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Many NATO armies may be unprepared for large-scale urban warfare.
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The Israeli operation in Gaza is a test case for what they need.
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Perhaps the biggest lesson is to provide infantry platoons with as much firepower as possible.
The urban warfare in Gaza has exposed a painful truth for NATO: many NATO armies are ill-prepared for fighting in crowded cities.
The Israel Defense Forces have had some success in adapting new weapons and tactics, such as arming tactical units with missiles and drones instead of relying on aircraft and artillery support, according to a new British study. The problem is that the British military lacks the equipment to copy Israeli tactics.
“While British troops are trained to fight like the IDF, they are equipped to die like Hamas,” the report by the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.
The British Army is understaffed, underequipped and underfunded. But so are many European armies, which have shrunk since the end of the Cold War. Even some American experts are concerned about the capabilities of the American armywhich is far more luxuriously equipped and supplied than its NATO counterparts. There is good reason to worry: urban warfare has become an integral part of warfare on a rapidly urbanizing planet, from Fallujah in 2003 to Bachmut until 2023.
So it makes sense that NATO militaries are studying how the IDF—a NATO-style mechanized force with a reputation for innovative tactics and high-tech equipment—fights Hamas in Gaza’s labyrinthine streets and skyscrapers. Like Western militaries, the IDF wants to fight the last in a city, where buildings and rubble shield the defender, hamper armored vehicles, and impede air power and artillery. Gaza presents an additional challenge: a huge tunnel network which Hamas uses to store weapons and carry out hit-and-run attacks.
Israel has even coined a term for this form of struggle: “Warfare on devastated terrain.” Israel’s air campaign has left many neighborhoods in ruins before ground troops can respond and is the leading cause of the 39,000 reported Palestinian deaths. It’s a challenging environment for Israel in particular, a small country of 10 million people that is prone to casualties among its soldiers, most of whom are reservists.
One tactic that proved effective was to give lower echelons – such as platoons – a small attack force drones And anti-tank missiles. “It was found that units equipped with these systems, as well as ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles), could cover more urban terrain and conduct precision strikes in support of tactical operations,” RUSI said. “The small size of the munitions used meant they could be used with an expectation of precision.”
While Hamas hides in and plunders from an estimated 450 miles of concrete tunnels, the IDF also found that it could not first clear buildings and then destroy the tunnels beneath them. “As the operation progressed, it became clear that this allowed Hamas to continue to conduct prolonged ambushes and then switch to a layered defense of underground facilities,” noted RUSI analysts Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, who co-authored the report. “Underground infrastructure could also not be safely bypassed.” This meant that Israeli forces had to clear the surface and the tunnels at the same time.
Surprisingly, the tall buildings Gaza proved less favorable to Hamas than expected. Fighters stationed on the upper floors had limited visibility and firing ranges, so the tendency was to confine themselves to the first few floors. But tall buildings helped the defender in another way: destroying them with airstrikes created a lot of debris that hampered the attacker’s tanks and infantry.
The biggest lesson from Gaza is the importance of firepower in urban warfare, according to RUSI. This ensures that tactical units, such as infantry platoons, get as much firepower as possible. Unlike mechanized operations, where infantry and armored units can draw air and artillery support from higher headquarters at low levels, urban fighting is typically fought by small units.
Firepower played a decisive role “in determining the initiative during the fighting in Gaza,” RUSI said. “Ultimately, the superiority in responsiveness and organic lethality of IDF units made it expensive for Hamas to carry out attacks, and the larger the force they attempted to deploy, the higher the cost of any given action. Moreover, while indirect fire prevented Hamas from concentrating its forces, the limited organic lethality of its teams meant that once they engaged IDF forces, they were quickly suppressed and then destroyed.”
Another lesson is the importance of air defense“Buildings do not provide significant protection from aerial munitions due to the weight of the munitions that can be dropped with precision,” the report said.
Air power also hampers maneuver, a major disadvantage for armies that are typically not strong enough to occupy an entire city and so must redeploy troops to key sectors. “Hamas’s lack of ability to threaten Israeli aircraft and ISR (aerial reconnaissance) meant that it could not concentrate and had no freedom of movement,” RUSI said. “Once defensive strong points were identified, they could be reduced. The weight of munitions that can be delivered from the air far outweighs anything that can be delivered by artillery systems, so many of the defensive advantages of urban terrain can be circumvented if it is possible to carry out precision bombing from medium altitudes.”
In other words, aerial bombardment from this height the accuracy and volume are great enough to destroy or render useless most urban strongholds.
This phenomenon has been observed in Ukraine, say Watling and Reynolds, who have studied that conflict extensively. “When Russian air power has gained access at medium altitude near an urban settlement, it has quickly destroyed it, allowing it to then be captured.”
The lessons of Israeli operations, however, are not always applicable to other conflicts. Unlike Russia, for example, Hamas does not have artillery or electronic warfare to jam Israeli drones and communications, RUSI said. Hamas also had only 40,000 fighters at the start of the war, many of whom are now casualties.
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter And LinkedIn.
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