Psychology of Urban Warfare (Invading Gaza, Ukraine)

FEATURES OF URBAN WARFARE

The more you destroy, the more concrete defenses you provide, rubble is optimal, booby traps

Small units

Killing zones and ambushes

Hidden enemy, constant guessing, surprises, shocks

Hand to hand combat

Underground, on the ground, from top of buildings (three-dimensional death envelope)

Grind, no clear end or horizon, feels like it could last forever: from shaping operations to actually urban warfare (invasion)

Advantages to defender: bloody, slow, complex (great equalizer)

Civilian collateral damage inevitable: attackers are bad guys

Need to besiege defenders in pockets (siege mentality, static trench warfare)

No prisoners, kill everyone in sight

Night operations (superiority of night vision technologies)

Assets (drones, robots): mechanical, impersonal airborne or land warfare (to clear rooms, for example), blowing up building in contested urban warfare – war as a video game

Combined arms maneuvers: infantry and commando units guide pilots and navy, artillery

Heavily armed force followed by isolation force

Personal responsibility, you are on your own, no one has your back

PSYCHOLOGICAL DEFENSES and OUTCOMES of URBAN WARFARE

PTSD

No movement or accomplishments, frozen scene, surreal

Gruesome death as constant companion

Sense of abandonment, extreme dependency on others: external locus of control, splitting, alloplastic defenses, defiance, acting out/crazymaking, moral collapse, magical or superstitious thinking

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