Offensive urban operations have been in the news for years, now; first with Iraq’s reconquest of Mosul from ISIL, then with Russia’s ruin of Mariupol (which is and likely will be under reconstruction for years to come), then with Russia’s ruin of Bakhmut, and now, of Israel’s operation to clear Gaza City of Hamas terrorists.

What is the cost of seizing or clearing an urban area (when it comes to terrorists, clearing is similar to seizing, though obviously implies a longer presence in the place)? While certain information around an operation may be classified, it shouldn’t be difficult to establish a framework for calculating the cost a country can expect to incur in taking a city, both in weapons and soldiers, and rebuilding it on the back end.

THE BIG STORY

Calculating the Cost of Urban Operations

How can one quantify the cost a country might expect to spend seizing or clearing a city in war?

One characteristic of modern warfare is the city-fortress. Terrorists use urban areas to hide, and astute generals use urban areas to rob invading armies of their momentum. In Ukraine’s east, cities have been swamps for the Russian army, which was only able to take Bakhmut by emptying out Russian prisons, and the unexpected (and now unavailable) charisma of a mercenary leader who has since been assassinated.

Hamas, having attacked Israel and murdered over 1,000 civilians, quickly ran back to hide in Gaza City, from which it has been fighting a grinding defensive struggle against the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Hamas knows that cities are a terrible place for armies; in war, a city is a giant interconnected bunker system. And Israel, for its part, has no choice but to “enter and clear” it.

How can we calculate the cost of seizing and clearing a city? What are the variables that ought to be taken into consideration?

In economic terms, the arithmetic is straightforward (if difficult): fix everything that has been damaged and can be recovered, raze and rebuild that which cannot be recovered. Buildings, roads, underground infrastructure. The cost for to fix and rebuild gets higher with every bomb that is dropped, every round of artillery that’s fired, every door that gets breached.

On the military side, the arithmetic is more difficult. Tabulating the cost of bombs and artillery is simple. But rounds expended / bombs dropped is one part of an equation that should also take into consideration equipment damaged or destroyed. The cost of a person being wounded or killed can be estimated but never fully accounted for, as a human life is invaluable both on spiritual and practical terms (it is impossible to know what contributions a dead man might have made to society had he lived instead).

Further complicating the military part of the equation is the fact that the more one uses soldiers to mitigate civilian harm and damage to infrastructure — light infantry trained on urban combat — the higher the casualties to one’s own side. Grinding out apartment buildings and tunnel systems is like assaulting bunkers over and over again — horrible for morale, little better than casualty-producing factories. But the alternative is bombing campaigns, and that always ends up leading to indiscriminate bombing, which is hell on the infrastructure and the civilians who will not or cannot leave their homes.

A city, while it’s under siege or attack, is also not the source of any economic activity; anything it might have generated through trade, and the tax revenue it might have otherwise created can be subtracted from the nation and region’s balance sheet.

Then there are the residents. The prospect of urban fighting always creates an immediate rush to the exits — whether that’s a quarter of a city’s population, or three quarters of the population (or more), many people always leave before the shooting starts. Urban fighting is known to be brutal and often indiscriminate. Those people who leave may leave the country entirely, and some never return. From a country’s perspective, this, too, can be a “cost” of urban operations — doubly so for refugees who are supported by the state during their plight.

So there are three separate types of costs incurred while conducting an urban operation: the cost of military means used to destroy one’s enemy occupying the urban area, the cost to sustain the urban area’s population during the operation, and the cost to rebuild / fix the urban area after the operation is complete.

Cities — it feels less personal to describe them as urban areas somehow, doesn’t it! — are incredibly complex social and economic organisms; resilient and hard in some senses (built of concrete and stone) with deep foundations, literally and metaphorically. They’re also sensitive to quick changes and vulnerable to disruption. An urban operation will, almost by definition, kill whatever social and economic entity exists at the moment the operation begins. It is (of course) possible to return economic activity to a city. But the city, once destroyed, will never be the same — one can only recapture some approximation of its previous self, an echo.

From this perspective, the cost of urban operations is incalculable. One must decide to destroy a system that will never return. For some that is acceptable collateral damage. For others it is the point. In all cases, though, it’s important to consider the damage to be done before undertaking such an endeavor. And when and where urban operations are carried out unnecessarily and with a maximum of barbarity and savagery — such as was the case during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Mariupol and Bakhmut (not, remarkably, during the Ukrainian liberation of Kherson, and not during Iraq’s liberation of Mosul from ISIL) — they are among the greatest crimes conceivable.

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