Eli5: Why is Urban warfare feared as the most difficult form of warfare for a military to conduct?
In: 1719
Imagine you are standing in an open field so large there are no trees as far as you can see.You have perfect visibility to the horizon, no-one can sneak up on you, no-one can snipe you, you can see everything. Sounds will be easy to identify. Vehicles have free range to manoeuvre.
Now you are in a rocky meadow surrounded by forest with the old low wall running through the surrounds. Suddenly you can’t see past the forest, and the rocks are perfect hiding places, but at least you can see the tanks or the helicopters. Sounds will be muffled, but clearly identified once they exit the trees. Vehicles have free range to manoeuvre within the clearing keeping clear of the rocks. The ground provides good cover particularly if you are on a hill.
Now you are in a forest, not good, you can’t see very far, too many trees. But the enemy has the same problem. Sounds are muffled to some extent, but others can travel far. You need to keep watch at all times, head on a swivel and all that.. BUT you also have to look up into the trees for sniper nests. Vehicles are unusable. Every gap could be an IED (Improvised Explosive Device).
Now you are in the middle of street of a major city, pick any. Look at this image:
https://goo.gl/maps/ZWbH3zuUTEZQP4Kb9
***Every*** window is an enemy position and every single one is HIGHER than you. Every building is a warren of small rooms and even worse choke points. Every car is hiding an enemy behind it. Every low wall is hiding an enemy. There are subway entrances that could be holding hundreds of soldiers ready to pour forth. That building next to you could be holding a battalion and you wouldn’t know it. Sounds will echo and reverb and reflect making it hard to pinpoint direction. The sun will be hidden for much of the day. Vehicles are restricted to a single path, betwen the buildings with easy ways to stop or block their progress. Every gap less than a few meters is an IED waiting to happen. In narrow alleys or corridors, explosions will be concentrated due to the narrow corridors and hard floors and walls making them more lethal. Glass will explode making it hard to be stealthy and causing additional fragmentation effects. Civilians abound, and how do you know they are real or pretending? Extraction via helicopter is difficult (if not impossible). Supply lines are easily cut and if you only have enough force to cover one city block, you can be surrounded easily with every exit cut off.
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[Urban warfare is the worst](https://mwi.usma.edu/city-not-neutral-urban-warfare-hard/) and is one of the reasons some forces choose to just flatten the entire city instead
> The American unit that executed the Aachen operation did it with massive amounts of artillery and mortars. The attacking unit adopted a catchphrase—“Knock ’em all down”—that reflected both its systematic approach to destroying buildings and a complete lack of concern for collateral damage.
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