Urban Warfare: Challenges of Military Operations on Tomorrow’s Battlefield

Abstract

It is often said that future combat will take place in urban areas, including megacities, and preparing for urban warfare has become a necessity. Whilst urban warfare in itself is nothing new, urbanization and new technology are inexorably forcing battles to move to urban areas to a larger extent than ever before. The chapter outlines key challenges and expectations for urban operations on today’s and tomorrow’s battlefield-urbanization, multi-domain operations, grey zone problems, technology, and the urbanization of insurgency-and outlines ways to handle them including outlining best practices and available tools. It is found that not only does the future of warfare lie in urban areas but in today’s interconnected world, with the information sphere becoming the centre of gravity, the urban battlefield reaches far beyond the city limits. Finally, eleven takeaways about urban warfare are drawn up.