ausa.org/publications/land-warfare-paper/a-professor-and-a-soldier-walk-room
