This book explores military operations, including indirect support to other interagency actors and functions in dense urban terrain and megacities. A definition of Dense urban terrain can be described as urban areas with high population densities that, in the developing world, that often outstrip the capacity of local governance systems to exert formal control. The term megacity describes a city with a population of 10 million or more. These environments define patterns of human settlement. In 1950, only 30 percent of the world’s population lived in cities compared to more than 55 percent in 2018. Much of this growth is concentrated in large, urban centers that connect a global flow of goods and ideas. By 2030, there will be more than 40 of these "megacities.”
List of Illustrations ix
Foreword xi
Introduction 3
CHAPTER ONE 11
Third World Megacities: An Illusion of Control
CHAPTER TWO 52
Territorialization of the Megacity: Exploiting Social Borders
CHAPTER THREE 75
The 2008 Battle of Sadr City: Implications for Future Urban Combat
CHAPTER FOUR 93
ISIL’s Territorial Logic of Urban Control in Mosul and ar-Raqqah: City as a System Analytical Framework
CHAPTER FIVE 111
Distributed Influence: Enabling Maneuver in a Megacity
CHAPTER SIX 140
Coordinating Chaos: Integrating Capabilities in Future Urban Conflict
CHAPTER SEVEN 156
Joint Combined Arms Maneuver in the Megacity: Learning to Thrive in Chaos
CHAPTER EIGHT 181
Cyberspace in the Megacity: Thickening the Fog of War?
CHAPTER NINE 212
Take It, Don’t Break It: A Megacity Concept of Operations
CHAPTER TEN 234
Symbiotic Warfare: Resource Competition and Conflict
CHAPTER ELEVEN 263
Air Domain Dominance in a Megacity
CHAPTER TWELVE 291
Virtual Resistance Networks: Enabling and Protecting Electronic Information Flows in the Megacity
CONTENTS vii
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 311
The City Prism: A Triangle of Urban Military Operations
CONCLUSION The Military Implications of Complex Terrain 344
Appendix: The World’s Largest Megacities 361
Glossary of Select Terms, Abbreviations, and Acronyms 367
Index 371
Military leaders, political scientists, urban planners, social scientists
Product Details
- Jenson, Benjamin M.
- Urban Operations
- Cities
- Megacities
