Eli5: Why is Urban warfare feared as the most difficult form of warfare for a military to conduct?
In: 1719
Urban warfare also neuters armored fighting vehicles by removing one of their key survival aspects: mobility. Rather than having an open battlefield to move around in, they are funneled down streets. Anti-tank teams can aim from high floors of buildings and fire down onto the roofs of vehicles, which for AFVs are thinly or weakly armored. They can also shoot up from basement windows into the weakly armored lower hulls of vehicles and damage tracks or wheels. I think in Chechnya during the 90s, the Russians found they couldn’t depress the guns of their T-80 tanks low enough to fire at basement threats.
Once a vehicle is disabled or destroyed on a street, it can causse a blockage of traffic. Knock-out a vehicle at the back also and suddenly a convoy has no where to go. I remember seeing a picture of a destroyed column of Russian vehicles in a street from the recent Ukraine conflict. You can see one of of the vehicles tried to climb over one in front of it, likely trying to keep moving and not get trapped.
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