Destroyed buildings in the city of Aleppo, Syria. Photos / AP
Destroyed buildings in the city of Aleppo, Syria. Photos / AP
Future wars will be more Stalingrad than Star Wars, a US General has said as he warns against a relentless focus on technology.
General Stephen Townsend, the head of the US Army's Training and Doctrine Command, told British military leaders at the annual Kermit Roosevelt lecture in London, that combat in an increasingly urbanised world will result in a "scale of devastation beyond our comprehension".
"The future operational environment will be more lethal and on a scale not seen in decades," he said, as he warned military chiefs that advanced weapons will be of little use in built up areas devastated by fighting.
Modern armies have no idea how to fight in these "hyper populated [and] literally unboundable" areas, Townsend told the audience at the Royal United Services Institute.
In the battle to liberate Mosul from Isis (Islamic State), he had had to ask coalition partners if any army still used flamethrowers, as 'bunker buster' bombs had proved useless against fighters dug in amongst destroyed buildings.
The number of megacities - those with populations over 10 million - is expected to jump from 31 today to 60 by 2030. By that time two-thirds of the world's population is expected to live in urban areas.
Fighting in such areas means "we must prepare for a scale of destruction we have only read about in history books," Townsend said.
Townsend, who commanded the coalition effort to defeat Isis from 2016 to March this year, likened the fight to liberate Mosul to Stalingrad, the bloodiest battle of World War II.
A coalition force of 90,000 soldiers took nine months to finally defeat the 5000 Isis fighters in Mosul. It took seven days to clear the last pockets of resistance, contained in an area about the size of a football pitch.
Townsend said that buildings taller than about four storeys would just collapse under aerial bombs with the basements and ground floors - where Isis fighters were hiding - largely intact.
Subsequent bunker busters just made the ruined structure shake a bit and absorb the blast. He needed a way of killing every last Isis insurgent as they were determined to fight to the death and cause as many casualties as possible.
A man walks next to damaged buildings in the old town of Homs, Syria.
Eventually the Iraqi Army deployed a specially designed armoured bulldozer to bury alive the remaining Isis fighters. Soldiers patrolling behind the bulldozer were used to kill any Isis suicide bombers that ran out to stop the vehicle.
It was a low-tech and brutal form of war.
Townsend questioned whether Western armies had maintained the skills and the stomach for such a fight.
"Battles are won by young soldiers fighting in sand, mud, heat and cold," he said. Hi-tech weapons are largely useless is such battles, Townsend cautioned.
Ben Barry, Senior Fellow for Land Warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, cautions against "Stalingrad syndrome;" the idea that all urban combat will be similarly destructive. "It's all to do with the density of the enemy and the degree to which they can stop the attackers movement," he says.
Tanks and other armoured vehicles will always have utility. Their protection and ability to deliver precise firepower makes them very useful, Barry believes. He points to the so-called 'Thunder Runs' in the battle for Baghdad when US forces conducted high-speed raids to test Iraqi defences.
The Kermit Roosevelt lecture series is an annual exchange of speakers from the UK and US militaries.
German soldiers from the 389th Infantry Division make their way through the "Red October" steel plant in Stalingrad, 1942. #WW2pic.twitter.com/euRjnBPB9y
