Lessons in MOUT

[Jericho941]

Well, the short answer is because if you want to actually preserve structures, you send people in with guns. If you don't, you send in GBUs. Once you start blowing up walls and setting fires, you might as well just bomb the neighborhood.

Like yogi suggest, set a fire in the lower levels using available materials and accelerants. Machine gun anyone that runs out and doesn't immediately surrrender, let the fire burn itself out. Easy peasy.

And yet people get upset when the ATF does it, for some reason.

I have always wondered why we get all worked up making sure we don't destroy a building being used by the enemy that at one time was a school or a church. Don't want your place popped and burned to the ground? Kill the dude up to no good from your belltower and hang his corpse on the lamppost outside with a sincere apology for any inconvenience his usage of your place of worship/learning may have caused in any language you prefer.

Well, sure, that'd work great if you were up against a spaghetti western villain and his gang. The trouble with real villains is that they tend to take the "bring friends with guns" rule seriously, and have probably already claimed said belltower in this scenario. For example, the estimated number of insurgents in Fallujah for the first battle was around 3600.

So, when you blow up the mosques, and the schools, and the bad guys take out the power plants, and the water and sewer lines were already broken, you've left the locals sitting on a pile of rubble and literal shit as punishment for the crime of being invaded. We have a term for kids who grow up in that kind of environment: "suicide bomber."

[Yogimus]

Cheaper to rebuild after the purge.

[Netpackrat]

So, when you blow up the mosques, and the schools, and the bad guys take out the power plants, and the water and sewer lines were already broken, you've left the locals sitting on a pile of rubble and literal shit as punishment for the crime of being invaded. We have a term for kids who grow up in that kind of environment: "suicide bomber."

If nothing else, it makes for a good object lesson on the dangers of;

A) Getting invaded by another country, and
B) Letting your country be governed by people crazy/dangerous enough that invading you begins to look like justifiable self defense to other countries.

[Vonz90]

The biggest problem is when we are facing urban warfare in these areas is that we have no patience. All of these cities are collections of building surrounded more or less by deserts. Surround them (nothing in and nothing out) and wait. Maybe slowly tighten the perimeter at times, but basically offer them the choice of coming to us or starving.

Smaller hamlets and such can either be blown (artillery or air) or taken though traditional MOUT since they don't offer the same disadvantages as larger cities.

We have a tremendous advantage in mobility and firepower. The Terrs want to fight in the cities because that is the only place where they can mitigate those advantages somewhat. The answer is to not play their game. If the enemy puts himself in a situation that begs for being surrounded, then surround him. That used to be common sense but we are too much fetish for movement and attacking these days (appropriate in many cases but not in this one). Sieges ARE offensive operations but they are also very safe and with the greatest likelihood of success and the least likelihood of casualties.

[Weetabix]

If nothing else, it makes for a good object lesson on the dangers of;

A) Getting invaded by another country, and
B) Letting your country be governed by people crazy/dangerous enough that invading you begins to look like justifiable self defense to other countries.

We should make that lesson more unmistakable by teaching it actively after we win. I mean like preaching it to the local populace and having schools and such. Especially B).

The biggest problem is when we are facing urban warfare in these areas is that we have no patience. All of these cities are collections of building surrounded more or less by deserts. Surround them (nothing in and nothing out) and wait. Maybe slowly tighten the perimeter at times, but basically offer them the choice of coming to us or starving.

Smaller hamlets and such can either be blown (artillery or air) or taken though traditional MOUT since they don't offer the same disadvantages as larger cities.

We have a tremendous advantage in mobility and firepower. The Terrs want to fight in the cities because that is the only place where they can mitigate those advantages somewhat. The answer is to not play their game. If the enemy puts himself in a situation that begs for being surrounded, then surround him. That used to be common sense but we are too much fetish for movement and attacking these days (appropriate in many cases but not in this one). Sieges ARE offensive operations but they are also very safe and with the greatest likelihood of success and the least likelihood of casualties.

A Desert Called Peace. And we should tattoo the noses of any terrorists we don't kill. Even if we imprison them.

[Aesop]

It would have to be a true siege. No signals getting out or in, just as no food or water.

Otherwise it's all video of children with bloated bellies, and people cooking rats over 55 gal. drums, etc., which pisses off the Moms Who Get The Vapors when shit gets real.

The first delusion to be dealt with is the idea that wars have rules, but that's a slippery slope.

[workinwifdakids]

In a true siege on a town held by ISIS, they'd have just as much food, water, and child rape on Day 30 as they did on Day 1, because they'd just take more of it from the locals. Eventually they'd run out of everything, but I'm not into starving out Germany until they run out of Jews to gas.

[Aesop]

Bad analogy, because the Jews weren't handing out celebratory candy with each Nazi conquest up until the trains rolled in; unlike vast swaths of the caliphate-to-be has since 9/11, until they suddenly found the guns pointed at them and being herded into soccer stadiums for the customary ISIS civic change of power ceremonies.

Besieging the cities, and letting ISIS kill everyone inside, and then killing ISIS, is a superb way to stop future generations [strike]of suicide bombers[/strike].
It's pretty much exactly how we kept Native Americans from scalping random people on NY subways for the next century after Little Big Horn, and why Rome wasn't troubled by a Fourth Punic War: no players left on the other team to do the job.
Even the American military in Vietnam eventually figured out that one of the easiest ways to stop a continued jungle war, is to stop having a jungle.

[Langenator]

This tactic of blowing holes in everything was used by the US military in WWII and I have seen training films from the 1950's encouraging this tactic. Looks like the idea got lost along the way at somepoint.

I was just reading a book about the occupation of Vera Cruz in 1914. We used the tactic all the way back then, except I suspect they were using shovels and axes instead of C4.

[Aesop]

Dynamite and nitro.
Sappers are an old and honorable military occupation.