Micro-Robots, Sensors Shape Urban Warfare.

• Author: Tiron, Roxana

Marine Corps tactical war games focus on enhancing 'situational awareness'

A recent war game sponsored by the Marine Corps is offering insights into the challenges of fighting urban wars and is helping participants to determine what military technologies will be needed in the future, said officials from the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities.

CETO was established last year as a partnership between the Marine Corps and the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.

As part of its plan to identify emerging threats and find solutions for future military war-fighting challenges, CETO has been running a urban warfare exercise, called Project Lincolnia, since October 2000. The exercises will end this fall and the center will start working on recommendations, which will be submitted to Defense Department officials.

The war-game project had a $700,000 budget.

CETO designed Project Lincolnia to find a methodology that combined strategy, operation and tactics for military operations in urban terrain (MOUT). "All of that was being done under a common scenario," said the director of the project, Gary Anderson, a retired Marine Corps colonel.

Under this methodology, "the ambassador can ask the lieutenant why he blew up a certain building," said Anderson. "You get cross talk that you don't traditionally see in operations."

MOUT operations have more than a military dimension, said Anderson. Current urban operations have economic and diplomatic implications and also are used for aid relief.

"One of the main criticisms of Panama [when the United States ousted dictator Manuel Noriega] was that it had been a good military plan, but it did not have a follow-on piece on how to transition the country from Noriega and repair the damage from an economic and diplomatic perspective," said Anderson.

According to CETO, Project Lincolnia is the Defense Department's first attempt to examine military operations in urban terrain at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. In fact, it was initiated as a response to a General Accounting Office report, which said that current Pentagon efforts are too focused on tactical operations and neglect strategic and operational concerns.

The project, for the most part, was built around war game seminars that put together strategic and operational-level simulations. The force-on-force exercises tested decisions and information developed during the strategy and operational games, said Anderson. The first force-on-force...