MILITARY GEOGRAPHY
    FOR PROFESSIONALS AND THE PUBLIC

10. URBANIZATION

No straw for him, no twigs or sticks,
this pig had built his house of BRICKS.
"You'll not get me!" the piggy cried.
"I'll blow you down!" the Wolf replied.
"You'll need," Pig said, "a lot of puff,
and I don't think you've got enough."
Wolf huffed and puffed and blew and blew,
the house stayed up as good as new.
"If I can't blow it down," Wolf said,
"I'll have to blow it up instead."

Roald Dahl
Revolting Rhymes

THE FOREGOING PARODY OF THE THREE LITTLE PIGS, WHO RESPECTIVELY BUILT THEIR HOUSES OF STRAW, sticks, and bricks, applies to urban combat on a grander scale. Some hamlets, villages, towns, and cities are more difficult to seize and secure than others if inhabitants strongly resist, but modern munitions can quickly reduce the best built settlements to rubble. Rational reasons to blow cities up or down, however, have been scarce for 2,500 years, since Sun Tzu proclaimed that, "The worst policy is to attack cities."¹ Aggressors who do so deprive themselves of valuable assets, defenders who do so destroy precious possessions, and well-meaning friends who do so wound their allies. The anonymous U.S. Army major who blurted, "It became necessary to destroy the town [of Ben Tre, South Vietnam] to save it" spouted nonsense.² Urban combat moreover disrupts unit cohesion, complicates control, blunts offensive momentum, and causes casualties to soar on both sides.

Most military doctrines the world over consequently advise land force commanders to isolate or bypass built-up areas, but the subjugation of political, industrial, commercial, transportation, and communication centers even so may sometimes decisively affect the outcome of battles, campaigns, even wars. Military commanders in such events face an endless variety of structures and facilities the seizure or control of which demands esoteric plans, programs, and procedures, since no two cities are quite alike. Urbanization moreover plays an imperative part in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations as well as deterrent strategies that hold cities hostage³ and war fighting strategies that seek to break the will of stubborn enemies by bombing them back into the Stone Age.⁴

SITES AND STRUCTURES

Urbanization, for purposes of this appraisal, connotes plots of land where population densities equal or exceed 1,000 persons per square mile (about 3 square kilometers) and buildings average at least one on every 2 acres. That definition embraces small towns and suburbia as well as cities of assorted sizes and shapes, close together or widely separated, superimposed upon flat, rolling, or rough topography. The mixture of manmade and natural features generally is more complex than sparsely inhabited deserts, swamps, and jungles, which contain fewer distinctive terrain features.

TOWN AND CITY CONFIGURATIONS

Some towns and cities emphasize governmental affairs, physical security, industries, commerce, business, or services, while others accommodate two or more primary functions. Every agglomeration is uniquely configured with regard to horizontal and vertical dimensions, structures, building materials, street patterns, access routes, bypasses, parks, recreational facilities, rural enclaves in otherwise urban settings, and undeveloped lands (table 19). Original layouts occasionally remain intact over long periods of time but often expand willy-nilly in response to new needs. Urban centers in North America and Western Europe toward the end of the 20th century, for example, tend toward lower average population densities per square mile as municipalities expand, more freestanding construction as opposed to solid blocks, greater use of glass, fewer buildings with basements, and a dearth of subways in suburbia where private automobiles abound.⁵

Urban environments consequently differ drastically in several militarily relevant respects. Castles, cathedrals and solid medieval buildings flush with narrow, crooked streets mark the midst of many European cities, whereas downtown Washington, DC, features construction astride a wide, rectangular mall that runs for 3 miles (5 kilometers) from Capitol Hill to the Lincoln Memorial. Affluent suburbanites sometimes encircle metropoli loaded with slums, shantytowns elsewhere surround prosperous inner cities, and the rich mayhap mingle with poor. Building designs and materials reflect urban functions, available resources, climatic conditions, and cultural proclivities. Construction in heavily forested parts of frigid Siberia favors lumber, easily obtained adobe is popular in relatively warm, arid regions, and structures elsewhere variously emphasize reeds, sod, reinforced concrete, or stone. Assorted street patterns also are observable (figure 29). Main thoroughfares run the gamut from unpaved threadneedle alleys to broad, hard-surfaced avenues abutted by open spaces that not only permit two-way traffic several lanes abreast but allow off-the-road vehicular movement.⁶

UTILITIES, FACILITIES, AND SERVICES

Modern towns and cities could not perform major functions or sustain present standards of living without lights, power, electricity, food, and potable water, together with supply, storage, distribution, maintenance, and waste disposal systems. Community life would slow to a crawl or stop if denied public transportation, police, fire departments, hospitals, telephones, and news media (newspapers, radio, television).

Table 19. Variable Town and City Components

Engineers, logisticians, and civic action forces are intensely interested in the current condition of urban infrastructure, restoration requirements in wartime, total capacities, and percentages that could be diverted for military use without dangerously depriving civilian inhabitants. Typical considerations include:

• The number, type, and capacities of water purification plants, reservoirs, and aqueducts
• Garbage, trash, sewage, and industrial waste collection, dumps, incinerators, and processing facilities
• Food processing plants and bakeries
• The number of hospitals by type, plus numbers of beds
• Electrical power, gas, and central heating plants, along with distribution lines
• Open, covered, and cold storage, POL tanks, arsenals, and ammunition dumps
• Public transportation facilities, including conveyances, parking lots, car barns, garages, and repair shops
• Potential military billets (hotels, motels, schools, churches, barracks, auditoriums, parks, and other open spaces)
• Historical and cultural landmarks to be preserved
• Recreational facilities, such as cinemas, gymnasiums, stadiums, and swimming pools.
  

URBAN SPRAWL

Half of all people on Planet Earth live in urban communities, but that number will reach two-thirds by 2025 if expectations prove correct. Forecasters predict that more than 40 cities then will exceed 10 million residents, of which Europe, the United States, and Canada will contribute only two--New York and Los Angeles (table 20). Each complex covers far more area than forerunners did during the Middle Ages, when most centers generally consisted of a castle surrounded by shacks on a few acres, whereas Los Angeles within its incorporated limits occupied almost 500 square miles (1,300 square kilometers) in 1997.⁸

Figure 29. Assorted Street Systems

Mighty cities moreover are coalescing to form enormous urban walls in many places on all continents save Africa and Australia. Seoul, which has swollen from 1.1 to more than 11 million since war erupted in 1950, included most of the lower Han River valley as far west as Inchon in 1997 and was swallowing Suwon to the south. The Ruhr and Rhine-Main complexes stretch almost 200 miles (320 kilometers) from Bonn to the Hook of Holland and continue to spread while Frankfurt-am-Main, Darmstadt, Mainz, Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Hanau, and Stuttgart are starting to form one megalopolis. Loosely linked villages, towns, and small cities a mile or two apart are common.⁹ The same could be said for the U.S. eastern seaboard from Boston, MA, through New York City, Newark, NJ, Philadelphia, PA, Washington, DC, and Norfolk, VA.

Table 20. Present and Projected Megalopoli

(more than 10 million inhabitants; boldface indicates more than 20 million)

Urban obstacles would seriously constrain 21st century adaptations of General Count Alfred von Schlieffen's grand plan to sweep across the North German Plain through Holland and Belgium into France.¹⁰ Blitzkriegs would be difficult to sustain and secure supply lines hard to maintain under such conditions. Rapid movement through suburbs seems feasible at first glance, because population densities are low and structural impediments few compared with urban cores, but urban sprawl sooner rather than later probably will impose barriers and chop high-speed avenues into short segments.¹¹

CONVENTIONAL URBAN COMBAT

Conventional urban combat began perhaps 6,000 years before Joshua assailed Jericho and "the walls forthwith fell down" between 1300 and 1200 B.C.¹² Three options are open to present day policymakers whenever armed forces cannot bypass cities because so doing seems geographically infeasible, politically improvident, or militarily imprudent: they can spare selected centers if attackers and defenders both agree; attackers can lay siege while defenders try to survive; or attackers can try to seize control from opponents in possession.

OPEN CITIES

Defeat in olden days was a life or death crapshoot for city dwellers who never could be certain whether fate would be kind or cruel if they capitulated quietly, because winners ordinarily took as many liberties as they liked. Benevolence was a rare exception to that rule. "Open city" declarations that deliberately preserve urban areas for political, economic, military, aesthetic, or humanitarian reasons remain few, and degrees of success differ considerably.

Hitler permitted Field Marshal Albert Kesselring to vacate Rome on June 3, 1944, largely because that ancient city was the capital of his Italian ally, Benito Mussolini; it housed the Vatican, which was revered by Bavarian Catholics; and historical treasures therein were irreplaceable. German forces streamed out, and Allied troops who streamed in the next day found that all key bridges over the Tiber River as well as other valuable structures were still standing. Triumphant generals assembled fearlessly for photo opportunities at Piazza de Campidoglio on Capitoline Hill.¹³

French Commander in Chief General Maxime Weygand officially declared Paris an open city on May 11, 1940, after sporadic fighting. Victorious Germans took possession peacefully three days later, but low-key opposition continually marred their 4-year occupation.¹⁴ Hitler personally designated General Dietrich von Choltitz as fortress commander when Allied divisions neared Paris in August 1944, vested him with full powers of a Befehlshaber (commander in chief), and directed him to ruin that symbol of French resistance. His hand-picked destroyer, however, refused to comply and, in direct defiance of der Führer's orders, implicitly designated Paris an open city. Sharp clashes occurred, but that action by General von Choltitz saved the heart and soul of France.¹⁵

Manila fared less well the following year when General Douglas MacArthur made good on his promise to return. Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita informally declared the Philippine capital an open city and planned to evacuate all but a handful of stay-behind forces in January 1945, but diehards under Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi refused to obey his orders. Fierce battles raged until March 3, by which time more than 17,000 military men on both sides and 100,000 civilians lay dead (nearly 15 percent of the population); thousands more had been seriously wounded, and Manila's ancient walled center along with everything in it had been torn to shreds.¹⁶

SIEGES

Sieges involve prolonged military blockades that isolate cities until supplies run out, attackers breach defenses, reinforcements break the ring, or morale cracks and occupants surrender. Partial encirclements, however lengthy, fail to satisfy that definition if the defenders never are isolated from essential sources of sustenance.

Siegecraft was popular well into the 19th century when most cities still were rather small, artillery was primitive by present standards, bombers had not yet been invented, and patience was a virtue.¹⁷ Those circumstances, however, no longer pertain. Few modern military commanders currently seem anxious to instigate sieges, even if competing missions and time permit, and few of their civilian supervisors seem willing to pay the political and economic costs of "sedentary" confrontations with no end in sight.

Some dramatic exceptions nevertheless have occurred in relatively recent times. Most of them, typified by the siege of Singapore (1941-42), featured desperate efforts to fend off enemy armed forces.¹⁸ German General of the Airborne Forces Bernhart-Hermann Ramcke won Hitler's highest decoration, the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds, for his brilliant defense of port facilities at Brest, France, which U.S. VIII Corps isolated and battered from August 12, 1944, until the one-division garrison capitulated on September 20.¹⁹ The most horrific siege in history took place at Leningrad, where more than a million civilians (one-third of the population) became battle casualties, froze, starved to death, or died of disease between September 1941 and January 1944. Survival instinct provided the strongest possible incentive to persist because, as local Communist Party chief Andrei Zhdanov bluntly explained, "The working class of Leningrad [would] be turned into slaves, and the best of them exterminated" if Nazi representatives of the "Master Race" overran their city.²⁰

Besiegers with time to burn may invest urban centers without expending bullets or bombs to see how well-armed opponents might respond to pressure. Stalin did so in 1948-49, when he ordered Soviet and satellite forces to block all roads and rail lines into politically combustible Berlin, which lay deep in East Germany, 120 miles (195 kilometers) from the nearest friendly frontier. The United States, which then possessed the world's only nuclear weapons, might have threatened to use them but elected instead to mount a massive airlift that supplied Berlin with food, fuel, and other essentials for 11 months until the disgruntled Generalissimo backed down rather than risk a ruinous war.²¹

STREET FIGHTING

Street fighting ensues whenever armed forces try to wrest urbanized terrain from stubborn defenders. It can be brutal but brief in villages and a lengthy, agonizing struggle between small, isolated units in cities where concrete canyons and culs-de-sac degrade technological advantages, severely limit vehicular mobility, render tactical communications unreliable, complicate intelligence collection, and swallow troops wholesale. Restrictive rules of engagement designed to reduce collateral damage and casualties may further decease benefits obtainable from aerial firepower as well as artillery and magnify dependence on foot soldiers.²²

Urban Avenues and Obstacles. Street fighting problems are similar regardless of locale, as battles for Stalingrad (1942-43),²³ Seoul ( which changed hands four times between June 1950 and March 1951),²⁴ and Hué (1968)²⁵ bear witness. Motorized troops must stick to streets and open spaces, whereas infantrymen fight three-dimensional wars at ground level, on rooftops, and in subterranean structures such as subways, sewers, and cellars, creeping over, under, or around each structure, blasting "mouseholes" through walls, ceilings, and floors when more convenient avenues are unavailable. Mines, booby traps, barbed wire, road blocks, rubble, and other obstacles abound (figure 30).

Every inner city building becomes a potential strong point, particularly those that overlook key intersections or open spaces.²⁶ Clear fields of fire for flat-trajectory weapons seldom exceed 200 yards (185 meters) even in suburbs, where ornamental shrubbery and sweeping curves often limit lines-of-sight. One lucky French gunner at the Arc de Triomphe may have established a world's record during urban combat in August 1944 when, with a first-round hit, he defanged a German Panther tank 1,800 meters (more than a mile) away at the opposite end of the Champs-Elysées.²⁷

Armored Firepower. Tanks and other armored vehicles inch through inner cities at a snail's pace, find little room to maneuver on narrow or rubble-clogged streets, cannot turn sharp corners, and are vulnerable beneath enemy-occupied buildings unless they "button up," which limits visibility and invites ambush. Many lucrative targets remain beyond reach, because most range-finders produce fuzzy images close up, tank turrets cannot swivel freely in cramped quarters, and main guns on level ground can neither elevate nor depress enough to blast upper stories or basements nearby. Tank-killer teams armed with short-range weapons commonly seek sanctuaries in resultant "dead spaces," from which they can attack soft spots such as gas tanks and treads with relative impunity. Conventional urban combat

Figure 30. Three Layers of Urban Obstacles

consequently calls for few rather than many tanks, mainly to furnish close support for front-line infantry.²⁸ Exceptions to that rule normally involve opponents in disarray or other special circumstances, as demonstrated on August 25, 1944, when French General Jacques-Philippe Leclerc's 2d Armored Division led Allied liberators into Paris.²⁹

Artillery. Urban jungles, like their leafy analogs, discourage artillery. Chemical warfare (CW) munitions in one sense are well suited, since they can seep into crannies, retain required concentrations longer than CW strikes in the open, and neutralize opponents without damaging structures, but inimical consequences could ensue if lethal chemicals caused mass casualties among friendly civilians. The effects of high explosives are easier to control, although detonations are hard to adjust in densely populated areas and buildings reduced to rubble provide better protection for enemy troops than those left standing. High-angle artillery fire in urban areas thus is often used mainly to clear rooftops and target troops in the open while mortars, which are more maneuverable and less destructive, handle most close support missions. Medium and heavy artillery projectiles, however, perform superbly at low angles and pointblank range, as the senior German general in Aachen discovered on October 21, 1944. He waved a white flag as soon as the first U.S.155mm shell hit his command center, with the wry comment, "It's time to quit when artillerymen turn into snipers."³⁰

Recoilless and Wire-Guided Weapons. Urban combat inhibits lighter crew-served arms as well. Backblast makes it dangerous to emplace recoilless weapons in small, unvented rooms or other cramped spaces where loose objects, glass, and combustible materials must be covered or removed. Enclosures so amplify explosive sounds that personnel without earplugs become deaf after a few experiences. Minimum feasible ranges and limited abilities to elevate or depress launchers severely restrict the utility of wire-guided missile systems in towns and cities, where such obstructions and entanglements as buildings, rubble, walls, fences, trees, brush, telephone poles, power lines, and television antennas are abundant (see center diagram of figure 30). Firing positions on roofs or in lofty rooms allow clearer fields of fire than sites at street level, but long-range shots even so are scarce.³¹

COMBAT SERVICE SUPPORT

Logistical requirements in cities differ significantly from those in open terrain. The dearth of vehicular traffic reduces petroleum consumption, except for engineer and power generating equipment. Reliance on artillery munitions declines as well, although troops in compensation expend prodigious amounts of small arms ammunition, machine gun bullets, hand grenades, mortar shells, and plastic explosives. They also wear out weapons, equipment, and uniforms at abnormally rapid rates. Route clearance is a high priority task that requires bulldozers wherever offensive forces find rubble in the way, whereas defenders demand materials with which to build barriers. Both sides use sandbags to shore up positions in and around buildings.³²

Commanders in densely populated centers often must divert military supplies, other resources, and manpower to sustain life among noncombatants, who need food, water, and some sort of shelter along with medical assistance for the sick and wounded. Early control over endemic diseases and septic threats becomes doubly important if civilian health and sanitation systems break down. Stringent security measures, such as identification cards, curfews, restricted areas, restraining lines, checkpoints, and road blocks, may be required to prevent pilferage, looting, and actions that interfere with military operations. Refugee control can assume immense proportions if panic-stricken civilians, young and old, many of them infirm, pour out of cities by the thousands on foot and aboard automobiles, bicycles, horse-drawn wagons, ox carts, or baby carriages, together with all possessions they can possibly carry (General "Lightning Joe" Collins never forgot one elderly Korean man who, during the first exodus from Seoul in 1950, carried on his back an A-frame laden with rice bags "atop which sat his wizened old mother").³³

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Military trappings intended primarily for use in wide open spaces are liabilities in cities, where short-range weapons are more valuable than those with long reaches and inexpensive, durable, or disposable items are preferable to costly accouterments. Ready markets consequently await innovators, as the following samples suggest.

Tank guns and artillery would be more useful if higher and lower angles of fire were feasible. All armored vehicles engaged in urban warfare would benefit from sprint capabilities, greater all-round visibility, and better protection for soft spots that are particularly vulnerable during close combat. Richer defensive suites, increased agility, and stealthiness would help helicopters survive at window level between high-rise buildings. Sensors able to "see" around corners and in pitch black sewers would be infinitely more advantageous than those that rely on ambient light. Engineers need the wherewithal to raze multistory structures on short notice without undesirable collateral damage.³⁴ Several categories of nonlethal weapons, exemplified by adhesives ("stickums"), anti-traction substances ("slickums"), thermal barriers, foams, calmatives, and odiferous agents, perhaps could reduce fatalities among belligerents as well as noncombatants and limit unplanned damage to urban property.³⁵ Street fighters also would welcome wheeled, tracked, and walking robots, remotely controlled or with artificially intelligent computers for brains that could operate for long periods without sustenance or sleep and remain emotionless under fire. Assorted automatons, each with specialized skills, could reconnoiter, spearhead attacks, clear obstacles, breach minefields, and perform other hot, heavy, hazardous, humdrum, or repetitious (H⁴R) missions.³⁶

UNCONVENTIONAL URBAN COMBAT

Ingenious insurgents, resistance movements, and transnational terrorists thrive in labyrinthine cityscapes that amplify their capabilities and frustrate technologically superior adversaries who find it difficult to acquire timely, accurate intelligence and quickly discover that conventional military tactics are marginally useful in urban games of "cat and mouse."

REVOLUTIONARY UPRISINGS

"People's wars," as expounded by Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, and Vo Nguyen Giap, are mass insurrections that open primarily in rural areas and work their way toward cities. Urban insurgencies, which take a different tack, start in cities where most people reside and, if successful, pay off faster.

Recipes for Urban Revolutions. French General P.-G. Cluséret penned the original recipe for urban revolutions in his Memoires of 1887, which Lenin adapted in 1905 and published in the Bolshevik newspaper Vperid. Hit or hold real estate, he advised, because ruling classes "will sell any government you like, in order to protect their property." Paralyze police stations at the onset, seize buildings that command key intersections, blow up or burn down whatever cannot be captured, block subterranean approaches, build barricades, cut telephone lines, disable utilities, and strike before dawn while most cities sleep.³⁷

Carlos Marighella, an aging Brazilian firebrand who authored the Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, emphasized how easy it is for revolutionaries familiar with streets, alleys, byways, impasses, straits, shortcuts, parks, underground passageways, and other peculiarities of their own city to move surreptitiously, appear by surprise, strike with impunity, then fade away like specters. "It is an insoluble problem for the police," he asserted, "to get someone they can't see, to repress someone they can't catch, to close in on someone they can't find."³⁸

Rhetoric Versus Results. Correlations between the foregoing rhetoric and real-life results are tenuous. The Russian Revolution of 1917, which involved brief, spontaneous uprisings in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg), developed overtly without recourse to serious violence, ousted Tsar Nicholas II, and terminated 300 years of Romanov rule. Geographic factors scarcely influenced that cataclysmic upheaval, which would have achieved all objectives if neither General Cluséret nor Lenin had ever written a word.³⁹ The 7-year Algerian struggle for independence from France (November 1954 to March 1962), which was well-planned and protracted, proceeded in a very different vein. Climactic actions took place in crooked corridors of the Casbah, where 80,000 wretched souls were cheek to jowl on 75 isolated acres. The revolutionary Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), which hit public buildings, police posts, communication centers, cafes, and shops, made all the right moves according to Cluséret and Marighella. French troops savagely suppressed passive supporters along with active participants, but ultimately lost the war because President Charles de Gaulle saw no way to keep a tight lid on the cauldron indefinitely.⁴⁰ The influence of geography on urban uprisings, in short, varies radically from time to time and place to place.

RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS

Resistance movements, as contrasted with revolutionary uprisings, aim to evict occupying powers, "puppet" regimes, or well-meaning domestic meddlers whose intrusion they resent. Those who make best use of urban terrain invariably fare better than those who do not, even if they lose.

The handful of heroes in Berlin who attacked Soviet tanks with Molotov cocktails and stones (1953)⁴¹ and Hungarian freedom fighters who battled in Budapest 3 years later⁴² were quickly outclassed, whereas unconventional urban brawlers armed with antiquated weapons were formidable in Somalia, despite unfavorable odds. Wily warlord Aideed's lightly armed militia ambushed unwelcome Pakistani peacemakers under a U.N. banner in Mogadishu on June 5, 1993, killed 25, wounded 53, and escaped unscathed. U.S. Special Operations Forces captured several of his lieutenants on October 3, but the ensuing fire-fight caused 91 serious casualities on the U.S. side (18 dead) and mangled maybe 1,500 Somalis. The resultant U.N. military "victory" became a major psychological defeat. President Clinton, in response to adverse public opinion at home and abroad, soon withdrew all U.S. Armed Forces from Somalia. Aideed thereafter was free to run his own show without foreign interference.⁴³

Sabotage, a more subtle, less risky form of resistance, can pay off handsomely provided personnel involved are well informed about the locations, characteristics, overall values, and vulnerabilities of potential targets. Teams armed with timely, accurate information can prioritize intelligently, strike targets that promise the most lucrative payoffs, and avoid those that would put sympathizers out of work, deprive them of public utilities, or otherwise impair popular support. Ignorant saboteurs, on the other hand, may do more harm than good, as one feckless French team discovered in a Paris sewer during World War II: its members leveled and flooded more than a city block and left many friends dead or wounded when they detonated a charge to sever telephone service with Berlin, unaware that the lines lay next to gas and water mains.⁴⁴

TRANSNATIONAL TERRORISM

Urban centers are the main milieu of transnational terrorists, whose operations in foreign cities aim to spread panic and cause such turmoil that authorities comply with their sociopolitical demands to avoid further suffering. Atrocities against innocent bystanders make warped sense when seen in that light.

U.S. experience indicates great potential for the escalation of transnational terrorism since one small bomb killed 12 persons at La Guardia Airport in 1975.⁴⁵ Suicidal assailants buried 220 U.S. Marines, 18 Navy bluejackets, and 3 U.S. Army soldiers in their barracks on the outskirts of Beirut in 1983.⁴⁶ Greater property damage and repercussions followed an enormous explosion that shook New York City's 110-story World Trade Center on February 26, 1993. Perhaps 55,000 employees and thousands of visitors were trapped for hours in pitch black, smoke-filled stairwells; a monstrous traffic jam in lower Manhattan impeded police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances en route to rescue them; many banks, businesses, brokerage houses, law firms, and other tenants were displaced for a month and lost about $1 billion as a direct result; and city police investigated 364 bomb threats during the first 5 days after the blast ( 5 or 6 per day previously was average).⁴⁷ Other potentially lucrative urban targets for consideration by transnational terrorists include air traffic control centers, information storage and transfer sites (computerized banks, commercial houses, and stock exchanges), transportation nodes (airports, bridges, tunnels, switching centers), nuclear reactors, and petrochemical plants. Calamities could ensue if commuter service ceased, ventilating systems failed, and perishable products spoiled.

The President and Secretary of Defense in 1996 consequently issued unusually urgent security directives designed to protect urban infrastructure and occupants against terrorist acts.⁴⁸ Those steps came as no surprise, because counterterrorism specialists have not yet devised countermeasures that credibly cover worst case contingencies. They could convert critical installations into fortresses across the country, and U.S. allies could do likewise, but budgets would balloon, mission effectiveness would suffer, and free societies would become less free. Creative solutions consequently are required.

CONVENTIONAL URBAN BOMBARDMENT

Aerial bombardment specialists, who have very different perspectives about urban combat than conventional street fighters and special operations forces, promote two basic options or some combination thereof. Option A emphasizes precision strikes against carefully selected targets, the destruction of which would degrade rival military capabilities; Option B stresses conventional carpet bombing designed primarily to break the enemy's will.

OPTION A: PRECISION BOMBING

"Smart" weapons first saw combat in 1943, when Luftwaffe dive bombers sank the defecting Italian battleship Roma in the Mediterranean Sea, but full appreciation for precision-guided munitions (PGMs) was deferred for three decades until large U.S. laser-guided bombs dropped North Vietnam's Paul Doumer and Thanh Hoa bridges in April 1972, both of which had survived repeated attacks with "dumb" munitions.⁴⁹

Fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters armed with air-to-surface PGMs currently can see and strike point targets with far greater accuracy and far less collateral damage than ever before. Heavier payloads, greater explosive power, and abilities to penetrate far into reinforced steel and concrete structures before detonating further enhance the utility of PGMs wherever enemies mingle civilian populations with militarily valuable assets typified by command/control centers, urban strong points, air defense sites, supply depots, defense industries, power plants, railroad yards, and port facilities. Not every "brilliant" aerial bomb or missile performed as well as advertised against targets in downtown Baghdad during Operation Desert Storm (1991),⁵⁰ but results were nonetheless impressive, major improvements are under development, and further advances are technologically feasible.

OPTION B: CARPET BOMBING

Italian Brigadier General Guilio Douhet voiced urban carpet bombing concepts in 1911, 8 years after the first powered aircraft flew, and published his contentious views in Command of the Air a decade later. He stated unequivocally that the basic objective of war "has always been, still is, and always will be . . . to compel the enemy to bow to one's will," then concluded that "to bend the enemy's will, one must put him in intolerable circumstances; and the best way to do that is to attack directly the defenseless population of his cities and great industrial centers" using chemical warfare (CW) as well as conventional munitions.⁵¹

Past Practices. Air power proponents exposed Douhet's principles to their most stringent test during World War II. The German Air Force, which took first turn, razed a good deal of Rotterdam on May 14, 1940, under the guiding hand of Reich Marshal Hermann Göring, then began to bomb Liverpool, Bristol, Plymouth, Southhampton, Manchester, Birmingham, and other British cities in September. The prolonged Blitz of London killed 10,000 civilians, left 17,000 badly wounded, and damaged or demolished historic buildings that included parts of Parliament, St. Paul's Cathedral, Old Bailey, and Buckingham Palace between September 1940 and May 1941. V-1 "buzz bombs" and V-2 ballistic missiles subsequently mounted terrorist attacks.⁵² Göring's Luftwaffe visited Coventry 17 times before a horrific raid on November 14, 1940, left that charming city in ruins.⁵³

The Allies then took their turn. Britain's Bomber Command by night and U.S. Eighth Air Force by day shellacked most major German cities for 2 consecutive years, beginning in 1943. Together they hit Hamburg six times between July 24 and August 3, 1943, with results that recipients called die Katastrophe.⁵⁴ Berlin looked like a lunar landscape by VE-Day: 50,000 buildings had been destroyed, many more were little more than shells, and resultant rubble conservatively totaled 100 million cubic yards (75 million cubic meters).⁵⁵ Beautiful Dresden, famed for baroque and rococo architecture as well as exquisite porcelain figurines, practically disappeared on the night of February 13, 1945, when 135,000 residents, refugees, foreign laborers, and prisoners of war died--more than the combined toll at Hiroshima and Nagasaki after both were atomized. ⁵⁶

Low-level U.S. raids against Japan, all at night, slighted high explosives in favor of incendiaries, mainly magnesium, white phosphorus, and jellied gasoline (one bizarre scheme, eventually discarded, proposed dropping millions of bats "armed" with miniature delayed-action flammables ⁵⁷). Successes destroyed 40 percent of 66 cities, left almost one-third of Japan's population homeless, and inflicted far more casualties than Japanese Armed Forces suffered during all of World War II. The cataclysmic Tokyo raid of March 9 and 10, 1945, killed 83,000 when high winds among flimsy wooden and rice paper structures whipped up uncontrollable fire storms that one eye witness said looked like paintings of Purgatory. Kobe, Osaka, and Nagoya experienced similar fates that terrible night. Japanese noncombatants felt shock effects many times greater than those that accompanied urban bombing campaigns against Germany, because attacks were concentrated in a much shorter period.⁵⁸

Past Repercussions. Conventional bombing campaigns nevertheless were less rewarding than Douhet and his disciples predicted. Urban bombardment indeed devastated the Third Reich, but "did not so reduce German war production as to have a decisive effect on the outcome of the war," according to the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. Resilience was greater than expected, partly because damage to machine tools (as opposed to structures) was slight. Depression, defeatism, and fear were rampant, but apathy made most people amenable to discipline and receptive to Reichminister Joseph Goebbel's propaganda ("Enjoy the war; the peace will be terrible" became a cynical slogan when defeat loomed). Deeply ingrained work ethics coupled with needs for enough deutsche marks to put ersatz food on the table kept most bread winners on the job until the bitter end.⁵⁹ Conditions were worse in Japan, where shortages of raw materials crippled war efforts well before U.S. bombers began to batter the home islands. Cottage industries, which were logistical mainstays, closed down completely after workers en masse fled fire storms. National traditions of obedience, conformity, stoicism, and willingness to make sacrifices, however, prevented collapse despite widespread desperation--most men, women, and children who heard Emperor Hirohito's recorded radio broadcast on August 14, 1945, expressed stunned disbelief when he announced that Japan had surrendered.⁶⁰

Future Applicability. Currently available guided missiles and modern bombers that carry huge loads of technologically advanced conventional explosives could ravage cities faster, more efficiently, and with worse effects on enemy morale than World War II weapon systems, which were much more numerous. Lethal chemicals and biological warfare attacks could wipe out poorly defended populations. Carpet bombardment therefore remains a credible course of action for any country that possesses armed forces able to penetrate enemy defenses in sufficient strength. The key question to be resolved thus involves policy decisions concerning conscionability rather than military capabilities.

URBAN CENTERS AND NUCLEAR STRATEGY

The ability of urban centers to resist nuclear bombardment varies considerably with size, configuration, and predominant construction materials, but well-placed weapons in the megaton range could obliterate the biggest, most solidly built with instantaneous shock effects many magnitudes greater than any previously experienced in wartime. Deterrence and defense accordingly have attracted intense attention since August 1945, when the 15-kiloton Little Boy bomb flattened much of Hiroshima and the 23-kiloton Fat Man of different design ravaged Nagasaki 3 days later. ⁶¹

U.S. Policies and Postures. U.S. deterrent strategists emphasized a "balance of terror" after Soviet adversaries acquired nuclear weapons in the early 1960s. Concepts focused on urban targets picked to "ensure the destruction, singly or in combination, of the Soviet Union, Communist China, and the communist satellites." Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara assumed that abilities to eradicate "say, one-fifth to one-fourth of [the Soviet] population and one-half of [Soviet] industrial capacity would represent intolerable punishment," and therefore be credibly dissuasive. Efforts to protect U.S. cities received slight attention at that stage, because McNamara believed that power to pulverize aggressors provided the prime deterrent, not "the ability partially to limit damage to ourselves."⁶² Homeland defense aspirations resurfaced two decades later with President Reagan's so-called "Star Wars" speech in March 1983,⁶³ but U.S. and allied cities at the turn of the 21st century nevertheless remain at risk, because adequate ballistic missile defense systems have not yet been fully developed, much less deployed.

Soviet Policies and Postures. Russian leaders assigned a high priority to homeland defense long before Soviet successors sanctified Lenin's saying that "the primary producer of all mankind is the laboring man, the worker. If he survives, we save everything . . . if he dies, so does the State."⁶⁴ Soviet ballistic missile defenses, like those of the United States, were limited largely to warning networks, but their air defense apparatus was impressive and stout civil defenses emphasized fallout shelters, hardened facilities, stockpiles, and thorough indoctrination in their use. Elaborate plans to evacuate Soviet cities during intense crises, however, aroused widespread skepticism among Western strategists, who questioned whether logistical capabilities then available could adequately feed, clothe, shelter, and otherwise minister to millions of displaced persons whose homes and places of employment might be leveled during their absence in summertime, much less in subzero winter.⁶⁵

Prospects for City Defense. It is helpful at this point to put past pluses and minuses in perspective. Few cities currently are as well prepared to withstand a nuclear assault as Soviet counterparts were before the Cold War wound down. Ballistic missile defense (BMD) specialists have made immense technological strides since the mid-1980s, but even small nuclear-capable nations will be able to hold urban centers hostage until much better BMD systems have been perfected, purchased, and deployed in adequate quantities.

OVERALL URBAN VULNERABILITIES

Modern metropolises depend on outside sources for food, water, fuel, electricity, and other essential facilities. They also must dispose of garbage, rubbish, and toxic waste materials beyond their borders. Areas of vulnerability consequently include sources of supply and distribution systems far beyond city limits.

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Last Update:  September 30, 2002