I’ve seen a lot of footage of urban warfare over the years. Lately it’s been Syrian fighting street to street. How hard is it to take a building that’s occupied by troops ?
And how come cover seems to matter so little to people rattling AK rounds off in the street ?
Have you ever seen the way a lot of urban warfare types shoot those AKs? “Spray and pray” doesn’t even begin to cover it. All they are concerned about is sending rounds down-rangeish. Cover seems like a meaningless concept when nobody is really aiming at you. Well, that and the fact that fired-up young people think they’re immortal and invulnerable. You don’t see the experienced street fighters.
Without RPGs or armor, taking a fortified or even semi-fortified building is a slow and bloody slog. Defenders will always be at a tremendous advantage.
Maybe you’ve heard of the Pavlov’s house in Stalingrad, if not, that building alone (with around 31 Soviet soldiers in it) held the German advance for about 58 days until the Soviets made a counterattack, so the building wasn’t captured by the Germans even once, although some sources say that Germans managed to capture only the 1.st floor, but that is not 100% sure, from the 31 soldiers, only 3 have died, even though Germans made multiple attacks on the building per day, basically a building is a ,defense and force multiplier" , meaning that the security of the soldiers will be way higher there, where they are surrounded with walls, than in a trench or open field and also, there are a lot of places where you can put heavier weapons like heavy machine guns, atgms, anti-air artillery,etc. , which would all be harder to set up and use in an open terrain on the go if you were making an attack, that’s why there is the attack ratio of 3:1, meaning that you should have at least 3 times more soldiers to attack, than the defender has, since you’ll be in a relatively open (and unknown) terrain, while the enemy will be in his own turf, where he could have already set up heavy weapons that would be waiting for you to get in to the trap. Regarding the Syrian war footage, whatever you do, do not do what the Syrians, especially rebels, are doing, people that run around like in cod with ak’s and pretend to be Rambo’s are just waiting to get shot. Generally unlike what movies and games show them to be, battles (with perhaps the exception of really huge ones like the Stalingrad battle) are generally really, really slow, hard and consist mostly of people shooting from around corners and peeking from time to time, even the Syrian war fronts with those Rambo idiots are really slowly moving, there are cities like Allepo and Deir Ez Zoir which have a more or less same front line, as they had around the start of the war, which was some 3,4 years ago.
Hey JakeRS, your posts works better when you parse it into a number of grammatical units known as sentences.
Serbs don’t believe in sentences. Although Jake also seems unclear on the difference between commas and periods as well. But if you wade through the post, you’ll find that he is correct with his info.
I think its a professionals vs amateurs thing. Those fighters clearly haven’t been trained to fight in urban environments.
Compare those videos tothis video (which has disturbing parts BTW) of US troops in Fallujah, where no one is firing a gun who is not entirely behind cover:
I’m sorry for my comma addiction 
, I pay more attention to stuff like your/you’re than I should, so I entirely forget when to use a dot/period, however when I’m writing in my language I generally don’t have that problem, even in huge texts, weird…
Thread: There is a great channel on youtube called Warclashes , it has a lot of modern war footage from all over the world, including urban warfare. Not that related, but there is also a channel 90swarvideos https://www.youtube.com/user/90sWarVideos/videos , it has videos from Yugoslav wars, for those that want to compare ,tactics" of Yugoslavs, Syrians, etc.
[quote=“griffin1977, post:6, topic:735790”]
I think its a professionals vs amateurs thing. Those fighters clearly haven’t been trained to fight in urban environments.
Compare those videos tothis video (which has disturbing parts BTW) of US troops in Fallujah, where no one is firing a gun who is not entirely behind cover:
[/QUOTE]I did actually go and look at Fallujah vids to see the difference and I concur the NATO forces are much more organised and seem to realise that the more body you expose the more of a target you are.
But I think a lot of the footage being shot in Syria, for example, is for the camera. Hard to tell. If I was a potential Jihad recruit, I would have my doubts about joining an outfit that stands in the middle of the street in track suits.
Mortars could be nice too, but I’m not sure how accurate they are with them.
One insurgent tactic is to blow a hole in a base’s defensive wall or a checkpoint with a truck bomb and then have everyone else pour through. Probably overkill for one building.
In a lot of these conflicts over the years in Africa and the ME it seems like attacking a well defended position would be rough, especially when your most advanced weapon is a pick up truck with an AA gun in the back. Fast, maneuverable, decent gas mileage, but very little protection. Better to bypass the problem spots and cut it off or flank it, I’d imagine.
I remember the news during the civil war in Lebanon in the 70’s. The Moslem faction had some Christians surrounded in a hi-rise building (Holiday Inn?) The news people could follow the progress from a distance as they fight went floor to floor up the tower; IIRC it took a week or more to capture the building.
Update: turns out that sometimes when you jump into the middle of the street like an idiot to get yourself on youtube, you get shot dead.
Warning: someone getting shot dead