Urban Warfare Project

What do engineers bring to urban operations? How do the basic capabilities resident in engineer units—like those in the US Army—enable maneuver forces to achieve their objectives when operating in cities? For commanders, what are the most important considerations to account for when employing engineers in combined arms operations, and what effects can they expect from specific

John Spencer is joined on this episode by retired General David Petraeus. He served thirty-seven years in the US Army, culminating his career with six consecutive commands as a general officer, including five in combat. He served as the commander of coalition forces in Iraq during the troop surge there, commander of US Central Command, and commander of coalition forces in Afghanist

In this episode, guest host Jayson Geroux is joined by retired Lieutenant Colonel Louis DiMarco, a professor of military history at the United States Army Command and General Staff College. Dr. DiMarco is the author of the influential 2012 book Concrete Hell: Urban Warfare from Stalingrad to Iraq. In the conversation, he discusses how he became interested in urban warfare and descr

Many will be familiar with the major facts about the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel. Over 1,200 people were killed and another 240 kidnapped and brought to Gaza as hostages. But what do we know about the specific sites—more than twenty in total—that the attackers selected as targets? What about the specific tactics they employed? And since many of the sites ta

In this episode, John Spencer is joined by retired Colonel Kevin Felix. He served 30 years in the US Army, with his last assignment as chief of Army Capabilities and Integration Center's Future Warfare Division. He describes the Army’s different approaches for thinking about and studying the future of warfare, including major efforts beginning in 2014 to focus on global urbanizat

During the 2022 Battle of Mariupol, approximately three thousand Ukrainian defenders, vastly outnumbered by Russian forces, were quickly surrounded in a steel plant with their backs to the Sea of Azov and little hope of anyone coming to their rescue. Running out of ammunition, short of medicine, and with casualties mounting, they were in desperate need of resupply. A bold plan was

Over several dozen episodes, the Urban Warfare Project Podcast has explored many of the unique challenges of urban warfare. But what is urban warfare, exactly? The simple answer is that it's simply combat that takes place in the man-made terrain of cities. But going deeper, what are the variety of urban patterns and urban functions, for example, and how do they influence the conduc

When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February, one of their first targets was the city of Mariupol. The battle that followed is an epic story of resistance in which a very small number of Ukrainian fighters defended the city for over eighty days against a Russian force five to eight times their size, preventing the Russians from diverting to other parts of Ukraine. In this episod

Iraq, Syria, Nagorno-Karbakh, Ukraine, and now Israel. The past year has seen no shortage of urban warfare. In this holiday-themed episode of the Urban Warfare project, Colonel (CA) John Spencer is joined by two urban warfare scholars to talk about the unique capabilities, ideas, and initiatives they hope Santa will bring. Major Jayson Geroux is a member of the First Canadian Divis

In this episode Dr. Charles Knight joings John Spencer to discuss the Battle of Marawi. A senior lecturer in terrorism, asymmetric conflict, and urban operations at Charles Sturt University and a senior researcher at the University of New South Wales, Dr. Knight has researched and and written about the 2017 battle, in which the Philippine Army fought against Islamic State fighters