Modern warfare

Urban combat promises future comms snags

Military leaders have asserted that future wars will likely be fought in mega cities, cities with more than 10 million people.

“It’s highly probable that the military forces armed conflict will occur in highly dense urban complex terrain, physical terrain,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, said in May, adding that today there are 10 to 15 of these cities, while in 2050 there might be over 50.

Noting that his service is not optimized to fight in these environments – a realization shared across the branches – he explained the Army must change. Urban environments pose several unique warfighting challenges to the military, one in particular is communication.

For one, the variety of sensors and communications equipment needed to navigate the large, concrete buildings that comprise cities eat up bandwidth. While the military – and even commercial industry – are looking at employing swarm technology with small unmanned aerial systems, interference and propagation issues can cause major command and control problems, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Kawada, who works electronic warfare, offensive cyber and information operations with headquarters Marine Corps, said during a panel at the annual MilCom conference in Baltimore on Oct. 23.