The Army mission literally from their own website says it's about defeating enemy ground forces

and indefinitely seizing and controlling those things and adversary prizes most.

Its land, its resources, and its population.

What about that statement does not lead you to urban combat?

We start, you know, in our training environments and we fight in them,

and we might have an urban day or two.

If I were going to be keen for day, I would make a 14-day combat training center rotation where you are living in the city, you know, continuous operations.

Hey, welcome back to the Modern War Institute podcast.

I'm John Amble, editorial director at MWI.

And for this episode, I am thrilled to feature a conversation with one of our own, MWI's chair of Urban Warfare Studies, John Spencer.

John has been a part of MWI since the organization was launched, and he has really established himself as a leading expert on the subject of urban warfare.

So I asked him to come on the podcast for kind of a wide-ranging discussion on the topic.

Why are cities so challenging for military forces? What concrete steps can be taken to achieve a

higher level of preparedness for those challenges? Is it even possible to replicate city's

complexity in a training environment? John explores these and other questions in a conversation

that is packed with insights.

Before we get to it, a couple quick notes.

First, if you find this subject interesting, I would highly encourage you to check out a separate podcast that John produces and hosts for MWI.

It's called the Urban Warfare Project podcast.

We've released more than 20 episodes already, and in each one, John and a guest really drill down into a particular aspect of urban warfare. You can find it wherever you get your podcast. And lastly,

as always, what you're about to hear are the views of the participants and don't represent

the position of West Point, the Army, or any other agency of the U.S. government. All right, enjoy the

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