Offensive Urban Operations

Offensive Urban Operations
As a doctrinal rule, success in urban environments is principally a matter of survival. To survive in an urban environment is, first and foremost, a function of understanding well the unique and complicated enviroment that a city provides. Overhanging building, darkened alley ways, ditches, and cellars are among the terrain obstacles one must be cognizant of when operating in a city.

In the offense, the limited sight-lines and copious ambush positions of a city make a blind rush at an objective a futile, and likely suicidal, proposition. The number of angles at which a unit can take fire, when coupled with a competently concealed defender, typically render any attempts at effectively returning fire an impossibility when advancing in a beeline towards an objective under the control of opposition forces. Thus, moving through urban terrain towards a guarded objective often necessitiates, in simplest terms, the following:

A) Deployment of supporting sniper groups to restrict enemy observation/movement around the objective.

B) Secondary units skirmishing around the flanks of defended objectives, to clear approach venues of defending units who may otherwise apply fire to the main offensive force.

C) Suppressing fire directed at the objective proper in the intermediate period after skirmishing units have acted to flank, but before the main attacking force has begun an active advance.

D) Deployment of smoke/stun grenades in immediate precession to the main attack, when the effect of the smoke would be to the advantage of the moving body of troops (ie. when the assualting force must advance a position that has an overlooking 2nd story balcony); but not when such smoke would occlude the attacking force's ability to overwhelm a defended position with its own firepower (i.e. a planar objective, such as a hill or courtyard).

This is but a limited description of the options which an attacking force may employ in order to better assault an objective. The list is not comprehensive, nor are its particular prescriptions necessarily reccomended in all cases. An effective fighting unit will recognize those methods of use in a given scenario, and employ them with deftness and skill. Assualting a fortified position is ultimately less a science and more an art -- one that relies most integrally on the vision of the commanding officer.