Edited by Gregory Fremont-Barnes.
Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2024.
ISBN 978-1-68247-724-3. Maps. Notes. Index.
Pp. vii, 389. $44.95.
Military operations in urban environments have become increasingly prevalent in modern conflicts since the end of the Cold War. Armed conflict centered on urban population centers will hold increasingly greater operational and strategic importance, with devastating consequences for both armies and non-combatants. As images from the ongoing Russo-Ukraine War of bombed-out cities in Ukraine’s east, as well as the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, emphasize, urban warfare is by nature brutal, destructive, and attritional, making the difference between victory and defeat almost uninterpretable until its strategic effects are determined. In Urban Battlefields: Lessons Learned from World War to the Modern Era, Gregory Fremont-Barnes offers a detailed study and analysis of the complexities of urban operations, enlisting ten experts to examine key elements that represent this costly and difficult method of fighting by focusing on notable case studies across the modern era, and the factors that contributed to success and failure.
Although focused primarily on urban combat from World War II to combat operations in the twenty-first century, Fremont-Barnes begins the first of eleven chapters with a case study on the U.S. Army’s first experience in urban warfare during the Battle of Monterrey, 21-24 September 1846, during the Mexican War. Fremont-Barnes uses this example to establish a baseline of key relevant lessons that remain constant in urban operations throughout modern history. Urban environments: constrain tactical maneuver; degrade command and control; require mutually supported strongpoints (offense and defense); require combined-arms groups, with an emphasis on firepower; necessitate holding key elevated structures for observation and reconnaissance; and require the right equipment for specific tasks. The attacker is ultimately faced with a complex operating environment requiring three-dimensional situational awareness. Most importantly, as highlighted throughout the book, the urban battlefield is up close and personal.
Another crucial lesson that the various experts emphasized in their respective case studies is the need to conduct urban operations as a means of supporting operational/strategic objectives (“the big picture”). The examples cited in the World War II/Korean War period were Ortona, St. Lô, Cherbourg, Manila, the Warsaw Uprising, and the 1950 Battle of Seoul. What these examples demonstrate are the importance in both enabling deeper offensive maneuver once secured or, in the case of Ortona from the defensive perspective, delaying the enemy long enough to enable friendly forces to establish strong defensive positions beyond the city. Time is also a consideration for both belligerents, as delays force the attacker to invest greater resources to dislodge the defenders while also potentially increasing non-combatant casualties as operations intensify. The Battle for Manila in February-March 1945 is a good example of this friction, showing U.S. forces needing to preserve offensive combat power, balancing the need to protect the civilian population, while also trying to dislodge a well-entrenched Japanese defense.
In the latter half of the book, Fremont-Barnes focused analysis on urban operations case studies from the 1990s to the 2010s, examining U.S. operations in Mogadishu; Russian operations in Grozny during the mid-1990s and early 2000s; the second battle of Fallujah in late 2004; Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip from 2006 to 2014; and U.S.-coalition operations against the Islamic State in Raqqa, Syria, in June 2017. What distinguishes these operations from past urban conflicts was not the ferocity and intensity, but the particular importance of the information environment as another domain that impacts success and failure beyond the urban battlefield. With communications technologies becoming widely available to both combatants and noncombatants, real-time, uncensored coverage provides diverging narratives from official military and press reports, further complicating urban operations. In addition to securing city blocks, armies (and non-state actors) must also contend with the battle of narratives.
Urban Battlefields concludes with a comprehensive assessment of common lessons learned based on the selected case studies for planning and conducting urban operations in future conflicts, especially considering rising global population trends, coupled with a heightened geopolitical environment from Eastern Europe to the Indo-Pacific region. Fremont-Barnes reminds readers that urban fighting is necessarily slow, but with sound combined arms tactics, effective specialized training, accurate human and signals intelligence, high morale, effective leadership, and communications across all echelons, casualties could be minimized (depending on the fanaticism of the defense), and civilian suffering mitigated. Overall, Urban Battlefields serves as a timely reminder that war is by nature a human endeavor where technology, no matter how sophisticated, serves as the means, rather than as the panacea to solving complex military problems.
Patrick Feng
Rockville, Maryland
