On February 24, 2022, Russian forces air assaulted into the Antonov Airport near Kyiv while a large ground force attacked from the north. In the end, the air assault failed but Russian troops pushed their way to Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv. There they clashed in a monthlong battle with Ukrainian forces, grinding the city to a pulp. Since then, the Russians and Ukrainians have fought in numerous large-scale urban battles, including in Bakhmut, Mariupol, Izium, Kharkiv, and Toretsk.

A year and a half after Russia’s invasion and about 1,200 miles south, Israel responded to Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7, 2023, by deploying three divisions into the heavily urbanized terrain of the Gaza territory, battling upwards of thirty thousand enemy fighters. The campaign in Gaza gained worldwide notoriety for its urban complications and remained a multidivision mission for over half a year.

These two conflicts, in Ukraine and Gaza, teach an inconvenient lesson—that large scale combat operations (LSCO) and urban environments are linked. Together, they demonstrate the urgent necessity for the US Army to prepare for conflict in urban environments. In particular, echelons above brigade commands must learn to plan for urban operations at the operational level of warfare. Having planned real-world urban LSCO in a theater army, I can attest to the scarcity of practical, readily available resources for planners at echelons above brigade. Doctrine is limited to primarily tactical matters, captured mostly in one joint publication and three Army techniques publications. As for education, the 40th Infantry Division ran an urban operations planner course, which has an uncertain future, that focused on brigade and division staffs. However, with relatively small cohorts, no direct connection to corps and theater army, and a more tactical how-to focus rather than operational campaigning, the course did not fill all gaps in the force. Until doctrine and education catch up to the requirement, planners will rely on simple guides like this to help understand how to plan for urban conflicts as part of LSCO campaigns.

The Future Fight is Urban

To embrace planning, echelons above brigade commands must first reject the myth that US forces would never fight LSCO in the urban environment. There are numerous reasons to fight in urban areas. First, cities can be intrinsically valuable. Cities contain dense populations of people, attract economic resources, and often have cultural or political significance. Global megatrends indicate continuing population growth over the next few decades with people concentrating in urban areas. This means an increasing number of these areas in the future operating environment.

Another reason to fight in urban areas is that the aspects of a city that make it intrinsically valuable may also make it militarily valuable. Consequently, US forces may need to operate in urban areas to deny critical capabilities from the enemy or to protect or recapture them on behalf of a partner nation. As a personal example, this is the category related to my urban LSCO planning experience. The combatant commander directed the theater army to develop plans for imposing costs to the enemy through the land domain. Our team developed multiple options that generally fell into one of two types. One type sought to directly deny resources to the enemy. The other sought to be close enough to those resources to indirectly deny them using land-based effects. Regardless, the most valuable resources in all options were in cities and required urban planning.

A third reason US forces may fight in urban areas is simply because that is where the enemy chooses to operate. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army today believes that American risk aversion to high-casualty situations makes drawing them into cities an ideal way to erode will, regardless of each city’s value. The Battle of Ortona in 1943 provides an example of this phenomenon. Ortona possessed zero strategic and little operational value to either Axis or Allied forces. However, the Germans defended Ortona almost solely because it provided the opportunity to attrit Canadian forces. The Canadians completed their attack simply because it provided the opportunity to attrit the Germans.

Finally, US forces may need to conduct urban operations to secure lines of communication to enable other operations. A significant reason for the US seizure of the German city of Aachen in 1944 was to secure the Aachen Corridor to the vital Ruhr industrial region. Bypassing urban areas when attacking Kyiv disrupted Russian lines of communication and significantly contributed to the Russian attack’s logistical culmination. As a result, the Russians abandoned the concept of bypassing cities when they contained important rail or road nodes.

Planning for Operations in Urban Environments

Once over the myth that urban areas can always be avoided, commands then encounter the challenge of how to actually plan large-scale operations. Urban environments significantly impact how Army forces conduct operations, which requires unique planning considerations.

Operational Approach

The first major planning factor is developing an urban campaign operational approach. The starting point for all urban campaign decisions is identifying how a city fits into the overarching strategic objectives. This context is essential for the commander to establish acceptable levels of destruction to the city, a determination that influences all subsequent decisions.

Offensive campaigns are different from defensive ones. As the attacker, US forces will exert more control over the amount of precombat destruction that occurs in a city (i.e., preparatory fires). Therefore, commands may be more precise when establishing acceptable levels of destruction. Some of the other important considerations for urban operational approaches include end state and conditions, phasing and transitions, tempo, operational reach, and culmination. While those are all aspects of operational art, they are uniquely impacted in urban environments by the commander’s acceptance of destruction. As a result, there are a handful of urban campaign approaches commanders can select from: destroy, assault, infiltrate, isolate and besiege, bypass, or raid.

Defensive urban campaigns have their own unique operational approach considerations. As the defender, US forces exert more control over the amount of destruction inflicted during combat. For example, defenders usually choose which bridges to destroy or buildings to rubble to create obstacles. Commanders must also decide whether they plan to conduct a long-term or short-term defense. The anticipated length of the defense informs nearly all subsequent decisions. Other key considerations for defensive campaign planning include enemy capabilities and objectives, strategically or culturally significant terrain, natural terrain, alterable terrain, civilian population, and the role of civilians in the defense. Based on historical examples, commanders generally employ one of the following types of defensive operational approaches: preemptive withdrawal, fortress of last resort, city as a fortress, envelop and counterattack, zonal defense, defense in depth, point defense, delay, and denial of control.

Operational Framework

The second major planning factor is the operational framework. Planners must consider that the application of the operational framework is complicated by urban environments, thereby increasing the difficulties of controlling subordinate formations. One challenging aspect of urban operations is that units will often have noncontiguous areas of operation. This presents challenges to identifying and delineating between deep, close, and rear areas by echelon, especially as boundaries based on terrain landmarks may be quickly destroyed. Another challenge is mutual support. Supporting range in urban environments can vary drastically over time and space. Also, supporting distance considerations are impacted by rapid change in the landscape, which can quickly isolate units.

The areas within the operational framework are challenging as well. In the close area, the most obvious and significant issue is that units will often be in a 360-degree fight along multiple axes. Consequently, the close area is much more expansive in urban than in other environments for an Army force, despite occupying a relatively small portion of a map. Planners at echelons above brigade need to adjust their correlation of forces and means (known as COFMs) for all operations. In the case of attacks, many historical cases indicate at least six to one.

The deep area also presents challenges. In particular, isolating large cities can be problematic. Large city perimeters increase security requirements, often beyond the capacity of available Army forces. Many large cities also have significant maritime features. As a result, urban deep areas at echelons above brigade are unusually joint-dependent and require close coordination with the other services.

Finally, in the rear area in urban operations, commanders at echelons above brigade must decide how to conduct reception, staging, onward movement, and integration (RSOI). Cities often provide excellent access to transportation facilities, such as ports and rail networks. However, those facilities are often within range of many of the enemy’s offensive capabilities. Yet conducting RSOI beyond the city may add significant maneuver distance, require fighting through previously cleared terrain due to enemy infiltration, and expose forces to enemy interdiction efforts.

Time

The third major planning factor is time. Commanders should expect to devote additional time for planning urban operations for two major reasons: intelligence and operational planning teams. First, intelligence preparation for a city should be lengthy and extensive. As noted by the Mosul Study Group, “Extensive and unceasing . . . intelligence preparation of the battlefield [is] essential to understand this ever-changing complex terrain.” The intelligence function benefits from developing on-the-ground knowledge in urban environments to collect and analyze human intelligence, which takes time. Planners should consider that the urban terrain limits the effectiveness of imagery intelligence while the congested urban electromagnetic spectrum reduces the effectiveness of signals intelligence. This will likely impact the selection of named areas of interest and priority information requirements.

Second, city-specific operational planning teams (OPTs) require additional time to complete their work. Each city, even within the same geographic area, is unique. Commanders need specialized planning teams to manage the planning process for operations in a city. These OPTs benefit from additional time to sift through the complexity of a city to best develop courses of action for the commander. Additionally, OPTs have a capacity limitation. Many of the planners involved in other efforts related to conducting operations in the operational environment will be dual-hatted in the city-specific OPT.

Enablers

The fourth major planning factor is enablers. The numerous adverse impacts of urban operations drive the requirement for additional capabilities.

Beginning with protection, combat engineers are an especially valuable asset in urban operations. They conduct breaching, route clearance, rubble clearance, and obstacle reduction to enable movement and maneuver and support the commander’s tempo of operations. Depending on the situation, urban operations may create significant demand for gap-crossing capability, especially multirole bridging companies. Additional military police capabilities will be essential because of the presence of internally displaced persons and the likelihood of holding detainees. Another consideration is for explosive ordnance disposal units. The presence of unexploded ordnance, the use of mines, and the likelihood, demonstrated by history, of encountering booby traps in urban areas will likely exceed normal capacity.

Sustainers will face increased requirements in multiple classes of supply. The presence of civilians, historically measured at about 10 percent of preconflict urban populations, will increase requirements for food, water, and medicine. US forces have legal obligations to the civil population, as well as enemy prisoners of war, that cannot be avoided and will drive increased sustainment demand. Urban operations also tend to increase demand on repair parts, particularly tires, and ammunition. Planners should consider the possibility of additional ground medical evacuation capability and surgical support in urban areas. There may also be increased demand for port-opening and -operating capabilities, depending on the mission. Urban areas also usually contain key infrastructure that can be dangerous and require technical expertise to safely operate, such as oil and gas refineries. This may require contracting technical expertise to provide support during operations.

Another consideration worth noting deals with the information dimension. Public affairs and combat camera units can be especially helpful during urban operations. Urban operations often generate civilian casualties, which is exploited by the enemy, such as Hamas did in Gaza during Israel’s ground campaign after the October 7 attacks. Effective and aggressive public affairs can mitigate this challenge. Commanders may also need additional civil affairs capabilities to assist with developing a civilian common operational picture and to lead stability-related efforts.

Finally, urban plans benefit from emphasis on special operations capabilities. Special operations forces (SOF) can assist with challenges associated with intelligence preparation of the operational environment, especially with developing vital human intelligence sources. SOF is also the key in defensive campaigns, particularly in developing civilian defense augmentation or a long-term resistance in enemy-occupied areas. Finally, SOF can assist with isolating portions of cities, conducting counter-SOF operations, and executing sabotage in enemy-controlled areas.

Preparing for urban conflict at echelons above brigade is urgent. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be inherently urban almost from the start. A Russian invasion of the Baltics would likely have a large urban component almost immediately as the Russians could reach capital cities in a matter of days. A North Korean attack on South Korea would have a significant urban component because of the proximity of Seoul to the border. The US military must accept that odds are high that the next large-scale conflict will have a heavily urban character within days of beginning. There will not be time to make up then for the lack of preparation today. This can be partly addressed now—at low cost—by training echelons above brigade staffs how to campaign in urban areas.

Major Brandon Schwartz, US Army, is currently a doctrine author at the Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate. He holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MA from Air Command and Staff College. During his career, Major Schwartz served with the Third Expeditionary Sustainment Command, 82nd Airborne Division, Cadet Command, and Army Central.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate, Combined Arms Center. Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Spc. Charles Leitner, US Army