Breaching Around Corners: Engineer Operations in Urban Environments
Abstract
The Department of Defense and the Army recently published new strategic-, operational-, and tactical level doctrine for urban operations: Joint Publication 3-06, Doctrine for Joint Urban Operations; Field Manual (FM) 3-06 (Doctrine Review and Approval Group [DRAG]), Urban Operations; and FM 3-06.11, Combined Arms Operations in Urban Terrain. The Army has long published doctrine on military operations on urbanized terrain (MOUT), but the previous doctrine was typically constrained to tactics, techniques, and procedures at the brigade level and below. The doctrine was flexible and allowed commanders the option to enter a city or isolate it and bypass. Due to the complex nature of urban operations, commanders typically opted to isolate and bypass. However, this may no longer be a solution. We now face adversaries that use asymmetric tactics and/or terrorism because there are few who can directly oppose America s combat capabilities. Future threats may use cities to negate our technological advantage and use the civilian population to impede and complicate operations. Commanders may enter cities to pursue the threat or to seize intermediate objectives. For this reason, it is imperative that engineers understand the potential problems under all these circumstances.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA592658
Entities
People
- Anthony C. Funkhouser
Organizations
- United States Army Engineer School