2RHPZ
06-14-2004, 12:38 PM
Bracing for 'Primordial Combat'
He had lost an entire squad to mortar fire, a sniper atop an adjacent building
was picking off his soldiers in the street one by one, and a rocket-propelled
grenade had just slammed into the next room, killing or wounding everyone
inside.
"We call it three-dimensional warfare," Kozelka said early one morning. "You can
be shot from all around."
War planners at the Pentagon understand this geometry only too well: They
foresee a battle for Baghdad, a sprawling city of 5 million people, as one of
the most difficult and unsettling aspects of any invasion of Iraq. The last
thing they want is to mount a full, frontal assault on the city because of the
likelihood of high casualties, both military and civilian, and the demands it
would make on already strained manpower.
Lt. Gen. Edwin P. Smith, in last month's issue of Army magazine, called urban
warfare "the great equalizer." The U.S. military is trying to minimize that
equalizing effect, both in its planning and its training.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Oct. 1 directed Gen. Richard B. Myers,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to conduct "a top down national review
and theater review of assets involving urban warfare." Two weeks ago, retired
Marine Col. Gary Anderson, a Pentagon contractor, briefed Rumsfeld's aides on
the results of a two-year urban warfare analysis and recommended that 36
infantry battalions -- about 18,000 troops, or roughly half the Army's infantry
force -- receive intensive training in urban operations right up until the time
they deploy to the Persian Gulf.
All Army and Marine infantry units have routinely been given training in urban
warfare, but recently that training, such as the exercise Kozelka and his troops
were on, has increased in intensity and focus, with an eye toward a conflict in
Iraq.
Recent experimentation by the Marine Corps has shown that battlefield casualties
exceed 30 percent in simulated urban operations involving troops who receive, on
average, only about two weeks of urban combat training per year, said retired
Marine Col. Randy Gangle, an official at the Marine Corps Warfighting
Laboratory.
Senior Iraqi officials have already said they would try to lure U.S. forces into
Baghdad, acknowledging that the Persian Gulf War in 1991 taught them the folly
of fighting in the desert against superior American armor and air power.
Bluffing or not, the Iraqis understand that the U.S. military's overwhelming
technological advantages are to some extent nullified in cities, where buildings
shelter enemy forces from reconnaissance aircraft and satellites and the
presence of civilians makes the use of even the smartest bombs infinitely more
difficult.
The big unknown confronting senior defense officials is whether the Iraqi
military would fight to save President Saddam Hussein -- and, if it did, whether
it would have the discipline and leadership to fall back into the Iraqi capital
and extract a heavy price from the U.S. invaders, as Chechen rebels did when
Russian forces invaded Grozny in 1994.
Military analysts inside and outside the Pentagon do not think that Iraq's
military can or will put up much of a fight, but even a limited number of
engagements, most likely against Hussein's Special Republican Guard, could be
nasty affairs.
"It is very unlikely that we could become involved in any type of urban warfare
and not see young American men and women fight and die," said Anthony H.
Cordesman, a former defense official now at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies. "The worst case in urban warfare is a bad case indeed."
The Army's urban warfare training manual quotes an Israeli officer in starker
terms: "Every room is a new battle. . . . Avoid cities if you can. If you can't,
avoid enemy areas. If you can't do that, avoid entering buildings."
In addition to posing the risk of casualties, urban operations also require
extremely large numbers of troops. One recent Marine scenario that used Chicago
as a battle template determined that it would take the entire Marine Corps to
clear and hold the city. Far from that kind of block-to-block engagement,
Pentagon strategists envision cordoning off Baghdad, providing escape routes for
civilians and surrendering military personnel, and striking critical facilities
whose loss, over time, should make the city, and Hussein's government, fall .
Navy Capt. Tom Johnston, head of the Center for Joint Urban Operations at the
U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, said the U.S. military has progressed
since World War II from laying siege to cities to waging "effects-based
operations" that seek to destroy an enemy's will without harming large numbers
of civilians or devastating infrastructure.
"Are we prepared to fight in the urban environment? Sure, but it's going to cost
us," said Johnston, explaining that the new organization he commands is working
to ensure that any necessary ground attacks "cost less and less and less."
But any engagement in and around a city the size of Baghdad would almost
inevitably be characterized to some extent by poor communications, elusive
targets and enemy forces typically no more than 50 yards away, Army officers
believe. It is for these unforeseeable difficulties that the troops train at
Fort Polk.
Kozelka, a 29-year-old from LaCrosse, Wis., said his men are ready for combat in
Iraq after a year in which they went from their home base at Fort Drum, N.Y., to
Uzbekistan and then to Afghanistan for a sweep of the eastern mountains there in
March, the last major ground engagement of the Afghan war and the first
involving large numbers of U.S. forces.
He and his men arrived at Fort Polk's Joint Readiness Training Center in early
October with two battalions -- about 1,000 troops -- from the 10th Mountain
Division's 2nd Brigade for a regular three-week training rotation that began
with live-fire exercises and ended last week with a 10-day force-on-force war.
The simulated combat, which costs more than $1 million a day to wage, involves
what is probably the world's most sophisticated game of laser tag against an
opposing force, fought over a battlefield in central Louisiana, 15 miles long
and 10 miles wide, part of which consists of 28 buildings arrayed across the
equivalent of three city blocks.
The Army takes great pains to simulate the strain of actual combat. Every
soldier wears a laser sensor that beeps when he or she is shot. Once the sensor
sounds, a soldier opens an envelope containing a card that describes how badly
he or she is hurt.
Medical personnel must evacuate wounded soldiers from the battlefield in time to
treat their wounds. Soldiers who die are taken to a holding area, where they are
made to do manual labor to underscore the point that dying is never fun.
The 2nd Brigade's combat training began with five days of operations against an
insurgent force like al Qaeda, switched to a defensive operation against a more
conventional invading force with tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, and
ended with a night assault on the urban battleground.
A battle plan developed by brigade commander Col. Kevin Wilkerson, 43, who has
fought in Grenada and Afghanistan, called for Kozelka's company to execute the
all-important breach of the perimeter defenses. This would come after Kozelka's
company and five others had traveled nearly 10 miles by truck through enemy
country and then marched through two miles of swamp and heavy woods.
Almost nothing went as planned. The enemy compromised the battalion's radio
network, and an enemy armored vehicle machine-gunned the convoy and killed two
squads of engineers who were supposed to help Kozelka's men cut through the
concertina wire around their assault point, Building 13, which they had planned
to storm and use as a company command post.
By the time Kozelka made it inside, after 2 a.m., his forces had fallen prey to
all the hazards of city combat -- an unseen enemy, fire from guns high in
buildings, and maximum confusion. "Hey, captain, I've got six personnel in first
platoon left alive," Spec. Matt Floyd, a radio operator, yelled at Kozelka after
the rocket-propelled grenade attack on their position.
"Okay, keep 'em alive," Kozelka yelled back.
Commanding from a room littered with casualties, Kozelka was busy calling in
suppressive fire on the next building over and warning soldiers over the radio
of a machine gun on the roof of another building across the street.
"It's lighting us up," he said.
After a few hours of continuous combat, Kozelka and the remnants of his company
captured the post office building across the street. During a lull, Kozelka
relaxed and started chatting with an observer. Then, an Opfor soldier burst
through the door and shot him. A half hour later, commanders called a halt to
the exercise.
"This battlefield throws everything at you all at once," Wilkerson said,
mingling with Kozelka and other soldiers as the smoke cleared. "Now, you've done
another scrimmage, you've learned how to fight this war, and you'll do it better
when there's live bullets."
He had lost an entire squad to mortar fire, a sniper atop an adjacent building
was picking off his soldiers in the street one by one, and a rocket-propelled
grenade had just slammed into the next room, killing or wounding everyone
inside.
"We call it three-dimensional warfare," Kozelka said early one morning. "You can
be shot from all around."
War planners at the Pentagon understand this geometry only too well: They
foresee a battle for Baghdad, a sprawling city of 5 million people, as one of
the most difficult and unsettling aspects of any invasion of Iraq. The last
thing they want is to mount a full, frontal assault on the city because of the
likelihood of high casualties, both military and civilian, and the demands it
would make on already strained manpower.
Lt. Gen. Edwin P. Smith, in last month's issue of Army magazine, called urban
warfare "the great equalizer." The U.S. military is trying to minimize that
equalizing effect, both in its planning and its training.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Oct. 1 directed Gen. Richard B. Myers,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to conduct "a top down national review
and theater review of assets involving urban warfare." Two weeks ago, retired
Marine Col. Gary Anderson, a Pentagon contractor, briefed Rumsfeld's aides on
the results of a two-year urban warfare analysis and recommended that 36
infantry battalions -- about 18,000 troops, or roughly half the Army's infantry
force -- receive intensive training in urban operations right up until the time
they deploy to the Persian Gulf.
All Army and Marine infantry units have routinely been given training in urban
warfare, but recently that training, such as the exercise Kozelka and his troops
were on, has increased in intensity and focus, with an eye toward a conflict in
Iraq.
Recent experimentation by the Marine Corps has shown that battlefield casualties
exceed 30 percent in simulated urban operations involving troops who receive, on
average, only about two weeks of urban combat training per year, said retired
Marine Col. Randy Gangle, an official at the Marine Corps Warfighting
Laboratory.
Senior Iraqi officials have already said they would try to lure U.S. forces into
Baghdad, acknowledging that the Persian Gulf War in 1991 taught them the folly
of fighting in the desert against superior American armor and air power.
Bluffing or not, the Iraqis understand that the U.S. military's overwhelming
technological advantages are to some extent nullified in cities, where buildings
shelter enemy forces from reconnaissance aircraft and satellites and the
presence of civilians makes the use of even the smartest bombs infinitely more
difficult.
The big unknown confronting senior defense officials is whether the Iraqi
military would fight to save President Saddam Hussein -- and, if it did, whether
it would have the discipline and leadership to fall back into the Iraqi capital
and extract a heavy price from the U.S. invaders, as Chechen rebels did when
Russian forces invaded Grozny in 1994.
Military analysts inside and outside the Pentagon do not think that Iraq's
military can or will put up much of a fight, but even a limited number of
engagements, most likely against Hussein's Special Republican Guard, could be
nasty affairs.
"It is very unlikely that we could become involved in any type of urban warfare
and not see young American men and women fight and die," said Anthony H.
Cordesman, a former defense official now at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies. "The worst case in urban warfare is a bad case indeed."
The Army's urban warfare training manual quotes an Israeli officer in starker
terms: "Every room is a new battle. . . . Avoid cities if you can. If you can't,
avoid enemy areas. If you can't do that, avoid entering buildings."
In addition to posing the risk of casualties, urban operations also require
extremely large numbers of troops. One recent Marine scenario that used Chicago
as a battle template determined that it would take the entire Marine Corps to
clear and hold the city. Far from that kind of block-to-block engagement,
Pentagon strategists envision cordoning off Baghdad, providing escape routes for
civilians and surrendering military personnel, and striking critical facilities
whose loss, over time, should make the city, and Hussein's government, fall .
Navy Capt. Tom Johnston, head of the Center for Joint Urban Operations at the
U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, said the U.S. military has progressed
since World War II from laying siege to cities to waging "effects-based
operations" that seek to destroy an enemy's will without harming large numbers
of civilians or devastating infrastructure.
"Are we prepared to fight in the urban environment? Sure, but it's going to cost
us," said Johnston, explaining that the new organization he commands is working
to ensure that any necessary ground attacks "cost less and less and less."
But any engagement in and around a city the size of Baghdad would almost
inevitably be characterized to some extent by poor communications, elusive
targets and enemy forces typically no more than 50 yards away, Army officers
believe. It is for these unforeseeable difficulties that the troops train at
Fort Polk.
Kozelka, a 29-year-old from LaCrosse, Wis., said his men are ready for combat in
Iraq after a year in which they went from their home base at Fort Drum, N.Y., to
Uzbekistan and then to Afghanistan for a sweep of the eastern mountains there in
March, the last major ground engagement of the Afghan war and the first
involving large numbers of U.S. forces.
He and his men arrived at Fort Polk's Joint Readiness Training Center in early
October with two battalions -- about 1,000 troops -- from the 10th Mountain
Division's 2nd Brigade for a regular three-week training rotation that began
with live-fire exercises and ended last week with a 10-day force-on-force war.
The simulated combat, which costs more than $1 million a day to wage, involves
what is probably the world's most sophisticated game of laser tag against an
opposing force, fought over a battlefield in central Louisiana, 15 miles long
and 10 miles wide, part of which consists of 28 buildings arrayed across the
equivalent of three city blocks.
The Army takes great pains to simulate the strain of actual combat. Every
soldier wears a laser sensor that beeps when he or she is shot. Once the sensor
sounds, a soldier opens an envelope containing a card that describes how badly
he or she is hurt.
Medical personnel must evacuate wounded soldiers from the battlefield in time to
treat their wounds. Soldiers who die are taken to a holding area, where they are
made to do manual labor to underscore the point that dying is never fun.
The 2nd Brigade's combat training began with five days of operations against an
insurgent force like al Qaeda, switched to a defensive operation against a more
conventional invading force with tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, and
ended with a night assault on the urban battleground.
A battle plan developed by brigade commander Col. Kevin Wilkerson, 43, who has
fought in Grenada and Afghanistan, called for Kozelka's company to execute the
all-important breach of the perimeter defenses. This would come after Kozelka's
company and five others had traveled nearly 10 miles by truck through enemy
country and then marched through two miles of swamp and heavy woods.
Almost nothing went as planned. The enemy compromised the battalion's radio
network, and an enemy armored vehicle machine-gunned the convoy and killed two
squads of engineers who were supposed to help Kozelka's men cut through the
concertina wire around their assault point, Building 13, which they had planned
to storm and use as a company command post.
By the time Kozelka made it inside, after 2 a.m., his forces had fallen prey to
all the hazards of city combat -- an unseen enemy, fire from guns high in
buildings, and maximum confusion. "Hey, captain, I've got six personnel in first
platoon left alive," Spec. Matt Floyd, a radio operator, yelled at Kozelka after
the rocket-propelled grenade attack on their position.
"Okay, keep 'em alive," Kozelka yelled back.
Commanding from a room littered with casualties, Kozelka was busy calling in
suppressive fire on the next building over and warning soldiers over the radio
of a machine gun on the roof of another building across the street.
"It's lighting us up," he said.
After a few hours of continuous combat, Kozelka and the remnants of his company
captured the post office building across the street. During a lull, Kozelka
relaxed and started chatting with an observer. Then, an Opfor soldier burst
through the door and shot him. A half hour later, commanders called a halt to
the exercise.
"This battlefield throws everything at you all at once," Wilkerson said,
mingling with Kozelka and other soldiers as the smoke cleared. "Now, you've done
another scrimmage, you've learned how to fight this war, and you'll do it better
when there's live bullets."