MOUT Discussion Topics

Discussion Topic One - MOUT Training

Introduction to MOUT Discussion Topic One

This is the first in a series of MOUT related discussion topics designed to generate debate, comments and insights on MOUT gleaned from operations, exercises and personal observations and experiences. Currently, the Joint Staff and the military services (and our Allies) are wrestling with the issues that will be presented here. Your insights and suggestions “from the field” and from those who are leading the effort in preparing our forces to conduct urban operations are important and need to be discussed. This includes MOUT at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. Additionally, potential solutions need to be identified. This is a forum to do so. Your post or E-mail need not address every issue presented – look at your input as one piece of a very complex puzzle, one that U.S. and Ally forces are attempting to successfully put together.

MOUT Discussion Topic One - Training for Urban Operations – The Issues:

It is understood that military units must train as they will fight, that given, look at the following issues from the standpoint of how we must improve each to be adequately trained to conduct MOUT.

1. Is our current MOUT doctrine adequate?
2. Break this doctrine down into these levels – Joint, Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force.
3. Are our current MOUT Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) adequate?
4. Considering MOUT doctrine and TTPs (either in need of improvement or sufficient to conduct urban operations), are we “training as we will fight or making preparations to train as we should fight?”
5. What improvements in MOUT training do we need?
6. At what sacrifice should other military operations training suffer from an increase in MOUT training?
7. If we train for MOUT – are we prepared to conduct other operations that are less intense and constrained? What is the tradeoff?
8. In our training, how do we adequately replicate the urban environment - the presence of noncombatants, the three dimensional combat environment, the need to reduce collateral damage, the low tech and asymmetrical tactics of the enemy, the high-rise buildings, the subterranean, and urban sprawl of potential urban battlegrounds?
9. Should we train to fight in a relatively modern city like Seoul, South Korea; Lima, Peru, with a modern area and a large shanty sprawl; or Mogadishu, Somalia, where all the urban social and critical service infrastructure is nonexistent? What are the tradeoffs?
10. Are our MOUT training facilities adequate? Can training at the Marine Corps’ Camp Lejeune MOUT Facility or the Army’s JRTC Shughart-Gordon MOUT Facility even come close to the reality of urban operations? Take a look at the MOUT facilities and then at Seoul and Lima. Now add in the noncombatant population, the extensive and three-dimensional infrastructure, and the potential to be fighting a “three block war” (humanitarian, peacekeeping, and combat operations at the same time). How do we train for this? What should we be training for?
11. Can computer simulation make up for any MOUT training shortfalls?
12. Do we need a National MOUT Training Center? What should it replicate? Would the benefits out weigh the cost?

Please E-mail your views on this subject to the MOUT Homepage.

Topic Response Number 1:

I have been the primary MOUT instructor at the Infantry Officer Course, USMC, at Quantico for the past two years. I would like to share some of things we have done to better train & educate the new infantry officer for service in the FMF. First, we increased the MOUT package of instruction to an entire week; one of ten weeks in the course. Not included in this time is additional instruction focused on MOOTW, and other related TTPs and principals.

The culmination exercise of the MOUT week is an off-site MOOTW exercise conducted in a "real" urban area, usually a small town that is selected because it has similar infrastructure to a larger city (just smaller); a local government; and a relatively large populous as compared to the student platoon. The objectives of the exercises are to: have the students operate within a real civilian populous (400-600), conduct civil-military liaison with local government leaders and police, closely replicate the 3D constrained environment of built up area (realism), and community relations of the armed services; specifically the USMC. We have exceeded our expectations on each of the four exercises, the first of which was conducted last Sept. The students conduct a tactical heliborne insert outside of the town and then move into the town. They establish observation posts on buildings within the town, conduct urban patrols (foot & vehicle) to include blank fire sniper attacks, conduct searches for weapons caches and other insurgent supplies. We utilize non uniformed Marines to act as the insurgents within the populous, requiring the students to identify them through effective decision making and execution. The students, our staff and the local town people have learned a great deal on each of these exercises. This is our small contribution to improving our ability to effectively fight in built up areas across the spectrum of conflict.

Charles Black
Captain of Marines

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