Amid the challenges inherent to urban warfare, militaries can no longer just focus on eliminating the enemy, according to a new paper published by the Association of the U.S. Army.

“Today, militaries representing civilized countries have an obligation to reduce war’s costs in civilian lives and damage to infrastructure to the extent that such limitation is feasible,” write retired Lt. Col. Louis DiMarco and Russell Glenn. “That these two imperatives are inescapably in tension does not negate the necessity of dual pursuit.”  

In “A Professor and a Soldier Walk into a Room: New Perspectives on Future Urban Conflict,” DiMarco and Glenn grapple with the responsibilities and challenges of waging war in an urban environment.

“Current and emerging technologies, understanding of past contingencies and innovative approaches could make future urban combat more efficient and less punishing for warriors and innocents alike,” they write. “With the right approach, tomorrow’s urban struggles can be less costly in terms of human life and physical destruction.”

A former U.S. Army officer, Glenn is a think tank analyst and faculty member with Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. DiMarco served in the Army for over 24 years as an armored cavalry officer and has written several publications on urban warfare.

More than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and over two-thirds are expected to live in urban areas by 2050, according to a 2018 United Nations report.

Urban warfare brings a set of unique challenges, including fighting across a battlefield without well-defined lines, more locations to conceal enemy combatants, below-ground structures, and difficulty with communications and navigation equipment, Glenn and DiMarco write.

Though urban warfare is inherently complicated, technology can help to facilitate waging war “with recovery in mind" through methods like pre-chambering, which “involves designing bridges, road surfaces or other infrastructure to facilitate the placement of explosives that, when detonated, block passage by an adversary,” and employing mines that become inert after a period of time, which spare civilians and reduce spending on demining.

Emerging and future technology, like drones, will continue to make an impact on urban warfare as well, they write. “The 2020s have brought unmanned aerial vehicles into the limelight,” Glenn and DiMarco write. “Emerging unmanned semi-autonomous and fully autonomous systems have the potential to dramatically decrease casualties among military forces. They also have the potential, if adequately designed with civilian population and infrastructure considerations in mind, to be much better at reducing wartime suffering more generally.”

How militaries leverage technology to balance the need to destroy the enemy while minimizing damage to civilians and infrastructure will be “one of the coming decades’ premier security challenges,” Glenn and DiMarco write.

Read the full paper here.