"Streetfighting": The Rifle Platoon in MOUT

Infantry Magazine, Sept-Dec, 2000 by Captain John W. Karagosian

Since the end of World War II, the world's population and conflicts have moved from the rural countryside to modem cities and their suburbs. The U.S. Army has found itself on this new battlefield, and is shifting greater training emphasis to these likely sites of future conflicts. There is no end in sight for the Army's increasing commitment to this role.

For today's infantryman, more training in military operations on urban terrain (MOUT) is conducted at MOUT sites and tire houses than before. One of the most elaborate training events at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) is the fight in which a brigade combat team attacks to secure a village and return it to host-nation control. This fight, as is so often the case in MOUT, hinges on the ability of rifle squads, platoons, and companies to accomplish their collective tasks. Many rifle platoons at the JRTC are challenged getting from one building to the next.

At platoon level, MOUT can be a short but intense and violent experience that can quickly render the unit combat ineffective. Most casualties do not occur in the buildings themselves; they occur outside while soldiers are crossing between buildings. This article will examine some of the recent trends and propose possible tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to help a platoon train for future urban operations.

Before examining problems for the rifle platoon, we must first consider the terrain. Buildings provide excellent cover against small arms rounds or concealment that masks sandbagging and other force protection steps taken by the defender. Except for downtown areas of cities, buildings are usually separated by open streets and sidewalks that provide little or no cover for the attacker. On the other hand, excellent fields of fire are available to the defender, although engagement distances are almost always 100 meters or less. Because adjacent buildings are much less than 100 meters apart, seizing a foothold in one of them often requires the suppression or obscuration of several others.

For the defender, winning an urban battle requires making the fight as unfair as possible in the first place. A good way to do this is to defend from buildings that provide cover and concealment for friendly weapons and fields of fire into streets and engagement areas that offer the attacker no cover at all. This setting results in time consuming, deliberate operations that require a high expenditure of ammunition and resources to suppress the enemy. The alternative is the expenditure of soldiers, our most precious resource.

At the platoon level, there are several "fights" we must win to survive in MOUT. For riflemen and team leaders, the fight is to seize a foothold in a given building and clear individual rooms. At squad level, the fight is for a floor or a single small building. The platoon fight revolves around larger buildings and small city blocks. At all levels of this fight we will be crossing open areas and securing footholds. The platoon is the lowest level at which we begin to see enough combat power to assault buildings while still being able to suppress and provide all around security. The fight requires coordination, which is gained through fire control and distribution, sectors of fire, and fire and maneuver tailored to a MOUT environment. For the team leader or squad leader, the fight frequently focuses on close-quarters battle tactics to clear rooms and to assault streets. The squad must have platoon support.

Commonly, however, platoons at home station focus on the fight inside the building. Although they accomplish this part successfully, they often suffer attrition getting to the building in the first place. Most casualties in MOUT take place outside the building, where cover and concealment are least available. At the JRTC village, casualties of 70 percent outside buildings are not uncommon. Yet the high-payoff TTPs for surviving outside are the ones we train on the least. Conversely, when we build MOUT training plans that go only from individual to team and squad level--rarely progressing to the outside fight--we set our junior leaders up for failure. Training on clearing rooms at the expense of entering and moving between buildings does us little good if we don't get into the rooms.

Generally speaking, three weapon systems cause almost all casualties among rotational units in the MOUT attack-- mines and booby traps, indirect fire (usually 82mm mortars), and direct fire from small arms. Direct fire, the biggest casualty producer, is commonly caused by the following:

* Direct fire at a soldier clearing a building, or at a stationary soldier inside a friendly held building.

* Enemy soldiers inside a building defending themselves from a friendly assault (friendly troops in the open).

* Enemy soldiers in a building engaging friendly soldiers in the open, while the friendly troops are attacking a different building, or are otherwise unaware of the source of the fire.

The second and third of these situations are the ones that soldiers train on the least. We should not be surprised that these situations result in most of our losses.