Compared to last year's Military Operations in Urban Terrain experiment at Fort Benning, Ga., friendly casualties in the final MOUT attack here dropped from 28 to 17 percent and enemy losses rose from 55 to 100 percent. Soldiers and Marines saw those results come to life Sept. 19 and 20 as they participated in the MOUT Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration at JCF-AWE at the Joint Readiness Training Center. It was the culmination of an initiative started in 1997 to improve the type of urban warfighting soldiers experienced in Grenada, Panama, Somalia, and Haiti, said Maj. By the year 2025, it will be approximately 75 percent.
Urban combat is particularly dangerous to U.S. military troops for several reasons.
According to Krebs, history has shown a hometown advantage is enough to complicate communication and restrict line of sight. And he said the presence of non-combatants can also restrict lethal firepower. The MOUT program was a direct response to those circumstances, he said, and aims to solve them with training on tactics, technologies, and procedures. Soldiers involved in this week's demonstration said they considered it a success. They waged a fierce battle that lasted more than seven hours.