1 00:00:01,370 --> 00:00:08,810 It is a great pleasure to introduce professor ethnic groups he's got a of already so I wanted to give you a title. 2 00:00:09,600 --> 00:00:13,610 He's also a professor of sociology at the University of Exeter. 3 00:00:13,640 --> 00:00:21,300 But more importantly, I think right now, as a visiting fellow for All Souls College, he's written, I think, on a number of different things. 4 00:00:21,310 --> 00:00:27,410 Some of you know him from looking at some of the political tribalism in the sporting world, 5 00:00:28,160 --> 00:00:32,570 but also in social theory, of course, and particularly with reference to the armed forces. 6 00:00:32,610 --> 00:00:38,630 What do you think of those views on that? And the most recent book of notes, which we must point out to you. 7 00:00:38,840 --> 00:00:42,050 The transformation of Europe's armed forces came out in Cambridge. 8 00:00:42,380 --> 00:00:46,870 2011 was most recently. The combat soldier was correct. 9 00:00:46,890 --> 00:00:51,510 This year we don't see university press does not have a reception quite like we should be talking about. 10 00:00:51,530 --> 00:00:58,700 So you can tell you about that. And it's also worth pointing out that unlike many sociology theorists who simply. 11 00:00:59,260 --> 00:01:04,030 Study the books and look at the material from a purely Chinese. 12 00:01:04,030 --> 00:01:07,540 Take in the effort, make the effort to get out on the ground to Afghanistan, 13 00:01:08,080 --> 00:01:17,910 work inside the headquarters as an advisor to try and help military personnel understand the species that sort of dealing with. 14 00:01:19,740 --> 00:01:23,660 Tony, thanks for doing this particular presidential 43 yet. 15 00:01:23,910 --> 00:01:27,740 Why don't you try it? Thanks. Thanks so much. Thanks for being here on a beautiful day. 16 00:01:27,750 --> 00:01:31,079 I mean, three months ago I was on. I don't have a choice. I might be outside. 17 00:01:31,080 --> 00:01:32,100 But anyway, thanks for being here. 18 00:01:33,330 --> 00:01:40,350 Well, this paper like yours, I mean, there's a, you know, obvious provenance of this paper, namely the book that Rob just mentioned. 19 00:01:40,620 --> 00:01:46,799 What have extracted out is is a set of discussions in the book about contemporary urban combat. 20 00:01:46,800 --> 00:01:50,160 And that's what I want to talk about today. 21 00:01:51,300 --> 00:01:57,350 But but I had no particular desire, no plans to work, you know, 22 00:01:57,390 --> 00:02:03,680 to provide presentations and potentially work up an article as I'm doing on on the issue of urban combat and close quarters battle. 23 00:02:04,470 --> 00:02:12,720 It came out of discussions with people. I also and they do these visiting fellow colloquium and I was asking my colleagues, 24 00:02:12,720 --> 00:02:16,950 my fellow visiting fellows also what they like to listen to me talk about. 25 00:02:16,950 --> 00:02:19,749 And I have a list of probably less interesting topics. 26 00:02:19,750 --> 00:02:23,610 And when I mention I've done a bit of work on urban combat, various colleagues said, Yeah, you must do that. 27 00:02:23,610 --> 00:02:27,990 And the talk went down as well as anything can go down well as a visitor. 28 00:02:28,140 --> 00:02:31,260 Also, it seemed to go down okay. So that didn't encourage me. 29 00:02:32,010 --> 00:02:36,360 That then encouraged me to maybe think there's something to this. 30 00:02:36,360 --> 00:02:41,969 And so I take the liberty of presenting this to you and I'll be interested to see what your reactions to it are, 31 00:02:41,970 --> 00:02:45,750 if there's any merit or wider validity in it. 32 00:02:45,990 --> 00:02:51,690 One point on the title, I mean, the title is slightly hyperbolic and you know, 33 00:02:51,690 --> 00:02:57,300 sensation is really a better title for this talk something like towards a pressurised military, 34 00:02:57,810 --> 00:03:02,820 the case of close quarter battle, the case of of urban combat. 35 00:03:02,820 --> 00:03:10,380 And that's what I'm going to talk to today. In the mid 1970s, 36 00:03:11,040 --> 00:03:22,019 sociologists and social scientists generally sociologists began to note and publish on what seemed to be and I think they were correct in identifying. 37 00:03:22,020 --> 00:03:24,000 It seemed to be a historic transformation. 38 00:03:24,060 --> 00:03:33,090 Namely, Western forces in particular were moving from the citizen model, which is typified Western armies from, we might say, 39 00:03:33,480 --> 00:03:45,330 the levee on March 1793 to moving away from these large scale citizen slash conscript forces to professionalised military units, 40 00:03:45,330 --> 00:03:49,110 all volunteer much small of all volunteer forces. 41 00:03:49,950 --> 00:03:58,709 Now, this rightly caused much interest at that particular time, but more recently, sociologists, 42 00:03:58,710 --> 00:04:08,790 the social sciences more more generally have been much more interested in the kind of more technical, spectacular aspects of military development. 43 00:04:08,790 --> 00:04:10,710 And in particular, if you look at the 1990s, 44 00:04:11,100 --> 00:04:19,860 there's intense debate about the whole revolution in military affairs and the introduction of new digital and precision technology into the military. 45 00:04:20,070 --> 00:04:26,250 And what it suggests is that in a certain sense, in no way am I denying the importance of the revolution in military affairs, 46 00:04:26,280 --> 00:04:29,879 no one tool in importance of new technology, digital technology in particular. 47 00:04:29,880 --> 00:04:33,990 But it seems to me that those social issues in the 1970s were, in a sense, onto something. 48 00:04:33,990 --> 00:04:39,350 The professionalisation at one level just means a change in employment contract, briefly, 49 00:04:39,720 --> 00:04:46,290 that you become a career soldier, paid for your pay for your potentially career service. 50 00:04:46,290 --> 00:04:52,500 And at that level it doesn't seem particularly important or or a portentous development. 51 00:04:52,740 --> 00:04:57,629 But what I try to suggest is that actually underlying that banal transformation, 52 00:04:57,630 --> 00:05:02,640 a mere contractual relationship between the employed soldier and the state of factory 53 00:05:02,650 --> 00:05:08,760 in the Ministry of Defence lies very significant cultural and social transformation. 54 00:05:08,900 --> 00:05:12,690 Since those of interest to me and those that I'd like to talk about today. 55 00:05:12,870 --> 00:05:16,880 Well, if we're going to talk about professionalism, of course, these two books are essential. 56 00:05:16,890 --> 00:05:21,690 Samuel's the Soldier of State, and Yaniv, it's who's the professional soldier. 57 00:05:22,170 --> 00:05:26,070 And I think they provide a useful definition of professionalism. 58 00:05:26,670 --> 00:05:32,550 None of it is very clear. Professionalism consists of three essential things a specialised form of knowledge, 59 00:05:33,150 --> 00:05:38,940 a responsibility to the society of which you're part, and a sort of corporate ethos. 60 00:05:39,510 --> 00:05:44,250 Pretty reasonable definition in terms of the specialist knowledge, the expertise, 61 00:05:44,730 --> 00:05:50,240 what he was thinking of and what he defined was, to use last word phrase, the management of violence. 62 00:05:50,240 --> 00:05:57,990 So he particularly saw the emergence of a professional officer corps that was expert in the management of violence, 63 00:05:58,200 --> 00:06:06,120 and particularly that phrase expertise, specialised knowledge seems to me to one to to to to hold on to in terms of professionalisation. 64 00:06:06,390 --> 00:06:16,500 And bizarrely, but perhaps ironically, it points to something slightly paradoxical about professionalism that the best professionals, 65 00:06:16,500 --> 00:06:24,660 the true professionals are actually amateurish about the vocation to which they're dedicated amateurs in the traditional sense of the word. 66 00:06:24,720 --> 00:06:25,740 They are lovers. 67 00:06:25,890 --> 00:06:38,370 They have a passion about the vocation which they have chosen, which gives them a kind of a intense interest in every detail aspect of performance, 68 00:06:38,370 --> 00:06:42,209 collective and individual performance in that domain of expertise. 69 00:06:42,210 --> 00:06:48,900 And I think in communicating that sense of passion, of amateurish passion, Janowitz and Shiels, 70 00:06:48,900 --> 00:06:55,590 despite Javits and Huntington, despite many differences I have with them, I think they provide a useful point. 71 00:06:55,740 --> 00:07:05,280 However, of course, famously, Huntington did not think that professionalism extended down into the domain that I'm interested in, 72 00:07:05,370 --> 00:07:14,250 namely into the kind of domain of tactical activity in which soldiers, NCO and very junior officers are involved. 73 00:07:14,550 --> 00:07:18,810 On the contrary, he was absolutely explicit in the opening of the book The Enlisted Men, 74 00:07:19,050 --> 00:07:23,070 and therefore the activities of that immediate tactical level of the engagement 75 00:07:23,220 --> 00:07:27,720 of the enemy with fire on the battlefield was not a professional activity. 76 00:07:27,720 --> 00:07:34,200 It was a training, not a profession. Now, what it suggests is that perhaps too, you know, 77 00:07:34,200 --> 00:07:39,960 he was writing in air despite the fact that he focussed on professionalisation, the professionalism of the officer corps. 78 00:07:40,050 --> 00:07:45,150 Of course, publishing. In 1957, Huntington was writing in an era of the Citizen Army, 79 00:07:45,150 --> 00:07:53,070 and indeed the primary kind of energy behind his work is precisely trying to explain and in 80 00:07:53,070 --> 00:07:58,460 fact provide a normative basis of a pretty novel situation that United States oneself in, 81 00:07:58,530 --> 00:08:05,969 namely in possession of a very large citizen standing army for more or less the first time in its history. 82 00:08:05,970 --> 00:08:16,500 And so his his concerns. His. His his definition of professionalism only exists at the officer level, reflects the army to which he was writing. 83 00:08:17,720 --> 00:08:24,170 If we turn now to the last ten years of conflict, to the intense operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, 84 00:08:24,440 --> 00:08:31,219 I think it would be extremely difficult for anyone to maintain the activities which have taken place 85 00:08:31,220 --> 00:08:37,310 at the ground level of troops patrolling and fighting in the streets and deserts of Afghanistan. 86 00:08:37,310 --> 00:08:42,710 The mountains of Afghanistan have not or could not be defined as professional. 87 00:08:42,800 --> 00:08:45,260 Indeed, what it suggests is a very useful comparison. 88 00:08:45,260 --> 00:08:51,739 Here is the performance of American citizen soldiers in Vietnam and their contemporary performance in the last ten years. 89 00:08:51,740 --> 00:08:54,920 And that difference in performance, one ending up in defeat. 90 00:08:54,920 --> 00:08:57,920 We need a massive disobedience. 91 00:08:58,550 --> 00:09:08,690 The other ending up in highly problematic, but nevertheless not outrageous defeat and collapse as a result. 92 00:09:08,900 --> 00:09:15,410 So what it suggests is that we can. And what I want to do today is to try and extend Huntington's definition of 93 00:09:15,410 --> 00:09:19,790 professionalism as a form of specialism down to the lowest tactical levels. 94 00:09:19,790 --> 00:09:29,030 And in effect, what I want to provide and I put it here, I want to try and analyse the micro practices of urban combat at the lowest tactical level, 95 00:09:29,420 --> 00:09:36,860 talking here of squads of 1015 people down to protect four people in a in a stack, as I will describe later on, 96 00:09:37,190 --> 00:09:43,550 in order to contribute to contemporary understandings of military professionalisation. 97 00:09:44,430 --> 00:09:51,990 There's another literature to which I hope and perhaps think this work potentially contributes. 98 00:09:52,470 --> 00:09:55,260 And in the last 10 to 15 years, 99 00:09:55,500 --> 00:10:05,610 I think there's been an increasing interest by sociologists in forms of collective protest and indeed collective violence. 100 00:10:05,610 --> 00:10:15,780 In fact, often unorganised collective violence in terms of stimulated by mass protests around things like G-8 and also in terms of, 101 00:10:15,840 --> 00:10:22,159 although principally peaceful, but in terms of the Occupy movement in response to the credit crunch. 102 00:10:22,160 --> 00:10:23,459 And indeed, Michael Biggs, 103 00:10:23,460 --> 00:10:34,530 he's who's sat here is I see his work as contributing very significantly to this work on the dynamics of collective violence in the contemporary era. 104 00:10:34,860 --> 00:10:41,940 Now, one of the key figures I would argue in this literature is Randall Collins, professor of Pennsylvania. 105 00:10:42,180 --> 00:10:47,490 And he's produced a number of important works on on various forms of conflict. 106 00:10:47,580 --> 00:10:52,830 One of his most recent was a monograph dedicated to violence and essential central point of that. 107 00:10:52,830 --> 00:10:58,620 And it's a micro sociology of violence in all its manifestations in social life, 108 00:10:58,620 --> 00:11:02,580 including military, but also including aspects like domestic violence. 109 00:11:03,370 --> 00:11:09,780 What what is central argument is, is that human beings are incompetent when it comes to violence, 110 00:11:10,020 --> 00:11:15,900 and that is typically in contradistinction to literary or filmic representations of violence. 111 00:11:16,080 --> 00:11:25,860 Actually, human human violence is typically incompetent, badly executed, unwillingly executed and disordered. 112 00:11:26,490 --> 00:11:36,090 Essentially, violence is almost overwhelmingly especially mass violence is overwhelmingly characterised by mass or individual incompetence. 113 00:11:36,090 --> 00:11:39,150 And certainly I think his work on this is profound. 114 00:11:39,160 --> 00:11:42,720 I have no disagreements in general with his point. 115 00:11:43,050 --> 00:11:48,720 What would suggest is in terms of the military and thinking about urban tactics, 116 00:11:48,720 --> 00:11:54,120 urban combat techniques is to professionalise military of the 21st century, 117 00:11:54,360 --> 00:12:00,030 is explicitly seeking to overcome the kind of natural I use in inverted commas, 118 00:12:00,180 --> 00:12:06,299 the natural crowd dynamics of which Collins and various of his colleagues, 119 00:12:06,300 --> 00:12:12,420 including Michael potentially and very usefully have illustrated the idea of 120 00:12:12,420 --> 00:12:17,399 professionalism at military level is to eliminate natural and incompetent, 121 00:12:17,400 --> 00:12:27,180 collective and individual reactions and responses and replace them with refined and established established responses. 122 00:12:27,180 --> 00:12:38,190 Now, clearly, in many cases, professional military style, that chaos and disorder is is what follows combat and especially urban combat. 123 00:12:38,370 --> 00:12:44,430 But I would suggest that the attempt is there to overcome the natural individual and collective reactions of panic, 124 00:12:44,670 --> 00:12:53,879 fear and flight or forward panic by more tempered and refined and effective response. 125 00:12:53,880 --> 00:12:56,940 And so therefore, in talking to close quote battle, 126 00:12:56,940 --> 00:13:03,419 I'd like to try and fuse these two interests in a story about military professionalisation and also 127 00:13:03,420 --> 00:13:09,960 in the micro dynamics of violence that many sociologists found interesting in the current era. 128 00:13:10,440 --> 00:13:14,430 So defining what I mean by close more to battle. 129 00:13:14,760 --> 00:13:23,290 I'm. Urban warfare. Since the beginnings of civilisation armies, humans have engaged in forms of urban warfare. 130 00:13:23,300 --> 00:13:27,400 They have fought in or for cities. And we only need to go back. 131 00:13:27,400 --> 00:13:32,110 You know, there's various sackings of cities and destructions of populations, 132 00:13:32,110 --> 00:13:42,790 and the Bible famously is book to the Aeneid has a actually really motive and powerful description of the sacking of Troy, 133 00:13:42,790 --> 00:13:47,380 and especially the destruction of the palace and the murder of Priam by Paris 134 00:13:47,590 --> 00:13:56,020 is a powerful story about urban urban combat in the pre kiss Christian era, 135 00:13:56,020 --> 00:14:04,030 although Virgil himself never served in the military, but presumably took some of the descriptions from his own knowledge of of that of that period. 136 00:14:04,240 --> 00:14:12,570 And. Urban warfare has remained a key category of human conflict since that time. 137 00:14:12,580 --> 00:14:19,380 If you look at Christopher Duffy's excellent work on fortifications and siege warfare, medieval and early modern Europe, 138 00:14:19,470 --> 00:14:30,030 we find that continual use of or continual happenings of urban combat, of fighting in and for cities. 139 00:14:30,030 --> 00:14:34,470 And this is one of those bands of time sports actually in Lille. 140 00:14:34,740 --> 00:14:38,010 And now, of course, in the 20th century, especially in the Second World War, 141 00:14:38,430 --> 00:14:49,379 there was very extensive urban fighting and much of this urban fighting generated quite high levels of skill among the combatants. 142 00:14:49,380 --> 00:14:52,710 And this is an image of Stalingrad, which was, in my view, 143 00:14:53,010 --> 00:15:01,260 the both culminating and the most the largest and most brutal of all urban combat in the Second World War. 144 00:15:01,470 --> 00:15:10,800 And Stalingrad provides, I think, a very interesting example of the nature of urban warfare, urban warfare, as distinct from close quarters battle. 145 00:15:11,220 --> 00:15:15,180 And of course, just give you an example of this, that in fact, the bear market, 146 00:15:15,180 --> 00:15:20,510 after much difficulty, did develop certain techniques for fighting in the urban area. 147 00:15:20,670 --> 00:15:23,310 The Soviets similarly developed similar techniques. 148 00:15:23,580 --> 00:15:30,569 Now, one of the examples here is the assault on the barricaded gun factory in late October and November 1942. 149 00:15:30,570 --> 00:15:34,649 And those some very sophisticated assaults occurred around these factories, 150 00:15:34,650 --> 00:15:40,440 one in particular on this house, a commercial house on the 11th of November. 151 00:15:40,440 --> 00:15:44,879 And what the Vermaak did was to generate special stormtrooper battalions, 152 00:15:44,880 --> 00:15:53,070 pioneer battalions in these assaults on the factories, and assigned one to be sort of this fortified house back here. 153 00:15:53,210 --> 00:16:00,300 And if you look at I'm not going to go into this, but it was a it was a well-planned, well executed type, brutal and very bloody assault. 154 00:16:00,960 --> 00:16:11,550 But what did suggest here is, although here is clear evidence of the refinement of the planning and execution of urban tactics at the battalion level, 155 00:16:11,850 --> 00:16:17,309 there is little evidence of something that I'm going to call Sea Cube micro expertise, 156 00:16:17,310 --> 00:16:24,840 micro practices at the level of the platoon and the squad and the section I at the level of teams of of four, 157 00:16:24,840 --> 00:16:30,060 eight, ten, 20 soldiers, it became sophisticated. 158 00:16:30,210 --> 00:16:36,480 But it still these these techniques I'm going to talk about hadn't really developed in the 1980s. 159 00:16:36,810 --> 00:16:44,670 NATO's began to take increasing interest in urban combat as a way of responding to Soviet 160 00:16:44,670 --> 00:16:51,600 threats and new Soviet doctrine on how they were going to take or avoid fighting in cities. 161 00:16:51,720 --> 00:16:54,870 But again, in the end, I'll come back to this infantry man's guide. 162 00:16:55,440 --> 00:17:02,370 There's no development of what I would suggest and what military practices would call close quarters battle, 163 00:17:02,370 --> 00:17:09,089 namely refined skills in terms of entering and clearing particular structures and buildings. 164 00:17:09,090 --> 00:17:19,200 That general there's sophistication at the level of planning and execution, but at the level of micro tactics, it still retains an unrefined method. 165 00:17:19,380 --> 00:17:24,630 Now in the 1990s, in there's experience of Mogadishu, Grozny and Sarajevo, 166 00:17:25,050 --> 00:17:33,840 Western countries again renewed this interest in urban combat and renewed this interest in a very serious and very serious, 167 00:17:33,840 --> 00:17:38,030 much more serious way than they had in the past with the emergence towards the end of that decade, 168 00:17:38,040 --> 00:17:48,120 especially into the first decade of this century, with the development of new training manuals and new training facilities. 169 00:17:48,630 --> 00:17:52,380 But even then, up till the early 2000, 170 00:17:52,410 --> 00:18:02,280 I would suggest to you that the specific practices of CQ be a close call to battle were not present within the general conventional military. 171 00:18:03,370 --> 00:18:11,980 Where then did CPB come from? What I'm to you is that while the conventional forces from the eighties on and specifically 172 00:18:12,160 --> 00:18:17,710 accentuated from the nineties became increasingly concerned with urban combat, 173 00:18:18,310 --> 00:18:25,690 there was a development occurring at a lower, more covert level, namely amongst special forces. 174 00:18:26,020 --> 00:18:36,879 In the 1970s, and one of the key, if not the key catalyst for this increased interest in the micro techniques of room 175 00:18:36,880 --> 00:18:42,160 clearance and building clearance was the emergence of international terrorism in the 1970s, 176 00:18:42,160 --> 00:18:46,750 and particularly the Munich crisis in response to Munich crisis, 177 00:18:47,320 --> 00:18:55,780 where Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes at that in some hideous event, 178 00:18:55,780 --> 00:19:01,330 in a hideously incompetently managed event by German federal federal authorities at that time. 179 00:19:01,480 --> 00:19:10,570 Western governments development began to develop an interest in the question of fighting in enclosed urban spaces, 180 00:19:10,750 --> 00:19:17,560 and they developed special forces units in order to develop and execute these counter-terrorist 181 00:19:18,130 --> 00:19:22,870 operations and those few organisations that were critical to the developments here, 182 00:19:23,260 --> 00:19:29,500 the SARS in Britain, Special Air Service, Delta Force in America. 183 00:19:30,100 --> 00:19:38,020 Gasquet no one should screw up annoying in Germany and the Jean-Marie the group more de security that haven't 184 00:19:38,410 --> 00:19:47,050 done to us here in France were key groupings in developing these micro practices of urban clearing techniques, 185 00:19:47,290 --> 00:20:00,250 namely trying to overcome the problem of entering buildings and eliminating terrorists while not minimising the risk posed to civilian hostages. 186 00:20:00,400 --> 00:20:10,570 And from these events that the close quarter battle techniques, which I'm going to talk about today, developed and were disseminated, 187 00:20:10,720 --> 00:20:19,600 but for approximately 30 years, from 1970 to, say, mid seventies right through to the early decades, 188 00:20:19,600 --> 00:20:23,140 the early years of last decade, the early years of the 2000, 189 00:20:23,470 --> 00:20:32,650 effectively CCP techniques, these micro practices of entering buildings and eliminating that is killing that to be honest, 190 00:20:32,800 --> 00:20:40,330 killing of terrorists or subsequent insurgents became and remained the preserve of 191 00:20:40,330 --> 00:20:47,500 covert special forces and was not disseminated out to conventional infantry soldiers. 192 00:20:47,620 --> 00:20:54,609 Well, this began to change, especially in Iraq, and especially following the assault on Fallujah in November 2004, 193 00:20:54,610 --> 00:21:01,569 when the US Marines found both that they had incurred more casualties than they needed to 194 00:21:01,570 --> 00:21:07,840 because of incompetent urban tactics and in fact had caused many more civilian casualties than 195 00:21:07,840 --> 00:21:14,919 they needed to by the use of old traditional Stalingrad esque tactics in an environment in 196 00:21:14,920 --> 00:21:20,380 which there were still many civilians in the in the buildings that they were seeking to clear. 197 00:21:20,950 --> 00:21:24,040 This was further affirmed in Afghanistan, where, 198 00:21:24,040 --> 00:21:32,740 although most of the fighting is taking place in these curious kind of rural and urban environments through and in compounds, villages, 199 00:21:33,370 --> 00:21:45,670 this requirement to execute precision close quarter battle techniques in which potentially armed insurgents had to be engaged and shot, 200 00:21:46,000 --> 00:21:52,690 but at the same time, civilians had to be protected. This became even more essential in Afghanistan. 201 00:21:53,200 --> 00:21:58,149 So what we see is the development of see keep tactics, close quarters, 202 00:21:58,150 --> 00:22:09,190 battle tactics in the end to preserve a special force from 1970s disseminating out to the conventional forces in the last 10 to 15 years. 203 00:22:09,220 --> 00:22:14,770 Now, quick word or method sinkings represents a very significant problem in terms of sociological method, 204 00:22:15,550 --> 00:22:20,980 but it's very difficult to see to observe these techniques in practice. 205 00:22:21,790 --> 00:22:27,760 It is some academics have embedded in forces, in combat forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. 206 00:22:28,420 --> 00:22:33,370 But CTP represents an additional problem, even those who are embedded. 207 00:22:33,370 --> 00:22:35,919 And if you look at journalism, but some of you've done very good work. 208 00:22:35,920 --> 00:22:43,210 I mean, I think you're being west or or have you not in many cases, even though they embedded in particular units, 209 00:22:43,360 --> 00:22:46,600 they did not witness the actions that they subsequently described. 210 00:22:46,990 --> 00:22:50,200 They were not present or in a different part of the field of battle. 211 00:22:50,290 --> 00:22:53,830 So they don't see the action that they subsequently described. 212 00:22:53,980 --> 00:23:02,650 Combat is confusing, it's dispersed, it's difficult. And therefore, even those academics who have been embedded and some of them done excellent work. 213 00:23:02,930 --> 00:23:06,690 In many cases, they've relied on the old technique of post action review. 214 00:23:06,800 --> 00:23:10,790 Certainly I've never met it, so I have relied on that post action review. 215 00:23:11,120 --> 00:23:16,540 We might say, Well, could we get around this problem of not being physically witness? 216 00:23:17,150 --> 00:23:21,140 And let me just say, of course we seek you be. The action happens inside houses. 217 00:23:21,350 --> 00:23:27,980 So it's very difficult only to sort of lead troops in each squad, actually see what occurs in each room. 218 00:23:28,130 --> 00:23:34,580 So it's very difficult to see be accentuates and multiplies the problem of participant observation. 219 00:23:34,700 --> 00:23:39,260 In terms of sociological research. So then the question is joint, can we use video footage? 220 00:23:39,350 --> 00:23:46,010 Ronald Collins I think it's very intriguingly suggested the emergence of video footage of helmet cameras, 221 00:23:46,190 --> 00:23:51,800 of GoPro cameras has been has may be of huge benefit to micro sociology. 222 00:23:51,810 --> 00:23:57,590 Certainly the micro sociologists of crowd bonds have used it very impressively on video footage. 223 00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:02,660 The problem is here is that I've done a brief survey of YouTube and various other sites. 224 00:24:03,020 --> 00:24:07,190 The footage is actually on the Web is again, not that that significant. 225 00:24:07,190 --> 00:24:10,610 It's not of troops entering rooms. It's a firefight for the distance. 226 00:24:11,330 --> 00:24:14,810 The context in which these fights occur is never specified. 227 00:24:14,930 --> 00:24:21,050 So they're very dangerous to use them in terms of empirically to look at issues so that they present problems. 228 00:24:21,170 --> 00:24:24,530 So how do I get around this problem? Well, since you're focussed on training, 229 00:24:24,800 --> 00:24:34,310 I got to focus on training in order to try and understand the techniques of post quarterback or the micro 230 00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:41,330 tactics of urban clearance clearing in order to get a sense and understanding of these methods and techniques. 231 00:24:41,330 --> 00:24:45,049 And these are some of the sites I did work out. I basically spent a week at most myself. 232 00:24:45,050 --> 00:24:54,080 This is the US Marine massive range to 2020 on farms out in California. 233 00:24:54,080 --> 00:24:57,470 This is down to Pendleton, their information centre. 234 00:24:58,070 --> 00:25:05,150 This is the Canadian Urban Training Centre. This is one of the British urban training centres in Norfolk. 235 00:25:05,240 --> 00:25:12,770 Again, Norfolk spent significant amounts of millions constructing compounds that we weren't fighting in of 2014. 236 00:25:12,770 --> 00:25:17,270 But that's a different that if we question Hamburg in Germany, 237 00:25:17,450 --> 00:25:22,340 this is a beautiful old 18th century village where the German troops still train 238 00:25:22,710 --> 00:25:30,190 component and then the the premier French training site in Piccadilly perform soon. 239 00:25:30,190 --> 00:25:38,010 And this training actually I'm pretty confident is the training here the finger trained on before Operation Michael in March 1982. 240 00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:42,229 We've been training our in the German lines. We're just in front of this training area. 241 00:25:42,230 --> 00:25:46,040 But this is Soul Soup, which is a very elaborate training area. 242 00:25:46,460 --> 00:25:50,570 Now, the key so I spent significant effort on all those institutions. 243 00:25:50,750 --> 00:25:56,570 This was this sort of unprepossessing shed was where I did the principal research. 244 00:25:56,960 --> 00:26:01,300 This is the Royal Marine Command, a training centre down Lympstone in Devon. 245 00:26:01,300 --> 00:26:05,390 And this is urban. This the compound is like where they do urban training. 246 00:26:05,690 --> 00:26:13,819 It has huge advantages in this country, I've got to say, from the gantry over which you can stand it stand on, 247 00:26:13,820 --> 00:26:19,490 which is not overlooking the training and indeed the directing staff stand on the country 248 00:26:19,490 --> 00:26:24,440 and direct and criticise the squads as they go through run through their exercises. 249 00:26:24,680 --> 00:26:27,390 So it presents not an optimal, 250 00:26:27,560 --> 00:26:36,440 but certainly seems to me to be a highly instructive way of seeing contemporary urban combat and certainly the doctrine of urban combat. 251 00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:40,520 Now, this still is not the front line, although the techniques are used on the front line. 252 00:26:41,300 --> 00:26:43,610 So in order to bridge that gap, 253 00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:53,180 what I tried to do in the research is to use a series of interviews with directing staff and with candidates who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, 254 00:26:53,180 --> 00:26:59,540 in many cases have been involved in in actual urban fights to to fuse the discussion 255 00:26:59,540 --> 00:27:03,949 and the description analysis of training with actual operational realities. 256 00:27:03,950 --> 00:27:07,609 And that's also been supported by some memoirs which actually are quite useful. 257 00:27:07,610 --> 00:27:10,610 So that's the data that I'm going to talk to today. 258 00:27:11,660 --> 00:27:16,070 What is the problem with urban combat? Well, let me get through this. 259 00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:25,270 Combat in the rural area is, although terrifying and difficult, is essentially simple. 260 00:27:25,990 --> 00:27:32,799 It involves effectively small groups. And I'm going to actually talk to no higher group in the sectional squad. 261 00:27:32,800 --> 00:27:42,670 I have about ten soldiers in the case of a sexual squad in rural operations, it's essentially a task to clear a trench or to trench. 262 00:27:42,670 --> 00:27:46,330 They've got two objectives and they manoeuvre with fire. 263 00:27:46,420 --> 00:27:51,370 So they move and fire in order to cover each other, to clear those those trenches. 264 00:27:52,540 --> 00:27:59,710 Throughout those processes, they are able to maintain their attack formation, that combat formation. 265 00:27:59,920 --> 00:28:08,490 In other words, in rural environment, infantry tactics, although an execution is liable to breakdown and collapse, is essentially simple. 266 00:28:08,500 --> 00:28:18,490 It's one or two threats executed in established combat attack formation, and therefore the fundamentals of it are simple in the urban environment. 267 00:28:18,700 --> 00:28:24,930 All of those simplicities are eliminated. Two critical things occur in the urban environment. 268 00:28:24,940 --> 00:28:33,909 This is another image of soldiers who and this is a disastrous attack, a trainee attack executed by a French company that went horribly wrong, 269 00:28:33,910 --> 00:28:38,620 indicating that one might say what occurs once troops get into buildings. 270 00:28:38,830 --> 00:28:48,540 Two things happen. First of all, destruction of building breaks are also formations and introduces a turbulence of the roads that people don't. 271 00:28:48,560 --> 00:28:56,500 Because as you move down a corridor, you might move down in original combat formation, but people have to go off inside groups to clear SGT. 272 00:28:56,680 --> 00:29:03,159 And so by bit by almost immediately on entering the building, the actual order of who's who's where, 273 00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:07,120 the spark in an order of a squad as they enter has changed around. 274 00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:17,920 And the the the, the initial combat from the initial formation has been utterly reformed and will be continuing reformed throughout the building. 275 00:29:18,220 --> 00:29:28,629 The second point is this the number of threats is multiplied by a very significant number instead of simply one enemy trench or two. 276 00:29:28,630 --> 00:29:35,020 And in trenches, there are multiple threats as one moves down, as troops move down a corridor, an urban environment. 277 00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:39,429 There are multiple threats in front of doors, left and right, stairwells, 278 00:29:39,430 --> 00:29:44,500 holes in the ground, potentially IEDs, civilians, insurgents, suicide bombers. 279 00:29:45,010 --> 00:29:51,010 The the moment there's a multiplication of threats and therefore, urban combat. 280 00:29:51,010 --> 00:29:54,190 And this is where close quarters battle has been developed. 281 00:29:54,430 --> 00:29:58,480 Urban combat requires a very specific and. 282 00:29:59,960 --> 00:30:06,380 Not totally novel, but a skill so accentuated and magnified in the urban environment. 283 00:30:06,380 --> 00:30:13,580 It might as well be a novel skill. Soldiers in the urban environment on entering buildings when seeking to clear buildings, 284 00:30:13,760 --> 00:30:20,450 need to identify the risks that they face, and they need to identify the risks or threats the face on each room that they enter. 285 00:30:20,690 --> 00:30:24,810 They need to prioritise those threats. Which ones are the most dangerous? 286 00:30:24,830 --> 00:30:29,270 In other words, which threat is likely to kill them or their fellow soldiers most quickly? 287 00:30:29,540 --> 00:30:34,550 And they need to assign team members to the neutralisation of each of those threats. 288 00:30:34,730 --> 00:30:40,910 Sometimes threats are things like furniture that might conceal weaponry, quite benign threats. 289 00:30:41,030 --> 00:30:44,149 But sometimes, of course, obviously rooms will contain insurgents, 290 00:30:44,150 --> 00:30:48,740 sometimes barricaded into into the rooms or in Fallujah, not only barricaded into rooms, 291 00:30:48,860 --> 00:30:57,379 but also high on various forms of drugs, which may make the maid actually stopping them for fighting a very, 292 00:30:57,380 --> 00:31:00,650 very difficult fight and very violent, very serious wounds. 293 00:31:00,710 --> 00:31:05,420 So you get three problems. Identification of threat. 294 00:31:06,780 --> 00:31:16,169 Prioritisation of threat and identification, assignment of the Neutralisation threat, the team members and military militaries, western militaries. 295 00:31:16,170 --> 00:31:21,210 They have a have words for understanding this problem in descriptions they call. 296 00:31:21,450 --> 00:31:29,750 They call it the requirement to break things down. Break things down is the ethnographic word they use to mean the identification. 297 00:31:29,770 --> 00:31:33,690 Multiple, multiple risk prioritisation and assignment. 298 00:31:34,290 --> 00:31:40,530 Now, how does this this this this neutralisation of multiple threats work in practice? 299 00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:45,180 Well, what if it actually used to happen in urban combat? 300 00:31:45,660 --> 00:31:48,479 At the squad level, this is right through from Stalingrad, 301 00:31:48,480 --> 00:31:58,260 right up into the into the Iraq assault in 2003 and into Fallujah in 2004 is effectively the lowest level infiltration entry building 302 00:31:58,410 --> 00:32:04,590 that threw a grenade into any room they thought there was someone in and they would charge into that room firing machine gun, 303 00:32:05,010 --> 00:32:10,800 machine gun or automatic rifle fire into that group room as this as this is evidence of. 304 00:32:11,130 --> 00:32:16,770 Now, this this is pretty plausible, especially not very well trained soldiers, a pretty plausible technique. 305 00:32:16,770 --> 00:32:23,850 It certainly is a technique that one can think has certain beneficial moral effects of throwing grenades and firing weapons at large numbers. 306 00:32:24,090 --> 00:32:25,629 There are problems, obviously, 307 00:32:25,630 --> 00:32:33,150 to the problem of collateral damage which and killing of civilians of instances which has actually happened when these techniques are used. 308 00:32:33,390 --> 00:32:39,390 But more surprisingly, is that the spraying of machine gun fire is not a very effective way of clearing a room. 309 00:32:39,390 --> 00:32:47,970 I give you the example of that. You would delay it. You're actually going to stall in on an action, a house clearance in Fallujah, November 2004. 310 00:32:48,240 --> 00:32:56,490 Before the first time you went into that house, you go into the first room and he was armed with a, well, minimal machine gun. 311 00:32:56,490 --> 00:33:00,330 Was a belt fed handheld machine, a kind of launching gun. 312 00:33:00,450 --> 00:33:03,480 The belt has 500 rounds on it and his belt was full. 313 00:33:03,660 --> 00:33:09,480 He went into this room in which there was insurgent insurgents barricaded behind a sandbag. 314 00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:12,360 And he pressed the trigger on this machine gun. 315 00:33:12,570 --> 00:33:18,330 And the military the military people here will confirm pressing the trigger on a machine gun and let it fall right through the hole. 316 00:33:18,330 --> 00:33:23,490 Belt is called going cyclical. He went slightly for five, 500 rounds into this room. 317 00:33:23,910 --> 00:33:29,340 He didn't hit anybody. He subsequently killed all the insurgents building when they went upstairs and killed nobody. 318 00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:36,540 So that the use of the spray technique is is not only extremely dangerous and undesirable in a mixed environment, 319 00:33:36,540 --> 00:33:40,170 whether civilians, insurgents, but actually is highly ineffective. 320 00:33:40,350 --> 00:33:52,470 And one of the key elements of CQ being as it was developed in the 1970s, as it's disseminated out to regular forces from 2004 in particular, 321 00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:56,969 has been the emphasis on precision shooting within the urban environment, 322 00:33:56,970 --> 00:34:03,330 within buildings as you enter and clear them and enormous amounts of time spent and this is one of them 323 00:34:03,330 --> 00:34:08,310 is that this is real Marines training down on death and actually on a day pretty much like today, 324 00:34:08,670 --> 00:34:17,430 two years ago, and they spent enormous amounts of time engaged in precision shooting at extremely close range, 325 00:34:17,760 --> 00:34:22,980 their 50 metre mark here, they never far from moving 25 metres away. 326 00:34:23,070 --> 00:34:32,129 They practice firing accurately from 25 metres down with rifles and here with pistols transitioning to pistols, 327 00:34:32,130 --> 00:34:34,590 his Canadians doing exactly the same thing. 328 00:34:34,740 --> 00:34:43,140 Now, one of the curious things about about contemporary shooting is that, you know, we might think, oh, shootings, a manual. 329 00:34:43,530 --> 00:34:46,890 You know, we pull triggers with our fingers and we hold weapons in the hand. 330 00:34:47,130 --> 00:34:50,640 And therefore, it's all about what you do with your arms and hands and arms. 331 00:34:51,090 --> 00:34:58,830 And they're not irrelevant in any way. But in fact, one of the key things that occurs in TV courses is training foot placement. 332 00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:07,410 But foot placement becomes absolutely critical in the ability to perform precisely both because stable foot provides, 333 00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:16,169 you know, sound basis for rocket fire. But also the techniques that are used are in terms of foot placement, do two things. 334 00:35:16,170 --> 00:35:23,969 One, and this is a pivot. The interest rates, this is a major pivoting is to the two things that are required. 335 00:35:23,970 --> 00:35:33,750 In the beginning, combat formations become very, very concertina because they're working in small rooms and corridors and therefore, 336 00:35:34,140 --> 00:35:37,410 foot placement is critical in terms of make sure people don't shoot each other. 337 00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:43,620 And these methods of pivoting are designed to stop people, pull it, putting a barrel against someone else's back and shoot them in the back. 338 00:35:43,780 --> 00:35:46,520 They they keep a barrel out of the way. 339 00:35:46,560 --> 00:35:56,459 There's more critical importance to the foot placement and the emphasis that is placed on foot placement throughout the throughout curve urban combat. 340 00:35:56,460 --> 00:36:00,140 Let me say this is work to make it work is highly likely not to work. 341 00:36:00,540 --> 00:36:04,800 This is just just watch. This is a video of the same Marines training down stop range. 342 00:36:13,820 --> 00:36:27,379 I just run through once more. Now, the interesting thing, although it is interesting, that is what the soldiers do. 343 00:36:27,380 --> 00:36:31,010 You'll note after they follow the weapon, they do this really odd thing. 344 00:36:31,100 --> 00:36:36,020 They got this an ice sheet. When I was watching the train, I couldn't find what was going on. 345 00:36:36,050 --> 00:36:41,810 I could understand what on earth they would do, why they would use with bulb every time off they thought. 346 00:36:42,020 --> 00:36:49,730 Well, this became apparent once they moved from the live firing on the range to tactical collective movements in the combat. 347 00:36:49,850 --> 00:36:50,870 Come on to this. And second. 348 00:36:52,570 --> 00:37:01,250 One of the crazy things in the urban environment, which is central to CTP and essential to precision fire, is the use of angles and arcs. 349 00:37:01,660 --> 00:37:08,200 Effectively, all buildings consist simply of a series of angles that consist of a series of corners, two opposing corners. 350 00:37:08,500 --> 00:37:13,690 And these and in theory, building the it is the factory, the force, 351 00:37:13,690 --> 00:37:18,560 the troops would use the angles the most effectively that would be most successful one. 352 00:37:18,730 --> 00:37:22,750 And let's just think about what corners and two opposing angles doing the things 353 00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:27,400 they offer you cover so that they can protect you from the fire of your enemy. 354 00:37:27,550 --> 00:37:34,000 But of course, they're also extremely dangerous because if you move around a corner, you expose yourself to fire and you can't see. 355 00:37:34,210 --> 00:37:42,250 So the moment to move around a corner is the most dangerous element in urban combat and warfare training in foot placement, 356 00:37:42,250 --> 00:37:50,260 in the sensitisation foot place, which goes on in these urban training courses, both in America, in Canada, in France and in Britain. 357 00:37:50,830 --> 00:37:57,879 What they seek to do is to sensitise the soldier to the importance of blowing themselves off with corners 358 00:37:57,880 --> 00:38:03,570 in order to maximise the chances or maximise their bodies to see around the corner while under cover. 359 00:38:03,700 --> 00:38:10,690 And the rocking movement is a rock, and we can imitate the eye soldiers line, a torch line that puts up with a corner. 360 00:38:10,900 --> 00:38:14,680 They're trying to look round and they walk around with their weapon showing. 361 00:38:14,830 --> 00:38:22,060 In other words, they try and maximise the cover, but also maximise the arm at which they can engage targets. 362 00:38:22,270 --> 00:38:27,730 And so since the entire you could say, and indeed I've heard directly staff say this, 363 00:38:27,940 --> 00:38:35,050 the entire principle of internal room flares is all about arcs and Engels pathology with tactics. 364 00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:37,090 And so it's all about angles. 365 00:38:37,450 --> 00:38:45,520 If you look at the back of a Baghdad assault in which an Osama bin Laden was assassinated, note where all the firing took place, 366 00:38:45,760 --> 00:38:51,790 all the all the six individuals who were killed in that assault were killed on all angles 367 00:38:51,790 --> 00:38:56,439 that the Special Forces troops hit behind angles and fired at the targets from angles. 368 00:38:56,440 --> 00:38:59,710 And Osama bin Laden was killed as he crossed his room. 369 00:38:59,800 --> 00:39:07,420 So we looked at his bedroom and the Special Forces soldier stood on the stairwell in cover and shot him from that. 370 00:39:07,430 --> 00:39:08,020 From that point, 371 00:39:08,020 --> 00:39:16,659 if you look at the it looked look at that whole assault all shot for the shots were all made from these from these using arcs and angles. 372 00:39:16,660 --> 00:39:20,000 And we can see regular troops doing the doing the same thing you look. 373 00:39:25,870 --> 00:39:31,330 But I think just very quickly about China, I'm going to go into collective fuels so that we stop one. 374 00:39:33,310 --> 00:39:36,490 CTV recall position for it is an acquired skill. 375 00:39:36,790 --> 00:39:43,180 Therefore, the form of training has changed in the past, and I'm sure those who had some military training remedies, 376 00:39:43,570 --> 00:39:50,980 bad shooting, inaccurate shooting was seen as moral failing to be improved by physical exercise. 377 00:39:51,340 --> 00:39:56,020 Normally push ups or running up hills or through mud or some unpleasant form of activity. 378 00:39:56,410 --> 00:40:03,610 What you find in the temporary post-war battle training is a professionalisation of the pedagogy of shooting 379 00:40:03,610 --> 00:40:11,710 and is an emphasis on the acquisition of a skill and therefore a careful and progressive training. 380 00:40:12,040 --> 00:40:13,570 Now, I'm not going to talk more about that. 381 00:40:13,780 --> 00:40:23,169 One of the interesting dimensions of this training is that it has begun not only to emphasise the physical dimension 382 00:40:23,170 --> 00:40:30,970 of military performance and the attempt to inculcate muscle memory into the body of the contemporary soldier. 383 00:40:31,210 --> 00:40:42,700 But actually there is a systematic attempt to colonise the mind, the psyche, the emotional states of contemporary urban soldiers, 384 00:40:42,850 --> 00:40:51,880 and all the CPB courses which currently run within American, North America and Western Europe, 385 00:40:52,060 --> 00:40:57,250 have a dimension of psychological training and psychological preparation. 386 00:40:57,710 --> 00:41:00,030 And one of the one of the interesting ones here, I mean, they're all interesting. 387 00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:11,769 But the Canadian Army developed this technique of resilience where they teach all their soldiers these mental techniques for calming themselves, 388 00:41:11,770 --> 00:41:19,719 for steadying themselves in combat, actually, every kind of divine derived deliberately and explicitly from sports science, 389 00:41:19,720 --> 00:41:24,430 that there are various things that mental visualisation and arousal reductions, 390 00:41:24,430 --> 00:41:30,550 breathing through deep breathing to breathe deeply, to stop yourself being being scared and shaking. 391 00:41:31,270 --> 00:41:39,100 But within this program, the Canadians are given they give this video to every single soldier they tried to collective video, 392 00:41:39,310 --> 00:41:44,560 and they have quite detailed discussion of the human, the development, the evolutionary development of human mind. 393 00:41:44,800 --> 00:41:50,470 And then eventually what they're trying to argue is that art would probably say this absolute nonsense. 394 00:41:50,650 --> 00:41:55,750 It's not my nonsense is all it is. Is that the human mind? 395 00:41:56,380 --> 00:41:59,709 The most fundamental part is a sort of all the amygdala, 396 00:41:59,710 --> 00:42:09,280 which is the sort of armed thing right in the centre of our brain where our flight and fight response is our most fundamental biological responses, 397 00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:13,089 all apparently contained in this amygdala. 398 00:42:13,090 --> 00:42:16,540 And that's where those fundamental responses occur. 399 00:42:17,470 --> 00:42:24,490 And eventually, what they're taught to try to do is to control those basic instincts which have 400 00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:31,659 been lodged in the amygdala by the use of frontal frontal lobes and the cortex, 401 00:42:31,660 --> 00:42:34,720 and they use visualisation, breathing in order to do so. 402 00:42:35,200 --> 00:42:40,420 This psychology might be nonsense, and it may indeed, and it seems to have some individual effect. 403 00:42:40,480 --> 00:42:50,620 But let us note the collective effect. The collective effect is that the internal workings of a soldier's mind, their emotional state, 404 00:42:50,620 --> 00:42:56,890 their attitudinal state, becomes the possession of the squad and the platoon of which they are part. 405 00:42:57,040 --> 00:43:02,199 That actually the psychological training publicises the most personal and 406 00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:08,349 emotional elements of a soldier and makes it accountable to his colleagues in the 407 00:43:08,350 --> 00:43:16,000 urban environment with an explicit purpose of enforcing and encouraging good 408 00:43:16,180 --> 00:43:21,969 soldierly performance in this highly complicated and difficult urban environment. 409 00:43:21,970 --> 00:43:27,190 And just a problem here. One of the worries about the Canadians is the resilience. 410 00:43:27,190 --> 00:43:36,100 Development was partly a way of overcoming the problem of post-traumatic stress disorder and the risks thereof and various Canadian soldiers that are. 411 00:43:36,610 --> 00:43:40,960 The problem is with this training. Once someone's had it, if they then collapse. 412 00:43:41,950 --> 00:43:48,760 They are morally responsible for themselves. They have not properly internalised these psychological techniques. 413 00:43:49,000 --> 00:43:55,630 And that seems to me very interesting evidence that although perhaps in our own Ridgway unacknowledged way, 414 00:43:56,020 --> 00:44:01,800 the armed forces are actually aware of what this psychological processing is trying to do. 415 00:44:01,810 --> 00:44:08,830 It is publicised and it is mainly accountable. Even your internal state as a close quarter battle operative, 416 00:44:09,310 --> 00:44:14,400 one section of the talk and then imperative section talk and then all come to a conclusion on. 417 00:44:16,120 --> 00:44:20,200 We talked about individual techniques of shooting foot put position. 418 00:44:20,500 --> 00:44:25,220 But of course, soldiers don't work alone in the urban environment. 419 00:44:25,240 --> 00:44:29,580 They work in what is called stacks. This is that it's not a technical term. 420 00:44:29,590 --> 00:44:35,140 It's just a row of people who are going to enter a building and enter a room together as a team. 421 00:44:35,340 --> 00:44:39,520 Stacked normally consist of between three and eight people. 422 00:44:39,670 --> 00:44:45,309 Ideal number normally about four. And that on the stack operates as a as it is a team. 423 00:44:45,310 --> 00:44:51,970 And indeed the ideal in close quarters battle is that the staff will operate as effectively 424 00:44:52,180 --> 00:44:57,819 to slightly manipulate the language as a single weapon system that there are for people, 425 00:44:57,820 --> 00:45:05,470 for rifles. There is a kind of hedgehog which operates completely in a coordinated manner. 426 00:45:05,710 --> 00:45:16,810 So the question is how do you get a team of four a stack to work together in the urban environment in order to identify. 427 00:45:18,260 --> 00:45:21,830 Prioritise and neutralise the multiple threats they face. 428 00:45:21,860 --> 00:45:24,890 Well, the key method is drills. Why drills? 429 00:45:25,190 --> 00:45:34,060 Because in combat environment and especially in urban combat environment, teams do not have time to discuss and coordinate their actions, 430 00:45:34,090 --> 00:45:38,870 deliberate upon their actions as they encounter as they go into buildings. 431 00:45:38,870 --> 00:45:46,249 In terms of encounter ended their responses, their collective responses must already be effectively internalised. 432 00:45:46,250 --> 00:45:54,140 There must be a set of algorithms that are effectively that they respond to the team on command of particular individuals within the team. 433 00:45:54,350 --> 00:46:00,050 And the stacks are taught a series of drills which are intended to maximise 434 00:46:00,200 --> 00:46:04,270 their chance of success and minimise the casualties within the urban event. 435 00:46:04,280 --> 00:46:12,980 This is an image of this. This is actually on the gantry in the compound, looking down on a stack as it goes into practice room clearance. 436 00:46:13,130 --> 00:46:22,100 And one of the key techniques of of rampage, of course, is getting into the room in order to clear a room, you probably go to get into it. 437 00:46:22,250 --> 00:46:28,370 And normally you've got to get into it through the door. I mean, in the past, people said, oh, we blow a hole in the wall. 438 00:46:28,370 --> 00:46:33,769 But what the American Marines, the US Marines noticed in Fallujah is that you're clearing thousands of buildings. 439 00:46:33,770 --> 00:46:39,830 They haven't got that many charges to blow holes. So a certain point troops just had to go through the door. 440 00:46:39,860 --> 00:46:44,689 There was no other way into rooms. The idea of blowing holes and surprise you going to be did not exist. 441 00:46:44,690 --> 00:46:47,419 You had to go through the room, through the door, into the room. 442 00:46:47,420 --> 00:46:55,129 So the question was then the question is how do you minimise the risk to yourself and the established technique? 443 00:46:55,130 --> 00:47:04,370 And you'll see this right across Western forces. It's a certain five step entry that the team will stack up and they will clear in five stages 444 00:47:04,370 --> 00:47:09,770 areas into the into the room until they're stood in what is called the dominant position. 445 00:47:09,950 --> 00:47:12,320 All four of them are lined on the back wall, 446 00:47:12,470 --> 00:47:18,500 pointing their weapons and covering the entire area and potentially shooting engaging targets if they need to. 447 00:47:18,710 --> 00:47:27,140 And this is what step entry looks like. So the first two individuals go in and slightly counter-intuitively, they don't go straight into the room. 448 00:47:27,350 --> 00:47:30,319 They actually go sideways and clear the corners first. 449 00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:34,460 Because, of course, you walk into the room, the chances are most likely for insurgent hides in the corner. 450 00:47:34,580 --> 00:47:41,450 He shoots you from behind if she shoots you from behind. So the first two people actually split and go sideways. 451 00:47:42,130 --> 00:47:44,150 The third person comes in from the middle, 452 00:47:44,660 --> 00:47:55,130 fourth person comes in and they form what's called a on the initial baseline on the in the dominant position, all covering the entire room there. 453 00:47:55,280 --> 00:48:02,150 And I have examples of troops actually doing this in, in, in the operating environment in, in Afghanistan. 454 00:48:02,300 --> 00:48:07,040 And the key point here is to stay away from the door. The door is to try to funnel. 455 00:48:07,730 --> 00:48:09,950 Why is it dangerous? Two reasons. 456 00:48:09,950 --> 00:48:16,099 One, anyone defending a room, if someone is going to burst in this room and we were all armed and feeling fairly aggressive, 457 00:48:16,100 --> 00:48:19,370 we were, of course, pointing the weapon at that door and wait till it came in 24. 458 00:48:19,610 --> 00:48:21,280 So the door is always the most dangerous point. 459 00:48:21,290 --> 00:48:26,270 The other thing is that you walk through a door, you silhouetted always you're silhouetted by the light behind. 460 00:48:26,450 --> 00:48:33,710 So it's a very dangerous area. So the troops are taught to clear away from the door and stand away from this fatal funnel. 461 00:48:37,660 --> 00:48:44,380 We can talk about this in questions. The drills get more complicated as the rooms get more complicated. 462 00:48:44,500 --> 00:48:51,090 And what's interesting watching people training is that the five step injuries really I mean, we could we could do faster entry. 463 00:48:51,100 --> 00:48:55,120 We could do for 10 minutes, and we wouldn't be able to do it really easily if we wanted to. 464 00:48:55,150 --> 00:48:56,530 Not that we wanted, but we could do it. 465 00:48:56,770 --> 00:49:03,040 But it's the rules get more complicated with different rooms and alcoves, doors, open cupboards, various things. 466 00:49:03,340 --> 00:49:06,190 The drills get more complicated and they get more numerous. 467 00:49:06,460 --> 00:49:13,630 And essentially, what an effective CQ be infantry squad does is to develop a kind of algorithm of algorithm, 468 00:49:13,630 --> 00:49:21,190 encyclopaedia of drills, which are called upon in the light of the immediate situation which they confront. 469 00:49:21,310 --> 00:49:25,090 And they'll have drills for left hand corners, right hand corners to shake corners, 470 00:49:25,240 --> 00:49:30,520 L-shaped rooms, square rooms, oblong rooms, rooms with multiple threats in. 471 00:49:31,000 --> 00:49:35,680 And if one of the drills for this is this back to back drills so that what a well-trained 472 00:49:36,070 --> 00:49:44,140 CVB team develops and so is this cyclic repertoire of 12 drills cued on command. 473 00:49:46,180 --> 00:49:49,090 Very fine point, and then I'll go to the conclusion. 474 00:49:50,800 --> 00:50:01,900 One of the problems, even if and notwithstanding the inculcation of a set of collective drills for all manner of possible threat, 475 00:50:01,900 --> 00:50:06,610 all manner of possible building, of shape, of room, of size, of room, etc. 476 00:50:07,090 --> 00:50:10,600 There's still the still significant difficulties in seeking B. 477 00:50:10,960 --> 00:50:16,480 First of all, even if it's a standard drill that has to be executed, someone has to call it someone has to command. 478 00:50:16,600 --> 00:50:22,420 Right. For step entry. Go in. We got. You get examples of of command structures such as that. 479 00:50:22,600 --> 00:50:30,650 So someone has to call that command. Secondly, sometimes drills have to be adapted because the environment is totally unique. 480 00:50:30,670 --> 00:50:37,450 There's a strange, you know, a form of rogue or a form of threat that has not been encountered before. 481 00:50:37,930 --> 00:50:41,680 But even if it's quite simple, drill, someone's got to call it. 482 00:50:41,890 --> 00:50:46,870 And here's the problem that goes back to round turbulence in traditional infantry tactics. 483 00:50:46,960 --> 00:50:51,610 If you go a section, the corporal or the fire team leader calls the manoeuvre. 484 00:50:51,910 --> 00:50:56,979 But of course, in the urban environment, nobody knows who's going to be in the command position. 485 00:50:56,980 --> 00:51:02,650 Is Stack the command position in the British and US stock is a two man he commands and is a he. 486 00:51:02,770 --> 00:51:07,360 In those examples he commands the drill and it could be anyone. 487 00:51:07,600 --> 00:51:16,180 So what you find with sheet B teams is not just adequate for people to have various bits of, you know, do archipelagos, especially for them. 488 00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:27,580 Everybody needs to be in possession of the encyclopaedia and to be able to enact every single form of action in every every point in the stack. 489 00:51:27,580 --> 00:51:32,889 And what it suggest is the emergence of this I to initiative based tactics. 490 00:51:32,890 --> 00:51:42,760 What it what it pressurised what it sort of engendered is a intensification of this specialised sort of dissemination intensification of 491 00:51:42,760 --> 00:51:51,760 the specialised knowledge across the entire assaulting everybody in the assault team needs to be up to a very significant level of skill. 492 00:51:52,660 --> 00:52:01,750 One point this goes back to the moving point. Why do seeking B operators all try and fulfil the same movement template? 493 00:52:02,290 --> 00:52:07,839 Because the movement of the body cues reactions from the rest of the squad. 494 00:52:07,840 --> 00:52:15,220 And if individuals begin to develop their own individual brilliant samurai techniques, people won't know what to do in following them. 495 00:52:15,430 --> 00:52:23,110 So it's very important that everybody works on this, you know, works their body on the same template and takes the same, 496 00:52:23,110 --> 00:52:31,149 the same very odd body shape that you see with CGP trained soldiers so that as they go into a room, the second, 497 00:52:31,150 --> 00:52:38,390 third and fourth man can just read what they need to do from the body shape that the individual adopts. 498 00:52:38,980 --> 00:52:44,260 For the point, this is my absolute conclusion that the developed could keep tactics. 499 00:52:44,260 --> 00:52:52,419 Its dissemination out to regular troops in nature in Western countries seems to represent a 500 00:52:52,420 --> 00:52:58,600 professionalisation of the armed forces in the manner that Huntington would describe it, 501 00:52:58,630 --> 00:53:05,110 notwithstanding the fact that he didn't think professionalisation was relevant for tactical level 502 00:53:05,110 --> 00:53:11,319 operatives and the soldiers themselves think that there has been an improvement of technique. 503 00:53:11,320 --> 00:53:19,870 And Marines I've spoken to compare the performance of Marine commandos for now for Peninsula when they arrived Iraq in 2003, 504 00:53:19,870 --> 00:53:29,350 in which there were numerous self-inflicted cock ups and indeed very serious injuries inflicted by force urban tactics at that particular point, 505 00:53:29,560 --> 00:53:39,520 with the contemporary Royal Marine trained in urban combat, does this mean we're talking about mere professionalised amelioration of progress? 506 00:53:39,850 --> 00:53:47,460 Hmm. Foreign point. It is very useful to remember Max Weber's point about professionalisation. 507 00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:54,240 It is not just about skill. It is not just about the development of new forms of expertise. 508 00:53:54,270 --> 00:53:58,970 It is about monopolisation. Professionals are critical status groups that, 509 00:53:58,980 --> 00:54:05,549 to paraphrase labour monopolise ideal and material opportunities and indeed the 510 00:54:05,550 --> 00:54:11,520 skills they profess to have are a key way of monopolising those opportunities. 511 00:54:11,760 --> 00:54:17,010 Now, what it's suggested to CTV certainly seems to be a development of skill at some level. 512 00:54:17,310 --> 00:54:25,380 But it is is it an optimal development? Well, it's hugely costly in terms of the investment of training resources. 513 00:54:25,620 --> 00:54:31,420 And we have no idea whether that that investment is sensible into in and of itself. 514 00:54:31,440 --> 00:54:34,770 We have no idea whether it's optimal in terms of the output that you get. 515 00:54:35,460 --> 00:54:40,830 It is predicated on the belief that militaries will be fighting in urban areas in the future, 516 00:54:41,220 --> 00:54:45,540 despite the increase in road noise, the human population living in urban areas. 517 00:54:45,810 --> 00:54:53,220 There is no in anyway no definite, definite deduction to be drawn that the next campaign will be in an urban environment. 518 00:54:53,340 --> 00:54:57,960 The Canadians worried about fighting off in the Arctic. There's not that many cities out there. 519 00:54:58,170 --> 00:55:04,980 So with the development and the investment in CTP minimally have to say it's under development. 520 00:55:05,400 --> 00:55:11,040 And then we come to the question, well, if it's undetermined by the strategic and operational environment, 521 00:55:11,490 --> 00:55:14,970 why have Western forces been so attracted to it? 522 00:55:15,000 --> 00:55:23,400 Why is it got such an allure? And here I just this that CPB tactics haven't moved because they've been the preserve of special forces. 523 00:55:23,460 --> 00:55:25,680 They are high status tactics. 524 00:55:25,950 --> 00:55:36,239 And therefore, Western conventional forces have been when they had very keen to embrace these kind of tactics, not ironically, 525 00:55:36,240 --> 00:55:44,520 primarily to defend themselves against strategic threats to future bombs, to defend themselves against financial budget shootouts. 526 00:55:44,670 --> 00:55:46,290 Now, thanks very much.