Quick Look ReportNATO

Urbanisation1 Project Experiment20-25 September 2015

NATO Modeling & Simulation Center of Excellence, Rome, Italy

ForCommanding Officer,

Marine Corps Tactics and Operations Group

Scott E. Packard9 October 2015

Marine Corps Tactics and Operations Group11th Street, MCAGCC

Twentynine Palms, CA 92278

VIEWS, OPINIONS, AND/OR FINDINGS CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS AN OFFICIAL DEPARTMENT OF THE MARINE CORPS POSITION, POLICY, OR DECISION UNLESS SO DESIGNATED BY OTHER OFFICIAL DOCUMENTATION.

1 Strategic Foresight Analysis Paper dated 11 Sep 2013.

Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project Experiment

PurposeThis paper covers the participation of the Marine Corps Tactics and Operations Group (MCTOG) in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Urbanisation Project Limited Objective Experiment, held in Rome, Italy from 20-25 September 2015.

Executive SummaryAs part of the ongoing Urbanisation Project, NATO conducted a limited objective experiment to gain insights into the implications of urbanization from NATO military-strategic and operational perspectives, in the context of anticipated instability situations using a model of a 2035 urban system. There were two objectives: 1) garner insights on the likely impact of a 2035 urban environment on NATO and NATO operations, and 2) gain insights into what NATO might do in response to those impacts.

During the experiment, three multi-discipline teams of subject matter experts (SME), each under the leadership of a flag officer, explored NATO strategic and operational level responses to three vignettes, natural disaster, mass migration, and inner city turmoil, within a modeled urban environment. The SMEs covered land, air, maritime, and expeditionary operations, with additional experts addressing support functions including city operations, cyber, information operations, social media, civil-military and military police.

The execution of the experiment represented NATO’s determination that the urban environment is the most likely future battlespace due to the increasing concentration of populations in cities, particularly in the littorals, along with the ubiquitous connectivity of those populations. Larger destabilizing effects in the global commons, such as the increasing polarization of wealth, climate change, and the rise of non-state actors, will necessitate NATO intervention into cities to protect vital Alliance interests. Moreover, the city may surpass the state in importance, with city governments competing for control with other actors.

The MCTOG participated in planning and executing the evolution noting a number of trends. The relevance to the Marine Corps extends beyond a key conclusion that seabasing capabilities will be absolutely critical – the GCE must be prepared to operate in this congested, contested, and connected environment. Many of the observations from the experiment will directly drive concept and capabilities development to support GCE operations and the MAGTF. The Marine Corps current and anticipated shortfalls in surface connectors are exacerbated by congested airspace that may drive entry by surface means. Surface means are further challenged by a city agglomeration with no beach landing sites and no exit points.The relevance to the Marine Corps extends beyond a key conclusion that seabasing capabilities will be

First, while acknowledging the likely requirement to operate in the urban environment, when given the opportunity, participants exhibited a strong reluctance to enter the city preferring to seek solutions that limited NATO’s exposure to the population found there. The source of this reluctance lay partly in institutional biases shaped by numerous historical examples, but mostly by recent operational experience and a keen awareness of the difficulties of employing relatively small forces in large urban expanses. Reinforcing this reluctance was a mature understanding of the difficulties the urban landscape and its population placed on command and control (C2), the execution of maneuver, the employment of force, and the lack of clearly defined roles and

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Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project Experimentresponsibilities within the city between NATO forces, international agencies, the host nation, and city authorities. Even in humanitarian assistance or disaster relief operations, participants focused less on placing personnel and equipment into the city and focused more on determining how to provide capabilities that filled civilian or commercial gaps.

Second, the consensus amongst the experiment teams was to add information as a fourth component to the urban triad outlined in JP 3-06 Urban Operations.2 The density of collections and communications, with smartphone proliferation providing egalitarian access and upload, will present both significant opportunities and threats to NATO forces. Given the importance of legitimacy and credibility as requirements for NATO intervention, any gap in what NATO says and what it does will quickly reach local and global audiences.

A perhaps more important aspect of information as a fourth component in an urban framework is its criticality to enabling NATO forces to understand the city and its dynamic nature prior to and during operations. The capability to restore, monitor, interdict, and exploit the data flows of a city’s social, media, commercial, and physical infrastructure (traffic, utilities, food stores) provides NATO both intelligence sources and a pathway for information operations. The ability of NATO to juxtapose a shareable, portable common operating picture over a city’s human and physical layers translates into more effective interactions with local power brokers, city authorities, non-governmental organizations, and Alliance members.

Third, the experiment teams recognized that even when conducting operations within the city, NATO forces would benefitmust have from the ability to use, and temporarily control, the space in and around the urban area for maneuver and sanctuary. Seabased capabilities, ranging from logistics, medical, and C2, to the positioning of combat forces, provide this maneuver area and force protection outside the cluttered, confined, and contested urban space. Part of the clutter will be from the proliferation of commercial and military unmanned, autonomous systems. NATO’s ability to operate in that cluttered space unimpeded will depend on technologies that secure its unmanned systems while countering or exploiting non-NATO systems. A softer, non-destructive approach may be in NATO’s long-term interest, as in the development of non-lethal and variable lethality systems that reduce damage and loss of life. All the above capabilities require training venues and opportunities to build the knowledge, skills, and abilities within the NATO forces.

NATO will publish the results of the experiment 31 January 2015 and add the conclusions to the final NATO Urbanisation Conceptual Study in March 2016. For 2016, the intent is to phase from experimentation to wargaming using an Article V (common defense) scenario involving a Red Cell. This offers an opportunity to explore high intensity combat, low troop to space approaches, and hybrid warfare in an urban environment.

2016 Experiment Schedule

7-11 December, Initial Planning Conference, 14-18 Mar, Main Planning Conference, SP COE; Vicenza, Italy6-10 Jun, Final Planning Conference, CCD COE; Tallinn, Estonia

2 NATO Framework for Future Alliance Operations, dated 9 Apr 2014.

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Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project Experiment

3-14 Oct, Experiment Execution, M&S COE; Rome, Italy

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Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project Experiment

OverviewForward deployed MAGTF’s translate to Marine Corps ground forces being among the first to enter a city in crisis. As the GCE proponent, MCTOG has engaged with the larger USMC, Joint, and Allied military community to understand and influence developments in doctrine, training, and capability development. MCTOG participated in the planning and execution of NATO experimentation into future requirements for the urban environment. As part of the larger USMC, Joint and Alliance community for urban operations concept, capabilities and doctrine development, urban training, MCTOG has shepherded new USMC (MCWP 3-35.3, MOUT, in final draft) and multi-service doctrine (ATP 3-06/MCWP 3-35.2, Urban Operations), chaired NATO’s Urban Operations Training Working Group, and engaged Alliance members on emerging concepts and capabilities. In concert with the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory’s lead role in USMCas the Marine Corps lead for experimentation, MCTOG shares observations and best practices from GCE, Army, and Joint exercises; and NATO experiments and research. In cooperation with TECOM and CCD, MCTOG facilitated the creation of a Marine Corps Urban Community of Interest to capture key concepts, best practices, and emerging capabilities from the USMC, Joint, and Alliance, as well as share a common understanding about the realities and challenges of future urban operations for the GCE. This shared understanding informs doctrine development, training standards refinement, and

BackgroundThe NATO Strategic Foresight Analysis (SFA)3, identified urbanization as a future strategic trend of concern to be monitored closely, one of 15 trends and 10 instability situations the Alliance is likely to face in the future. The NATO Framework for Future Alliance Operations (FFAO)4 further identified three urbanization related instability situations that could affect future NATO operations significantly: natural disaster; mass migration; and megacity turmoil. NATO’s Military Committee added the requirement to consider hybrid warfare and high intensity conflict within the inner city turmoil situation.

The identified urbanization trend resulted in the creation of the Urbanisation Project to answer the following questions:

– Is urbanization important to the Alliance?– Is it a future threat to the Alliance?– Will the NATO Nations cope with urbanization without any issues?– What is the “So What” for NATO?– How is the rest of the world dealing with urbanization?– Is NATO ready for a wide range of future operations, particularly humanitarian

assistance, in an urban environment?

Experiment FrameworkAs one part of NATO’s larger Urbanisation Project, the experiment was a “Discovery” Limited Objective Experiment. A discovery experiment is one that introduces novel systems, capabilities, concepts, organizational structures, technologies or other elements to a setting where their use 3 HQ SACT Research Paper – Climate and Geographical Implications for Future Urban Operations, dated 05 Jan 2015.4 Interim NATO Urbanisation Conceptual Study, dated 1 May 2015

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Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project Experimentcan be observed and catalogued. The aim of this experiment was to gain insights on the implications of urbanization from NATO military-strategic and operational perspectives, in the context of FFAO instability situations using a model of a 2035 urban system. There were two objectives: 1) garner insights on the likely impact of a 2035 urban environment on NATO and NATO operations, and 2) gain insights on what NATO might do in response to those impacts.

During the experiment, three multi-discipline teams of SMEs, each under the leadership of a flag officer, explored NATO strategic and operational level responses to three vignettes within a modeled urban environment. The SMEs covered land, air, maritime, and expeditionary operations, with additional experts addressing support functions including city operations, cyber, information operations, social media, civil-military and military police.

Model. Using a baseline city, Naples, the NATO Modeling and Simulation Center interpolated the changes expected with the city’s growth and development given the 15 identified trends to build a model city for 2035. Demographics, infrastructure, climate, and connectivity changes were all modeled in the future city, the fictitious Arcaria, capital city of a NATO-aspirant country. The model did not simulate the dynamic nature of a city, with the flows of people in and around the city nor the peaks and troughs of infrastructure demands.

Scenario. The scenario meshed with the model to place events within the context of the model city. Three vignettes were tested, 1) natural disaster, 2) mass migration, and 3) inner city turmoil. The scenario did not build progressively to a more unstable situation; i.e., a populace moving away from the effects of a natural disaster stresses the city’s support systems, resulting in friction between demographic groups. Instead, each vignette was addressed independently. Each SME team discussed impacts and possible NATO responses as well as capability gaps for each vignette. Many of the impacts, responses, and gaps applied to more than one or all vignettes.

The experiment did not explore challenges to forcible entry or maneuver concepts given low troop to terrain ratios. It did touch on, but did not deeply analyze, force aggregation and maritime security issues. Initial indications are that these subjects will be introduced for specific consideration in the 2016 iteration.

The scenarios made three major assumptions—

1. That NATO will employ a crisis management process that “describes how the Alliance handles a crisis throughout its life-cycle. As a crisis unfolds, NATO would assess the situation and marry all relevant military, civilian and political guidance…”

2. That Archaria is of strategic interest to NATO, therefore a crisis management process is employed.

3. That NATO is interested in outlining and considering options regarding the situation in Archaria.

The three vignettes were provided to each team on consecutive days, with one day devoted to analysis of the vignette against the scenario and model and subsequent synthesis of responses and capability gaps within NATO. The vignettes were themselves based on select FFAO

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Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project Experimentinstability situations to present an operational challenge for the teams and to stimulate discussion. There was no requirement to plan a mission in response to the vignettes.

ParticipantsUnder the guidance of the Headquarters, Supreme Allied Command Transformation (HQ SACT), most of the 28 member countries of NATO were represented, with specific representation from the Military Police, Stability Police, Cyber, Combine Joint Operations from the Sea, Confined and Shallow Waters, Energy Security, and Military Medicine Centers of Excellence (COE). Additionally, several subject matter experts contributed to the refinement of the experiment scenario and the model. MCTOG’s participation was requested for the purpose of subject matter expertise on expeditionary operations and for preparation of the specific experiment participant. Key individuals:

NATO Urbanisation Project Lead: Wing Commander Gordon Pendleton, RAF GBRNATO Urbanisation Experiment Lead: LTC Guiseppe Passaro, ITANATO Urbanisation Experiment Designer: Ms. Katie Hughes, HQ SACTExperiment Scenario Writer: LtCol David Rababy, USMC Ret.NATO Urbanisation Experiment Assessment: Ms. Sue Collins, HQ SACT

Team One: Brigadier Ian Rigden, GBR; Head of Development Concepts and Doctrine Center, MOD Shrivenham (outgoing)Brigadier Darrell Amison, GBR; Head of Development Concepts and Doctrine Center, MOD Shrivenham (incoming)

Team Two: Commodore Philip Titterton, GBR; Director, Combined Joint Operations from the Sea Center of Excellence, NATO

Team Three: Rear Admiral Chris Sadler, USA; Reserve Deputy, Maritime Operations, Fleet Forces Command

Teams comprised experts in strategic and national planning; air, land, maritime, special forces, and expeditionary operations; logistics; communications; strategic communications; city planning and emergency operations; policing; Foreign Office/State Department; international development/non-governmental agencies; medical; engineering; legal; and civil affairs.

Characteristics of the 2035 Urban EnvironmentWith more than 50% of the world’s population currently living in cities, and trending to 70% by 2050, military operations in cities are inevitable. In many cities, population increases have outstripped local and national governments’ ability to build matching infrastructure of government, security, transportation, power, food and water, and sanitation. Future, urban growth is expected to be concentrated in the poorest and least governed areas and the environment will be more congested, cluttered, contested, connected and constrained. The resulting instability, in concert with the concentration of so many people, raises the likelihood of both natural and manmade crises within a city. Additionally, various threats will harbor in cities for their resources and access to large swathes of the populace. The threat may consist of a conventional hostile military force, an unconventional militia or guerilla force (such as those found in Beirut or Mogadishu), terrorists, criminal organizations or gangs, an opposing political group, or a catastrophic or disruptive threat such as a force of nature, hunger, or disease. In fact,

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Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project Experimentit is increasingly typical to have multiple threats appearing simultaneously in the operational area. Therefore, NATO must prepare for such operations by identifying the future requirements and capabilities for this type of environment, and training to operate in it.

U.S. Joint Publication 3-06 Urban Operation frames the urban environment as an urban triad consisting of complex man-made physical terrain, a population of significant size and density and varying socio-cultural groupings, and a dynamic infrastructure. The consensus amongst the experiment teams was that information should serve as a fourth component, significant enough to warrant adding to the definition. The density of collections and communications, with smart-phone proliferation providing egalitarian access and upload, will present both opportunity and threat for NATO forces. Legitimacy and credibility will be baseline requirements for NATO intervention, and any gap in what NATO says and what it does will quickly reach local and global audiences. The concentration of media outlets with a variety of allegiances presents information operation and public affairs challenges not normally experienced in less dense environs.

Cities with populations of ten million5 or more are given a special designation: megacity. There are currently over twenty megacities6 in the world and by 2035 there will be close to forty (this includes cities in NATO countries: New York; Los Angeles; Istanbul; London; and Paris). While certain operations into a megacity is currently beyond the C2 and military capabilities of most of the NATO Allies this may not stop policy makers from directing a humanitarian operation or an Article V defensive action. Existing doctrine and studies do not adequately address challenges posed by megacities. Taken together, this insufficiency of doctrine, lack of emphasis on cities as units of analysis, and absence of large cities in force planning scenarios combine to yield both a lack of understanding about these environments and a lack of preparedness to operate within them.

In concert with the increase in city size, endless or continuous cities will comprise contiguous urban zones in which there are no distinct city edges, little open space between and within population centers, and hence no open maneuver space around urban areas. This urban infill occurs as interstices between cities are progressively filled in with ever-denser urbanization and existing open space within a city is closed with new settlement. Some urbanised spaces will lack open areas or edges that enable maneuver by a NATO force under current operational doctrine. For example, traditional beach landing sites, beach exits, airdrop DZs and lodgement areas for ground forces may be extremely difficult to identify in edgeless cities. It may also be impossible to surround an edgeless city or cut it off from outside influence.

Due to their enormous extent, these massive conurbations will require significant infrastructure, governance, and technology to enable populations to acquire food, water, fuel and electricity, gain employment, participate in distributed industry, and access urban services. Interspersed in these agglomerations will be peri-urban areas, known variously as slums, shantytowns, or favelas, that lack many of the aforementioned resources and infrastructure yet maintain high levels of connectivity. That connectivity has and will continue to impact conflict. Those impacts range from inform and influence activities, crowd-sourcing weapons technical intelligence, and

5 Joint Publication 3-18, Joint Forcible Entry Operations6 The generic abbreviation for unmanned systems, regardless of medium (air, ground, sea, subsurface)

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Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project Experimentintelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) functions such as identifying NATO positions, movements, and intentions. These endless cities will occur more and more in the littoral space.

“Three-quarters of all large cities are located on coastlines, and therefore, NATO forces7 are likely to operate in urban, often littoral, environments on multiple occasions between now and 2035. The Alliance has long understood the challenge of urban littorals. What is new, however, is the massive increase in electronic connectivity creating a networked urban littoral with new characteristics and enhanced threats. The impact of these developments for NATO littoral operations by 2035 will include increased crowds and clutter, constricted sea approaches, congested land approaches, crowded airspace, industrial hazards, coastal inundation and overlapping network footprints making the urbanised, networked littoral an increasingly complex and difficult operating environment.”8

Urbanised coastal zones will be cluttered with land settlement, traffic flows, maritime traffic, offshore obstacles and constricted sea approaches. The presence of vastly larger numbers of people, vehicles, aircraft, and offshore vessels and installations in urban spaces by 2035 will contribute to a dense and disordered battlespace, both in the physical/spatial sense and in terms of the electromagnetic spectrum. This will complicate targeting and hamper mobility for a NATO force attempting to identify and prosecute targets, move through cluttered sea and airspace, and operate in or around dense urban environments. Capabilities to understand, analyse and plan for operations in these environments will be critical.

The explosive growth of connectivity, most dramatically in the developing world, enhances and democratizes the sharing of information and the ability to use it to influence individuals, groups, and governments within physical and virtual peer-to-peer networks, access remote knowledge, and collaborate on technological projects. Because of the sheer density of people, much of the development will be concentrated in the urban environment. NATO identified ten categories of technology development expected to have the greatest impact on future urban environments: food and water technologies, travel and transportation, mass surveillance, energy production, storage and distribution, communications, unmanned (autonomous) systems, human performance enhancements, data management and processing, and advances in architecture, open source design and advanced manufacturing technologies including additive manufacturing.

Implications for NATO OperationsMost of the implications for NATO are also relevant to the Marine Corps, particularly the ground combat element. With MAGTF’s forward deployed to many of the world’s hotspots, Marine Corps ground forces are likely to be among the first to enter a city in crisis.

Many of the participants displayed a reluctance to enter the city or conduct operations within an urban environment—an inherent institutional bias within the military. There are a number of recent examples of the challenges a military force faces inside a city: Grosny in 1996, Lebanon

7 As an example of current research and development efforts on these munitions, see Office of Naval Research (2012) Broad Agency Announcement 13-004, Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare Applied Research and Advanced Technology Development, p. 15-17, online at https://gmp.ku.edu/sites/gmp.drupal.ku.edu/files/docs/ONR%20Manoeuvre%20Warfare%20Applied%20Research%20and%20Advanced%20Technology%20Development.pdf8 As an example of current research efforts in this direction, see the United States Marine Corps Expeditionary Forward Operating Base (ExFOB) program, developed by the Marine Corps Expeditionary Energy Office, at http://www.hqmc.marines.mil/e2o/ExFOB.aspx

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Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project Experimentin 2006, Aleppo 2012 to present. This bias played out during the experiment, with much discussion about what capability a NATO military force brings that other agencies or commercial parties cannot, what roles it can appropriately play, and the costs versus benefits of entering the city vice operating from its fringes or the safety of a seabase. The reality is that U.S. and NATO forces will be compelled to operate in the city to limit human suffering, separate belligerents, or defeat an aggressor. The 2010 Haiti earthquake destroyed vast portions of Port-au-Prince, exposing the city’s populace to famine, disease, and opportunistic violence. Those conditions could only be addressed by the a multinational and interorganizational force in the city. At the high end of the range of military operations, our potential adversaries will take to the cities to influence a dense population and mitigate NATO’s technological, maneuver, and firepower advantages. Avoiding the city is simply delaying the inevitable.

At the low end of the range of military operations, troop-to-task and force-to-space ratios limit what military forces can accomplish in the urban environment. It became very apparent during the experiment that the military will be only on part of the solution and rarely the lead in the types of operations the vignettes addressed. Employment will be more about enhancing a civilian or commercial response and less about combat power, requiring that operational planners define a very specific set of tasks for the military. Determining roles and responsibilities up front is an important step to ensuring the effective use of the force.

Urban operations are likely to reduce the advantages of the technological superiority that NATO enjoys. Widespread proliferation, long procurement timelines, and technological “hugging” by threat forces (the threat use of the same systems NATO relies upon such as GPS, internet, and the electromagnetic spectrum), will further whittle away NATO’s edge. Emerging technologies used by and against NATO during urban operations include cyber-kinetic operations, improvised explosive device proliferation, miniaturization and enhanced lethality, autonomous systems, enhanced sniping technologies (including remotely operated sniping), enhanced chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats, electromagnetic pulse threats, proliferation of commercial unmanned vehicles, directed energy weapons, and weaponized pathogens.

Potential adversaries may exploit emerging technologies through urban terrorism and urban siege techniques such as the Mumbai attack in November 2008. They will seek to leverage new technologies to generate, if not anti-access, then at least area denial effects. Threat forces will manipulate the use of semi- and autonomous systems, work in seams created by international norms, and employ hybrid and ambiguous warfare approaches and methods. The rise of cyber in confrontation and conflict will challenge NATO’s ability to respond effectively, particularly in the absence of a robust cyber capability. Russian use of cyber irregulars in South Ossetia in 2008 prior to attacking Georgia, the much publicized cyber-attacks in Estonia, and more recently in East Ukraine are illustrative. Cyber attacks will increasingly be used as shaping for kinetic operations, and the reverse will also become more common.

The complexity inherent to urban operations will strain both operational design and problem framing. The tactical problem does not just consist solely of the threat, but includes the entire urban environment and its elements. For example, military operations that degrade or destroy critical infrastructure may create greater devastation than direct and indirect fires. Similarly, the disruption of cellular or internet services may turn neutral or apathetic sentiment into hostility towards NATO forces. The dynamic nature of the urban system demands significant collection

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Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project Experimentand analysis of information that will challenge relatively (to the urban environment) limited NATO intelligence assets. Collection plans must consider the proper apportionment of resources to monitor changes in tempo, concentration, and direction of fluid urban dynamics.

These operations have historically been manpower and time-intensive and demanded decentralized C2. However, a number of factors will make this requirement a challenge to implement. The first is that the expectation of precision and the expectation of restraint (in the use of force) tend to lead to greater centralization of C2. This will likely leave small units outcycled by events and enemy action since the C2 systems required to operate within these expectations face significant challenge from urban terrain. Similarly, urban terrain and infrastructure negatively affect weapons employment and munitions effectiveness. Likely threat forces recognize these tactical seams and will seek to operate within them, placing NATO forces at a potentially significant disadvantage.

The acceptance of risk, combined with the amount of authority and trust pushed down to lower echelons of command, are a reality of urban operations that NATO doctrine must address. Determining the appropriate mix of analytical and intuitive decision-making is an iterative process, honed through wargaming and exercises. Tactical tenets and philosophies accepted in Marine Corps Doctrine Publication 1 Warfighting, and mirrored throughout NATO doctrine, will compete with the certainty and precision elusively promised by technological solutions.

The entry phase of a NATO joint operation in the urbanised littoral will be mission-critical, though not necessarily decisive—i.e. the mission will fail if entry operations do not succeed, but successful entry alone will not translate into mission success. The goal of entry is to achieve a lodgment, defined as “a designated area in a hostile or potentially hostile operational area that, when seized and held, makes the continuous landing of troops and materiel possible and provides maneuver space for subsequent operations.”9 A joint forcible entry (JFE)—otherwise known as multi-domain entry, multi-dimensional maneuver, or Entry from Air and Sea, is one option for this phase. Given the nature of the urbanised networked littoral by 2035, JFE is more likely to succeed than a classical amphibious operation, though it would almost certainly incorporate amphibious operations as a constituent part. The key problem by 2035, however, will be the emergence of large contiguous areas of urbanised terrain with little open terrain between and within urban centers. This reduces or eliminates traditionally “suitable” lodgments and landing sites (for amphibious or airborne insertion), drop zones, and assembly areas near urban objectives. In addition, sea walls and flood defenses may limit the availability of beach landing sites, while urbanisation may block beach exits. By 2035, in some cities, the only open areas may be parking lots, airport runways and aprons, sports fields and highway intersections. At the same time, the emergence of endless (or edge-less) cities will make traditional urban doctrine—which seeks to isolate an objective prior to break-in—harder to apply in a direct physical sense.

As acknowledged, the urban environment is a C2 challenge conceptually and practically. The employment of dispersed forces operating in urban canyons and inside, outside, and under buildings, communications, geometry of fires, and the commander’s visualization of the battlespace in three dimensions will tax current NATO systems and procedures. The dense electromagnetic spectrum, combined with terrain that limits line-of-sight single-channel radio

9 NATO Framework for Future Alliance Operations, dated 9 Apr 2014.

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Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project Experimenttransmissions may render useless many of the C2 systems the commander relies on for control of fires, coordination of maneuver, and protection of civilian populations.

As C2 may be episodic, reliance on the appropriate span of control, mission-type orders and commander’s intent address some of the uncertainty of urban operations – ideas that run counter to what is often a search for a technological solution. Objective-based operations and use of communications methods that persist or “loiter” awaiting connectivity (low bandwidth – text messaging; higher – email, web pages) allow continuity of operations, provided commanders accept some latency for the benefit of greater permanence. Maneuver for the sake of C2 may be an implied task for subordinate leaders.

The knowledge, skills and ability to tap into existing city C2 systems – cellular, internet, building phone systems, emergency management systems – must be organic to the forces operating in the urban area. Exploitation of social media for intelligence, the introduction of military deception, and assessment of military information support operations and operational security effectiveness should also reside within the NATO forces, with an ability to push to the lowest tactical levels.

Doctrine must address the pros and cons of using a particular C2 mechanism and the second and third order effects their use may have on friendly, enemy and neutral networks. Planned persistent C2 platforms, particularly unmanned systems with extended loiter times will address some of the communications issues, albeit not all. These solutions may come from robust contracted providers, though some degree of organic capability will be required.

Intelligence and counter-intelligence are significantly more complex in the urban operational area. Intelligence support requirements are also different and more demanding in urban areas. With denser human terrain, diverse and varied groups will be in closer proximity – challenging analysis of motivations and priorities of those groups. The anonymity a large metropolitan area provides threat forces will be difficult to overcome, even with the pre-conflict sensing provided by in-theater and strategic resources. Often, the city will be the unit of analysis, vice the nation state. NATO forces will require access to special operations forces, diplomatic agencies, theater resources, and national reach-back to build their intelligence picture and understanding of the operational environment for a warm start in order to leverage all assets to mitigate a reduced footprint in austere environments. Those methods must be complemented with existing infrastructure and information resident within a city. Even with this assistance, the intelligence task can quickly overwhelm the limited resources of NATO contingency force.

As experience with long-term stability operations has demonstrated, the lessons learned by large municipal police forces can prove illustrative when conducting military actions in the urban operational area. The templating and data tools of police can help determine the appropriate size of coverage for foot and vehicle patrols and unit coverage in mega-cities based on geography, demographics, and historical criminal activity. People skills, particular behavioral profiling, are key to lifting partially the veil malign actors operate under in cities.

Aviation and airborne ISR can be adversely affected by UAVs, electromagnetic spectrum competition (electromagnetic interference), and limited line-of-sight amongst tall buildings. Seabasing may reduce loiter times. The ability to augment existing ISR capabilities with crowd-

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Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project Experimentsourced data and city infrastructure such as security cameras can assist in real-time intelligence gathering operations, developing an understanding of atmospherics and patterns of life, in addition to enhancing force protection. Cameras, both organic and external, could assist the effectiveness of operations by confirming or denying the success of tactical deception, and recording friendly actions for use in information operations. Moreover, by tapping existing databases for identity operations, facial and license plate recognition algorithms can magnify the effectiveness of conventional collections programs. Add to this the ability to data-mine commercial networks (computer, phone) and social media for intelligence and broad immediate social trends, NATO commanders will gain awareness of developments in their AO, atmospherics, and eminent threats.

Non-lethal and variable lethality systems are an untapped resource for urban operations and will prove critical in denying threat forces the ability to operate in the tactical seams created by expectations of precision and restraint. Individual and group targeted solutions will be a force multiplying capability that limits damage and loss of life during NATO operations.

Similarly, the precise application of force, employment of maneuver, and intelligence collection is dependent upon effective mapping. In addition to maneuvering for C2, as mentioned above, it is likely that NATO forces will need to maneuver for topographical understanding of the battlespace. NATO forces will require new technologies that can, in real-time, better map the dense urban environment with an enhanced geographic reference grid system.

Sustaining NATO forces in the urban operational area will be a careful balance of precision, just-in-time logistics and tapping the existing capacity of a potentially stressed infrastructure. Even with an emphasis on joint seabasing, logistics will remain the biggest challenge of urban operations. While seabasing reduces the vulnerabilities inherent to large sustainment footprints ashore, sustainment of isolated sites inside the city will present a significant challenge both in movement to and from the logistics base and in logistics support on-site.

Force protection in the urban environment will be a delicate balancing act between retaining the force’s capability and security while avoiding making new enemies through the negative impacts that even mere presence may generate. Seabasing will be a key mitigating capability. Escalation of force continuum and the ability to de-escalate will prove as important as the ability to kill – particularly where the potential exists to create hostility, or additional hostility, through a perceived excessive use of force. Military information support operations become a critical supporting effort to ensure a favorable, proactive message is projected. Non-lethal weapons training and fielding are woefully deficient in the operating forces and the effects that an angry mob might create can prove significantly greater than that of an improvised explosive device.

NATO Core Capabilities for 2035 Urban OperationsNATO operational concepts specify the requirement for enhanced situational awareness, redundant capabilities, enhanced partnerships, and joint solutions for combined arms entry operations. Anticipated future technologies including autonomous systems, robots, expeditionary energy, and robust deployable networks will reduce the costs needed by both NATO and future threats to generate forces that are light, more lethal, and versatile. There were

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Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project Experimentseveral specific capabilities identified during the experiment, some of which were previously noted during the literature review and research papers.

Pre-conflict sensing. NATO’s ability to detect the emergence of instability and conflict in a given urbanized area, identify warning signs of urban overstretch, and thus posture forces to deal with emerging threats requires pre-conflict or Phase 0 mapping, sensing, and analysis at the city level. NATO will need to allocate attention and resources to urban intelligence preparation of the environment through modelling of urban systems—both before and during conflict, using historical and live data, and with the ability to produce graphical targeting overlays, dynamic flow animations, and key node analysis. These capabilities are necessary to enable the NATO force to identify where and how to operate in order to achieve desired effects (protect, control or disrupt) within an urban space. Key cities should be identified and analyzed for resiliency, their human domain (socio-cultural groups, key leaders), geographical mapping, critical infrastructure, sea/air points of entry, and pattern of life.

Urban mapping. A related capability will be for NATO to enable rapid, crowd-sourced, self-synchronised mapping capabilities for urban spaces, including flows and informal settlements. These capabilities would focus less on mapping the locations of particular buildings and infrastructure (which is already relatively straightforward) and more on identifying the purpose, ownership, and social-political-economic orientation of key locations in urban areas where the force might seek to operate. Technologies would enable a force to conduct wide-area, multi-spectral, continuous surveillance of a large urban area, including technologies to detect movement and threats within buildings and beneath the ground surface on land, and beneath the surface of waterways offshore. Mapping should incorporate the dynamic flows into, within, and out of the city of people, resources, and information. At a minimum, a comprehensive, shareable common operational picture accepting city system data feeds complemented by organic, persistent ISR, supporting real-time and trend analysis, within the proper legal and technical frameworks, would be indispensible.

City data system exploitation. The capability to restore, monitor, interdict, and exploit a city’s social, media, commercial, and infrastructure (traffic, utilities, food stores) data flows gives NATO both an intelligence source and a means of strategic communication. Inherent to this capability is offensive cyber operations.

Seabasing. The lack of open space ashore; threats to the force; theatre mobility; and expeditionary power, food and water stores, and medical treatment will combine to drive NATO forces off-shore. A seabased capability to extract and purify atmospheric, ground and surface water while conducting operations in urban environments will be essential to ensuring sustainability and mobility in the growing areas under water stress. The ability to do so from a sea base contributes to force protection and operational mobility. Seabased forces will face challenges in littoral access by surface connectors because of urban in-fill and agglomeration and aircraft will operate in ever more -congested airspace.

Counter-unmanned vehicle technology. Technologies will be required to harden air platforms against potential UAV UAS strikes from commercial and military UAVs UAS in a crowded urban airspace, as well as to detect and monitor UAV UAS launch and operations, including

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Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project Experimentminiaturized UAVs. Deployed forces will need technologies to detect, identify and (if needed) destroy UAVUxS10/UGVs operating over an urban space without unacceptable risk to civil populations. Technologies to monitor, collect, and disrupt information feeds and command-and-control links between UAVUxS/UGVs and control stations, including over long distances in urban terrain, will be required.

Unmanned/autonomous systems. Unmanned, semi- and autonomous ground, air and sea systems are already at an advanced stage of development but, given the likely advances in both commercial and military capabilities that potential adversaries will have at their disposal by 2035, continued NATO investment in autonomous technologies will be needed. Technologies to allow a small force to secure multiple rooms, corridors, rooftops and other spaces within a large urban area, without using large numbers of personnel to act as sentries and guards, will be essential to preserving the freedom of maneuver of NATO forces in urban environments. These may include automated (autonomous or remote controlled) sentry systems, perimeter alarms, unattended ground or air sensors, and area-denial systems.

Non-lethal and variable lethality weapons. Some NATO nations (notably the United States) as well as non-NATO countries like Israel have put significant effort into the development of non-lethal and variable-lethality weapon technologies, for use in public order environments and in cluttered or crowded urban spaces where avoidance of collateral damage is critical.11 There will be a need to continue developing this technology as countermeasures to existing technologies emerge, and also to distribute less-lethal technologies within the Alliance.

Mobile renewable power generation. Mobile or modular technologies for electrical power generation—to include improved battery technology, wind, solar, bio-gas and thermal power systems—will be required by deployed forces. These capabilities will enable NATO forces to sustain themselves for extended periods in an urban environment where power grids are down (or inadequate) and to avoid placing undue burden on already-overtaxed city systems or placing demand on logistic systems for the resupply of batteries and generator fuel.12

Medical evacuation and stasis. Medical technologies that enable a casualty to be placed into stasis (via sedation or cooling), allowing for complex and potentially time-consuming casualty evacuation procedures in congested urban environments. These capabilities will be essential to effective medical evacuation in environments where the ideal “golden hour” for casualty extraction and stabilization may be impractical.

Radio relay and non-grid communications. Technologies to deal with the signal-attenuation, multi-path propagation and scattering effects of urban spaces on radio communication, either through rapidly-deployable (perhaps ballistic-emplaced) radio relay systems, non-grid communications using mesh networks, or aerostats, will be essential to ensure continuity of communications for forces operating in urban spaces.

10 HQ SACT Research Paper – Climate and Geographical Implications for Future Urban Operations, dated 05 Jan 2015.11 Interim NATO Urbanisation Conceptual Study, dated 1 May 201512 Joint Publication 3-18, Joint Forcible Entry Operations

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Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project ExperimentUrban training. Cities will be NATO’s default operational environment, with the ability to operate there a core capability. NATO will need to build physical and virtual training environments that support stability policing, multi-domain/multi-partner training, and experimentation with new autonomous systems. The scale must be sufficient to effectively train for operations in a major littoral urban area. Moreover, training must test NATO’s ability to rapidly deploy to both land and sea bases, aggregate Allied forces, and command and control those forces seamlessly.

Subsequent eventsFollowing the experiment, the analysis team will collate, analyze, and report findings from the experiment.

2015 Experiment Schedule (remaining)

28 Sep – 16 Oct 2015: Initial data analysis19-23 Oct 2015: Conceptual Study Writing Workshop3-5 Oct 2015: Analysis Workshop31 Dec 2015: Final Experiment ReportMar 2016: Final NATO Urbanisation Conceptual Study Report

For 2016, the intent is to continue experimenting by wargaming with an Article V (common defense) scenario involving a Red Cell. This offers an opportunity to explore high intensity combat, low troop to space approaches, and hybrid warfare in an urban environment.

2016 Wargame Schedule

7-11 December, Initial Planning Conference, Berlin14-18 Mar, Main Planning Conference, SP COE; Vicenza, Italy6-10 Jun, Final Planning Conference, CCD COE; Tallinn, Estonia3-14 Oct, Experiment Execution, M&S COE; Rome, Italy

ConclusionService-level Marine Corps documents state that the urban environment is the most likely operational environment for the Marine Corps as both a crisis response force and as a force supporting joint operations. MCTOG serves as a the co-advocate and proponent for the ground combat element in the Marine Corps. It also serves as the service proponent lead for urban doctrine and is the leader of the service’s urban operations community of interest. The participation of MCTOG in helping craft the NATO study on urban operations, and in benefitting from both participation and outputs, directly and positively impacts MCTOG’s urban

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Quick Look ReportNATO Urban Project Experimentand ground combat related responsibilities. MCTOG will continue to participate in these efforts through 2016.

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