Thread 64086120

For defending a city in urban combat, what's better:

1. Defending a smaller densely-packed city with lots of apartment buildings, metro systems, high-rises and narrow/pedestrian roads like Hong Kong or Singapore

or

2. Defending a larger spread out city with a huge amount of single homes, small apartment buildings, malls, wide roads/highways etc. like Houston or Dallas.

there have been almost no modern battles in what we would call a "densely-packed city". Maybe Gaza would be the closest to that description but they had a lack of skyscrapers and traffic infrastructure as you're describing.

We do know that sprawling suburban cities are gruesome to capture because they're basically endless hedgerows that can conceal an infinite number of small strongpoints and ambush positions.

>>64086226
consider this street view from Dallas: just on this small street, there are 20 houses, of which only 2 are visible at a time.
Defenders can set up a position in any of them, knock holes in a few fences to create invisible firing lanes, then poke some machine guns out of the basement windows - this allows them to create sweeping lanes of fire covering many blocks, but you can't even see the house they're shooting from until you're right next to it. If you locate and prepare an attack to take out the house, the defenders can slip out and climb into another. There's no way to search or fully control the entire neighborhood, so you have to commit to a battle of attrition. This is what Russia has dealt with in Ukraine's cities and it has exhausted that country's momentum.

>>64086304
...and then we can zoom out a little bit to get a better idea of the scope of the problem. The aerial view pictured above is marked by the red circle.

I knew there was a reason I saved these

>>64086344
and then we can zoom out some more.
My opinion is that towering dense cities might have more gruesome scenes of fighting, but the campaign to take a sprawling city will be much more disastrous for an invading force.

>>64086372
>fighting in built up areas
Don't. Starve/seige them, avoid as much as possible.

And for those with too much money, a lot a prep time, and grew up without hearing the word, "Reasonable."

>>64086394
I'm all for a man's home is his castle but if I want a fortress it's not going to be obvious.

>>64086379
For comparison's sake
The Green dot is Luhansk, the yellow dot is Donetsk, the blue dot is horlivka and the black dots are Bakhmut and Siverskdonetsk

>Pavlov's House (Russian: дoм Пaвлoвa tr. Dom Pavlova) was an apartment building converted into a fortified position, which Red Army defenders held for around 60 days against the Wehrmacht offensive during the Battle of Stalingrad. The siege lasted from 27 September to 25 November 1942 and eventually the Red Army managed to relieve it from the siege... Pavlov ordered the building to be surrounded with four layers of barbed wire and landmines, and set up machine-gun posts in every available window facing the square. In the early stages of the defense, Pavlov discovered that an anti-tank rifle—a PTRS-41—he had mounted on the roof was particularly effective when used to ambush unsuspecting German tanks. Once the tanks had approached to within range of the weapon, their thin turret-roof armor was exposed to AT rifle fire from above, and they were unable to elevate their weapons enough to retaliate
>For better internal communication, Pavlov's soldiers breached the walls in the basement and upper floors, and dug a communications trench to Soviet positions outside.[6] Supplies were brought in via the trench or by boats crossing the river, defying German air raids and shelling. Nevertheless, food and especially water was in short supply. Lacking beds, the soldiers tried to sleep on insulation wool torn off pipes but were subjected to harassing fire every night in order to try to break their resistance.
>The Germans attacked the building several times a day. Each time German infantry or tanks tried to cross the square and to close in on the house, Pavlov's men laid down a withering barrage of machine gun and AT rifle fire from the basement, the windows and the roof.

>>64086540
>Recon discovered that German forces in the Elevator were insignificant but they had light machine-guns , submachine-guns and some mortars. With only 27 soldiers, Polyakov attacked with three groups from the rear and flanks: the first group drew the Germans’ attention upon itself; the second group enveloped the Elevator from rear; the third approached from the flank. The Soviet then consolidated and covered the exposed flanks by posting a few soldiers in destroyed houses. The top floor of the Elevator was also set up for all-round defense.
>II. Bataillon, which was faced with the fortified Elevator . One of the II. Bataillon’s soldiers, Willhelm Hoffman, recalls: “Our battalion, plus panzers, is attacking the Elevator , from which smoke is pouring – the grain in it is burning , the Russian seem to have set light to it themselves. Barbarism. The battalion is suffering heavy losses. There are not more than sixty men left in each company. The Elevator is occupied not by men but by devils that no flames or bullets can destroy. “ Soviet records state that “at 13.00, enemy submachine-gunners launched an attack on the Elevator but the positions was restored by a counterattack.”
>Over the next four days, the Germans launched attacks on the Elevator several times a day, having brought forward artillery and tanks (including flamethrowers. Fifty rounds of 88mm Flak were pumped into it but the effect was minimal; a series of small round holes. German infantry, under cover fire, repeatedly stormed the Elevator, but all attempts were smashed by the tenacity of the Soviet defenders. On 19 Septembers, the Elevator was surrounded. The Germans launched two attacks supported by 7 panzers. The Soviet counterattacked and threw them back to their starting positions. About 30 Germans corpses left the walls of the Elevator

>>64086564
>"The Red October complex and Barrikady gun factory had been turned into fortresses as lethal as those of Verdun. If anything, they were more dangerous because the Soviet regiments were so well hidden."[129] The danger of the Barrikady Arms Factory was made apparent firsthand by German sergeant Ernst Wohlfahrt, who witnessed 18 German pioneers get killed by a Russian booby trap.[130] The fighting for the Barrikady has been described as some of the most brutal and ferocious fighting ever, with it being stated that the "battlefield east of the Barrikady blazed with the most violent and profligate clash the world would ever see" and that in regard to hand-to-hand fighting, "nowhere was it more brutal, more savage, more relentless, than in the Barrikady"

>>64086564
Did the Germans not have artillery in sufficient amounts at this point?
I recall everything I've read starting with them leveling the city and absolutely smashing everything... and then, without elaboration, it's meat waves until the Sixth Army gets couldroned.
Where were the supplies? The logistics?

>>64086540
>>64086564
>>64086619
>>64086619
the tl;dr i suppose is that large concrete or brickwork industrial buildings as well as apartment complexes make the best defenses, as they can be turned into redoubts overnight. single family homes that can be flattened by an airstrike or artillery barrage are a terrible idea for urban defense; you want something with a large, comparmentalized interior, a huge, solid foundation and plenty of outward facing windows. you should also consider possible entryways for resupply, communication or even escape. factories, older high rise apartments, train stations, warehouses, older municipal buildings (libraries, city halls etc.) are all good choices.

>>64086632
they failed to destroy it with direct artillery fire, 88 guns, stuka airstrikes, bombing runs and decided to just starve the ruskies out until they started launching raids. they finally captured the elevator after a massive and costly frontal assault and found only 40 dead inside, with about 20 including the commanding officer having escaped during the night to Soviet lines

>>64086120 (OP)
1
Commieblocks are the fortresses of the 20th century
>>64086632
>german military
>ww2
>supplies
>and logistics

>>64086120 (OP)
Definitely the first

>>64086632
No, for several reasons
1stly, the Germans in general had overextended. Soviet infrastructure was pretty much inexistent so they had a hard time bringing anything up to the front. Virtually everything was in short supply.

2ndly, winter meant that additional fuel for heating had to be transported, further straining the supply and reducing the cargo fraction available for artillery and shells. Part of the reason for major frostbite casualties and sickness due to cold was because of lack of transport capacity for winter clothing, as it was stored in Poland / Romania.

3rdly, the Allied strategic bombing soaked up a lot of guns and shells and men that could have been used in the East. At its peak the German AA line consumed nearly a million personnel, ten thousand 88mm guns and thousands more light AA guns. Consider if all that had gone to artillery and in the East instead. Furthermore, Allied bombing did have an impact. We can only measure roughly its effect on steel, tank and aircraft production, but other supplies of all kinds must certainly also have been bottlenecked.

4thly, the Red Army launched successful counterattacks on the German airfields supporting the Stalingrad assault, which did some damage and forced them further back, which reduced the number of sorties they could fly.

All this adds up.

>>64086646
>>64086717
based effortposters, thanks.
very informative!

>>64086655
Why were they like this

>>64086540
>>64086564
>>64086619
Time to play RO2 again.

>>64086637
>>64086120 (OP)
The thread of course brings up the subject of the only city on earth designed from the ground up to withstand a siege by modern weapons including atomic attack.

>>64086372
what is this from ? it's fascinating

>>64086540
>>64086564
>>64086619
Not so sure this would work in today's age with ISR, drones and precision strikes. You'd pretty easily identify which building has alot of troop concentration in it and pummel it with drones and munition drops unless this had like an insane bunker complex below like Azovstal.

>>64086540
This reminded me of a boardgame by the same name, which was pretty good

>>64086120 (OP)
Why on earth would I ever defend a city?
Urbus Delenda Est.

>>64087229
>i hate having anything from the 21st century that needs to be imported/manufactured in blue states
yeah
That's a pants-on-head-retarded outlook. Cities not only make things you use constantly but also need to live. I cannot believe someone could be this retarded.

>>64087229
>propaganda appealing to tribal mentality easily convinces anon to hate his countrymen

>>64086120 (OP)
3. Get sieged and die of thirst and starvation.

>>64087485
>but also need to live
Like what? Porn? Traffic jams? TPS reports?

>>64087600
>propaganda appealing to tribal mentality
tribal mentality is human nature
>convinces anon to hate his countrymen
said "country men" are all either niggers, faggots, leftists, (((human rights activists))) or immigrants
YOU'RE the one who easily falls for propaganda

>>64089003
>man who asserts that 80% of his country's population deserves to die pretends not to have been demoralized by foreign subversives and that it's totally, like, an original thought bro
here's your crown, king

Cities are the fortresses of the modern age

>>64087485
a solitary farmer technically wouldn't need any city-produced goods to survive
Cities provide desirable rather than strictly necessary goods

>>64086384
this - why is the thread still going after this post?
if cities before the modern era were difficult to capture even when encircled even back then, why in the hell would you go into a modern city which is ten times larger and more complicated to navigate instead of encircling it to starve them out?

>>64089108
>a solitary farmer technically wouldn't need any city-produced goods to survive
you've got a lot, a lot, a lot to learn about the economy. unless your solitary farmer is scrabbling in the dirt with his naked fingers, he relies on a worldwide ecosystem of products which are manufactured and traded in cities, and whose operating organizations are run from cities.
John Deere has manufacturing plants in four different cities JUST in the US itself. Those plants order and consume materials from abroad and the entire process is orchestrated from office buildings and server farms in cities.

Tools come from cities: when they're made in the US, they're made in industrial centers with high populations. All other times, they come into the US through port cities. International trade is conducted by corporations that the average country bumpkin thinks are "do nothing" companies, but the only reason a blue-collar worker can end up with a Snap-On or a Makita or a DeWalt in their hands is because it came here along with billions of dollars worth of other goods on a giant ship that made port in San Francisco.

>>64089143
>unless your solitary farmer is scrabbling in the dirt with his naked fingers
Yes that's what I mean
It's not a desirable life, but he has what he needs to survive
Otherwise humans wouldn't have been able to exist without cities in the first place

>>64087485
>>64087600
citybugs think they're actually important lmao

>>64086304
Nobody in Dallas has a basement.
>>64086382
Urban warfare is dropping JDAMs on buildings that give you the heeby jeebies until the enemy stops being an asshole.

>>64089151
>It's not a desirable life, but he has what he needs to survive
99.99% of people would die attempting to subsistence farm without tools or any external assistance. Huge areas of the US aren't even agriculturally viable on any meaningful scale without mass-produced fertilizer or machine irrigation.

>>64089166
this is how the game works, isn't it? I reply with some smarmy retort about how it's actually the flyover state hicks who are unimportant, the conversation goes nowhere, and two Americans (who in reality share 95% of their values) walk away hating each other a little more.
That's exactly what China wants for us.

>>64089177
keyed and true

>>64087600
Russians are primitive people.

>>64089177
Everyone should be more like this anon.

>>64086226
>>64086304
>>64086344
I think battles in urban sprawls will become more like multi-year campaigns if Gaza is anything to go by. Russia's advance on Kyiv broke down and failed on the outskirts of the city, and as best as I can tell, they gambled on there being little resistance and the government choosing to flee rather than fight. Turns out they guessed wrong. Israel has been launching large raids into different areas of the Gaza Strip and pulverizing those areas in clearing operations before withdrawing, and then they'll go back in again. Now it looks like they're going to reoccupy the Strip in its entirety but large areas of it have been destroyed and people are starving.

>>64086379
https://youtu.be/hzvTXNKvafc

>>64089203
>Russia's advance on Kyiv broke down and failed on the outskirts of the city, and as best as I can tell, they gambled on there being little resistance and the government choosing to flee rather than fight. Turns out they guessed wrong.
Yeah I think it's pretty clear with hindsight that the Russians thought the Ukrainians would either fold immediately, that some pro-Russian coup would take place, or that the government would just flee westwards. It will be years until we learn the extent of the intelligence fuckup that led to that weird understrength pincer move to Kiev.
>Israel has been launching large raids into different areas of the Gaza Strip and pulverizing those areas in clearing operations before withdrawing, and then they'll go back in again. Now it looks like they're going to reoccupy the Strip in its entirety but large areas of it have been destroyed and people are starving.
Gaza is not really a good example of urban "warfare"; it's a high octane counter insurgency/genocide against a small militia equipped mostly with small arms depending on international aid for food and medicine. If the Gazans were near-peers to the Israelis in terms of weapons, logistics, numbers etc. combat in Gaza would look a LOT bloodier. The fact that Hamas still exists and pops off an odd IDF tank or couple ground troops every few days despite their entire city being turned to rubble for the past 2 years is kind of testament to how hard it is to finally win urban combat.

>>64089177
A good and serious answer
But to a joke post

>>64089203
>Dredd 2012
Awesome

>>64089167
>Urban warfare is dropping JDAMs on buildings that give you the heeby jeebies until the enemy stops being an asshole
Then the UN and Red Cross crawls up your ass about it and the bleeding hearts in your population (helped along by enemy disinformation) get annoyed and reduce their war support
It was all in Millenium Challenge

>>64086304
American style suburban sprawl is way easier to clear than modern high rise complexes. The techniques and tactics have been practised since WW2 and air support is available

Once inside a big city block you can control the stairwells and access and so on, which makes life slightly easier, but the problem is getting there
Go take a look at say central Mong Kok, Hong Kong; or maybe the area around Grand Central Station NYC
Imagine you're on the street
How do you even approach the building?

>>64086379
just buils a few commieblocks in every sprawling town and city.

done. problem solved and you have the best of both a kind of fortified town and a sprawling town.

>>64086564
that's literally the Pain Elevator from Red Orchestra 2. thank you anon, that was an interesting story.

>>64089092
What happens when the foreign subversives make up a growing portion your own country's population

>>64087485
>>64087600
Post gun with timestamp

>>64089096
>Cities are the deathtraps of the modern age
Fixed that for ya