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63-536: At present there are two tactical assault groups based on opposite sides of the country. As such they are individually identified as being either TAG East, based in Sydney or TAG West, based in Perth. Both groups are structured to conduct offensive domestic counter-terrorist operations focusing on direct action and hostage recovery. Each assault group maintains a short notice capability to conduct military operations beyond

126-559: A decisive Israeli victory. In Jenin the battle was much harder and fierce. Unlike in Nablus, the forces who fought in Jenin were mainly reserve forces. The Palestinian militants booby-trapped the city and the refugee camp with thousands of explosive charges, some were very large and most were concealed in houses and on the streets. After 13 Israeli soldiers were killed in an ambush combined with booby traps, snipers and suicide bombers ,

189-564: A different domestic geographical area of Australia. TAG East draws its members from the 2nd Commando Regiment , and rotates one company through the role for a pre-determined length of time. It is also supplemented with personnel from the Royal Australian Navy 's Clearance Diving Branch. The Royal Australian Navy component consists of an operations officer, a clearance diver (CD) assault platoon, and an underwater medic. Approximately 30 Clearance Divers are permanently attached to

252-433: A famous, notorious place in the history of war, particularly urban warfare. It seems to encapsulate and personify it, to provide an instinctive yardstick by which urban warfare can be examined, understood, defined, and assessed" according to military historian Stephen Walsh. The Soviets used the great amount of destruction to their advantage by adding man-made defenses such as barbed wire, minefields, trenches, and bunkers to

315-584: A ground-level tunnel similar to that between the first courtyard and the road. The larger, more expensive flats faced the street and the smaller, less expensive ones were found around the inner courtyards. Just as the Soviets had learned a lot about urban warfare, so had the Germans. The Waffen-SS did not use the makeshift barricades erected close to street corners, because these could be raked by artillery fire from guns firing over open sights further along

378-672: A myriad of structures, and mountains of rubble. Ferroconcrete structures will be ruined by heavy bombardment, but it is very difficult to demolish such a building totally when it is well defended. Soviet forces had to fight room by room while defending the Red October Steel Factory during the Battle of Stalingrad , and in 1945, during the race to capture the Reichstag , despite heavy bombardment with artillery at point blank range (including 203 mm howitzers ). It

441-545: A particular urban area or to deny these advantages to the enemy. It is considered to be arguably the most difficult form of warfare. Fighting in urban areas negates the advantages that one side may have over the other in armor, heavy artillery, or air support. Ambushes laid down by small groups of soldiers with handheld anti-tank weapons can destroy entire columns of modern armor (as in the First Battle of Grozny ), while artillery and air support can be severely reduced if

504-525: A short term measure, they deployed self-propelled anti-aircraft guns ( ZSU-23-4 and 2K22M ) to engage the Chechen combat groups, as their tank's main gun did not have the elevation and depression to engage the fire teams and an armoured vehicle's machine gun could not suppress the fire of half a dozen different fire teams simultaneously. In the long term, the Russians brought in more infantry and began

567-901: A small team of infantry soldiers should fight in close and built-up spaces). IDF's LASHAB was developed mainly in recent decades, after the 1982 Lebanon War included urban warfare in Beirut and Lebanese villages, and was further developed during the Second Intifada (2000–2005) in which IDF soldiers entered and fought in Palestinian cities, villages and refugee camps. The IDF has a special large and advanced facility for training soldiers and units in urban warfare. Urban military operations in World War II often relied on large quantities of artillery bombardment and air support varying from ground attack fighters to heavy bombers . In

630-520: A systematic advance through the city, house by house and block by block, with dismounted Russian infantry moving in support of armour. In proactive moves, the Russians started to set up ambush points of their own and then move armour towards them to lure the Chechen combat groups into ambushes. As with the Soviet tank crews in Berlin in 1945, who attached bedsprings to the outside of their turrets to reduce

693-742: Is also difficult to destroy underground or heavily fortified structures such as bunkers and utility tunnels; during the Siege of Budapest in 1944 fighting broke out in the sewers, as both Axis and Soviet troops used them for troop movements. Analysts debate the scope and size of urban battles in the modern day, as they are unlikely to match the scale of battles in the Second World War. For example, professor Michael C. Desch states that while "enormous forces engaged on both sides in those battles may never be seen in high-intensity urban battles again", that "the large numbers of killed and wounded underline

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756-400: Is warfare in urban areas such as towns and cities. Urban combat differs from combat in the open at both operational and the tactical levels. Complicating factors in urban warfare include the presence of civilians and the complexity of the urban terrain . Urban combat operations may be conducted to capitalize on strategic or tactical advantages associated with the possession or the control of

819-729: The Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International and Non-International Armed Conflicts . Sometimes distinction and proportionality , as in the case of the Canadians in Ortona , causes the attacking force to restrain from using all the force they could when attacking a city. In other cases, such as the Battle of Stalingrad and

882-621: The Australian Defence Force including the two tactical assault groups, Special Operations Command (Australia) and the Special Operations Engineer Regiment . The exercises also involve relevant components of state and territory police forces, such as police tactical groups and intelligence agencies such as ASIO . TAG-West conducts annual training courses for police tactical group members from each state and territory. Each year as part of

945-429: The Battle of Berlin , both military forces considered evacuating civilians only to find it impractical. When Russian forces attacked Grozny in 1999, they conducted a massive artillery and air bombardment campaign in an attempt to smash the city into submission. The Russian Army handled the issue of civilian casualties by issuing an ultimatum urging citizens to leave or be destroyed without mercy. Leaflets dropped on

1008-501: The Battle of Manila in 1945, General MacArthur initially placed a ban on artillery and air strikes to save civilian lives. Military forces are bound by the laws of war governing military necessity to the amount of force which can be applied when attacking an area where there are known to be civilians. Until the 1970s, this was covered by the 1907 Hague Convention IV – The Laws and Customs of War on Land which specifically includes articles 25–27. This has since been supplemented by

1071-471: The European theatre of war , roughly 40% of battles took place in urban areas. In some particularly vicious urban warfare battles such as Stalingrad and Warsaw , all weapons were used irrespective of their consequences. Military historian Victor Davis Hanson noted the lethality of urban warfare in the Second World War, "When civilian met soldier in the confined landscapes, the death toll spiked, and it

1134-748: The First Chechen War most of the Chechen fighters had been trained in the Soviet armed forces. They were divided into combat groups consisting of 15 to 20 personnel, subdivided into three or four-man fire teams . A fire team consisted of an antitank gunner, usually armed with a Russian made RPG-7s or RPG-18s , a machine gunner and a sniper. The team would be supported by ammunition runners and assistant gunners. To destroy Russian armoured vehicles in Grozny , five or six hunter-killer fire teams deployed at ground level, in second and third stories, and in basements. The snipers and machine gunners would pin down

1197-618: The Southern Ocean . On 20 April 2003, members from both Tactical Assault Group West and Tactical Assault Group East combined to board the Pong Su , a 4,000 ton North Korean ocean freighter in Australian territorial waters. The ship was flying the flag of Tuvalu at the time, known as flying a flag of convenience . The boarding of the freighter was carried whilst the ship was underway in rough seas. The reason for apprehending

1260-443: The macromanagement factor (i.e. sending troops, using of heavy armoured fighting vehicles , battle management), CQB refers to the micromanagement factor—namely: how a small squad of infantry troops should fight in urban environments and/or inside buildings in order to achieve its goals with minimal casualties. As a doctrine, CQB concerns topics such as: Military CQB doctrine is different from police CQB doctrine, mainly because

1323-540: The "superior" party wants to limit civilian casualties as much as possible, but the defending party does not (or even uses civilians as human shields ). Some civilians may be difficult to distinguish from such combatants as armed militias and gangs, and particularly individuals who are simply trying to protect their homes from attackers. Tactics are complicated by a three-dimensional environment, limited fields of view and fire because of buildings, enhanced concealment and cover for defenders, below-ground infrastructure, and

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1386-411: The 19th century. Most of those, thanks to housing regulations and few elevators, were five stories high, built around a courtyard which could be reached from the street through a corridor large enough to take a horse and cart or small trucks used to deliver coal. In many places these apartment blocks were built around several courtyards, one behind the other, each one reached through the outer courtyards by

1449-601: The 2020s. In 2023, analyst Mikael Weissmann claimed that it is widely agreed upon that urban warfare will be the "battlefields of tomorrow". The characteristics of an average city include tall buildings, narrow alleys, sewage tunnels and possibly a subway system. Defenders may have the advantage of detailed local knowledge of the area, right down to the layout inside of buildings and means of travel not shown on maps. The buildings can provide excellent sniping posts while alleys and rubble-filled streets are ideal for planting booby traps . Defenders can move from one part of

1512-489: The IDF changed its tactics from slow advancing infantry soldiers backed by attack helicopters to a heavy use of armoured bulldozers. The heavily armoured bulldozers began by clearing booby traps and ended with razing many houses, mainly in the center of the refugee camp. The armoured bulldozers were unstoppable and impervious to Palestinian attacks and by razing booby-trapped houses and buildings which used as gun posts they forced

1575-535: The National Counter-Terrorist Committee Skills Enhancement Course, each state and territory sends several members of its PTG to participate in a concentrated three-week course to strengthen standards of policing in urban counter-terrorist tactics and ensure all states are training consistently to the same codes and standards of counter-terrorism. On 12 April 2001, an SASR troop conducted a boarding of

1638-562: The SASR was directed to develop an offshore (maritime) capability, concerned primarily with retaking Bass Strait oil rigs in the event of terrorist capture. These operations were to be handled by a dedicated water operations team which included 17 Clearance Divers from the RAN's Clearance Diving Branch , who were placed under operational control of the SASR from 4 August 1980 as part of the TAG. TAG (East)

1701-411: The Soviets. Most of the central districts of Berlin consisted of city blocks with straight wide roads, intersected by several waterways, parks and large railway marshalling yards. The terrain was predominantly flat but there were some low hills like that of Kreuzberg that is 66 metres (217 ft) above sea level. Much of the housing stock consisted of apartment blocks built in the second half of

1764-460: The U.S. Army under Zachary Taylor invaded the town. The U.S. Army had no prior training in urban warfare and the Mexican defenders hid on rooftops, shot through loopholes, and stationed cannons in the middle of the city's streets. The houses at Monterrey were made of thick adobe , with strong double doors and few windows. The rooftops were lined with a two-foot-tall wall that acted as a parapet for

1827-644: The United States Marine Corps , Charles C. Krulak , and retired military officer and chairman of the urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, John Spencer have predicted urban warfare to become the norm in wars. Spencer confirmed this to be true in an article in 2024, providing a list of numerous urban battles in the recent decades of the 21st century alone, those being Fallujah , Sadr City , Mosul , Raqqa , Marawi , and now Bakhmut , Mariupol , and Khan Yunis in

1890-727: The area taking part in Exercise Ocean Raider 2016. Direct action (military) Direct action ( DA ) is a term used in the context of military special operations for small-scale raids , ambushes , acts of sabotage , and similar actions. The US Department of Defense defines direct action as "short-duration strikes and other small-scale offensive actions conducted as a special operation in hostile, denied, or politically sensitive environments and which employ specialized military capabilities to seize, destroy, capture, exploit, recover, or damage designated targets." Direct action differs from conventional offensive actions in

1953-414: The army needed to " mouse hole " through each house and root out the defenders in close combat. Worth's men used pick axes to chip holes in the adobe walls of the homes, in the roof of the house from where the soldiers could drop in, or used ladders to climb to the top of a rooftop and assault the Mexican defenders in hand-to-hand combat. The typical assault on a home would include one man who would run to

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2016-545: The basic fact that such conflict is extremely lethal", referencing the battles of Stalingrad and Berlin. An article by the Modern War Institute states that while lessons may be taken from Stalingrad, ultimately "Stalingrad took place in a theater with a large number of army groups with a total of a million soldiers involved on each side; modern armies are unlikely to fight with these numbers." Many analysts, such as former American army general and Commandant of

2079-492: The city but it could not hit the well-hidden defenders any better than the U.S. soldiers could. Two days later the US again assaulted the city from two sides and this time they fought differently. Not wanting to repeat the mistakes of the 21st, General William Jenkins Worth listened to his Texan advisers. These men had fought in Mexican cities before at the Battle of Mier in 1842 and the Battle of Bexar in 1835. They understood that

2142-577: The city read: ' You are surrounded, all roads to Grozny are blocked...Persons who stay in the city will be considered terrorists and bandits and will be destroyed by artillery and aviation. There will be no further negotiations. Everyone who does not leave the city will be destroyed '. Fighting in an urban environment can offer some advantages to a weaker defending force or to guerrilla fighters through ambush-induced attrition losses. The attacking army must account for three dimensions more often, and consequently expend greater amounts of manpower to secure

2205-509: The city to another undetected using tunnels and spring ambushes . Meanwhile, the attackers tend to become more exposed than the defender as they must use the open streets more often, unfamiliar with the defenders' secret and hidden routes. During a house to house search the attacker is often also exposed on the streets. The Battle of Monterrey was the U.S. Army's first major encounter with urban warfare. It occurred in September 1846 when

2268-531: The coordination and funding of various organisations involved. He also directed that police forces around Australia absorb the counter-terrorist role. However, a study by Sir Robert Mark , at that time recently retired from the London Metropolitan Police , concluded that this was a task for 'sophisticated soldiery' and should not be given to the police but rather to the Army. Sir Robert's advice

2331-680: The damage done by German panzerfausts , some of the Russian armour was fitted quickly with a cage of wire mesh mounted some 25–30 centimetres away from the hull armour to defeat the shaped charges of the Chechen RPGs. Operation Defensive Shield was a counter-terrorism military operation conducted by the Israel Defense Forces in April 2002 as a response to a wave of suicide bombings by Palestinian factions which claimed

2394-464: The defending soldiers. Each home was a fort unto itself. On September 21, 1846, the U.S. Army which included some of its best soldiers, recent West Point graduates, marched down the city's streets and were cut down by the Mexican defenders. They could not see the men hidden behind walls, loopholes, or rooftops. They tried to march straight down the street until the intense fire drove them to hide in adjacent buildings. Taylor tried to move artillery into

2457-402: The dismantling of mines and wires; and the securing of footholds in enemy areas. Israel Defense Forces calls urban warfare לש"ב (pronounced LASHAB ), a Hebrew acronym for warfare on urban terrain . LASHAB in the IDF includes large-scale tactics (such as use of heavy armoured personnel carriers , armoured bulldozers , UAVs for intelligence, etc.), CQB training for fighting forces (how

2520-448: The door of the house and chip the door away with a pick axe under covering fire. Once the door showed signs of weakening, 3–4 other soldiers would run to the door and barge in with revolvers blazing. Worth lost few men on the 23rd using these new urban warfare techniques. The Battle of Stalingrad is largely seen as the defining battle of urban warfare, with the battle commonly studied and referenced in studies of urban warfare. The battle

2583-781: The ease of placement of booby traps and snipers. Historically, the United States Armed Forces has referred to urban warfare as UO (urban operations), but this term has been largely replaced with MOUT (military operations in urban terrain). The British armed forces terms are OBUA (operations in built-up areas), FIBUA (fighting in built-up areas), or sometimes (colloquially) FISH (fighting in someone's house), or FISH and CHIPS (fighting in someone's house and causing havoc in people's streets/public spaces). The term FOFO (fighting in fortified objectives) refers to clearing enemy personnel from narrow and entrenched places like bunkers, trenches and strongholds;

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2646-518: The fishing vessel South Tomi using two RHIBs launched from the South African Navy vessel SAS Protea in international waters 260 nautical miles (480 km; 300 mi) south of Cape Agulhas , South Africa . The South Tomi had fled the AFMA fisheries patrol vessel Southern Supporter after being detected poaching Patagonian toothfish near Heard Island and McDonald Islands in

2709-633: The group at any one time. TAG West draws its members from the Special Air Service Regiment and rotates one squadron through the role for a pre-determined length of time. Both have world-class training facilities including advanced outdoor close-quarters battle ranges, MOUT villages, urban CT complexes, full-size aircraft mock-ups, and sniper ranges. Both participate in NATEX ( national anti-terrorism exercises ). Several times each year, exercises are conducted to test elements of

2772-547: The level of physical and political risk, operational techniques, and the degree of discriminate and precise use of force to achieve specific objectives. The US military and many of its allies consider DA one of the basic special operations missions. Some units specialize in it, such as the Navy SEALs and 75th Ranger Regiment , and other units, such as US Army Special Forces , have DA capabilities but focus more on other operations. Urban warfare Urban warfare

2835-817: The lives of hundreds of Israeli civilians. It was in part characterized by alleged usage of human shields by both IDF and Palestinian militants. The two major battles were held in Nablus and Jenin . In Nablus, the Paratroopers Brigade and the Golani Brigade , backed by reservist armour force and combat engineers with armoured Caterpillar D9 bulldozers , entered to Nablus, killing 70 militants and arresting hundreds, while sustaining only one fatality. The forces deployed many small teams, advancing in non-linear manner from many directions, using snipers and air support. The battle ended quickly with

2898-416: The militants in Jenin to surrender. In total, 56 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers were killed in the battle of Jenin. The term close-quarter battle refers to fighting methods within buildings, streets, narrow alleys and other places where visibility and manoeuvrability are limited. Both close-quarters-battle (CQB) and urban operations (UO) are related to urban warfare, but while UO refers mainly to

2961-499: The military usually operates in hostile areas while the police operates within docile populations. Armies that often engage in urban warfare operations may train most of their infantry in CQB doctrine. While training will vary, it generally will focus on what proficiencies each unit possess. This is in opposition to what units may lack in either strength or weapons capabilities. The fundamentals of muzzle awareness and weapons safety are of

3024-485: The rubble, while large factories even housed tanks and large-caliber guns within. In addition, Soviet urban warfare relied on 20-to-50-man-assault groups, armed with machine guns, grenades and satchel charges, and buildings fortified as strongpoints with clear fields of fire. A Soviet combat group was a mixed arms unit of about eighty men, divided into assault groups of six to eight men, closely supported by field artillery. These were tactical units which were able to apply

3087-549: The scope of State and Federal Police Tactical Groups . These aims are achieved through various highly specialised skill sets, niche capabilities and supporting Australian Defence Force (ADF) units such as those from the Special Operations Engineer Regiment and 171st Special Operations Aviation Squadron . The Sydney Hilton bombing on 13 February 1978 was the catalyst for the Commonwealth Government to initiate an urgent review of security procedures to combat

3150-519: The ship was that it was suspected of being involved in smuggling almost 125 kg (300 pounds) of heroin into Australia. On 12 December 2016, Tactical Assault Group members from TAG EAST conducted a boarding of the 50m former Japanese whaling vessel Kaiyo Maru No. 8 (KM8) in international waters in the Southern Ocean south east of Tasmania after it was intercepted by HMAS Adelaide . The vessel had been monitored by Maritime Border Command loitering and circling more than 200 nautical miles off

3213-574: The southern coast of Australia and was suspected to be involved in drug smuggling. Details of the boarding were not released by Defence but by law enforcement, however, imagery released by Defence shows TAG members in Air Drop Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat (ADRHIB) deploying from Adelaide . Tactical Assault Group members discovered 186 kilograms of cocaine worth $ 60 million on board KM8 with ten crew members nine from China and one from Singapore detained. Adelaide had been in

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3276-600: The straight streets. Instead, they put snipers and machine guns on the upper floors and the roofs – a safer deployment as the Soviet tanks could not elevate their guns that high. They also put men armed with panzerfausts in cellar windows to ambush tanks as they moved down the streets. These tactics were quickly adopted by the Hitler Youth and the First World War Volkssturm veterans. To counter these tactics, Soviet submachine gunners rode

3339-507: The streets. They moved through the apartments and cellars blasting holes through the walls of adjacent buildings (for which the Soviets found abandoned German panzerfausts were very effective), while others fought across the roof tops and through the attics. These tactics took the Germans lying in ambush for tanks in the flanks. Flamethrowers and grenades were very effective, but as the Berlin civilian population had not been evacuated these tactics inevitably killed many civilians. During

3402-431: The supporting infantry while the antitank gunners would engage the armoured vehicle aiming at the top, rear and sides of vehicles. Initially, the Russians were taken by surprise. Their armoured columns that were supposed to take the city without difficulty as Soviet forces had taken Budapest in 1956 were decimated in fighting more reminiscent of the Battle of Budapest in late 1944. As in the Soviet assault on Berlin, as

3465-399: The tactics of house to house fighting that the Soviets had been forced to develop and refine at each Festungsstadt (fortress city) they had encountered from Stalingrad to Berlin. The German tactics in the battle of Berlin were dictated by three considerations: the experience that the Germans had gained during five years of war; the physical characteristics of Berlin; and the tactics used by

3528-405: The tanks and sprayed every doorway and window, but this meant the tank could not traverse its turret quickly. The other solution was to rely on heavy howitzers (152 mm and 203 mm) firing over open sights to blast defended buildings and to use anti-aircraft guns against defenders posted on the higher floors. Soviet combat groups started to move from house to house instead of directly down

3591-624: The threat of international terrorism . The anti-terrorist agencies (the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation ) were placed on heightened alert and a Protective Security Coordination Centre was established. The Prime Minister proposed the establishment of a Standing Advisory Committee on Commonwealth State Cooperation for Protection against Violence, which would be primarily responsible for

3654-417: The utmost importance given the propensity for fratricide due to the confined spaces, as well as the limited avenues of approach. Armed forces seek to train their units for those circumstances in which they are to fight: built up, urban areas are no exception. Several countries have created simulated urban training zones. The British Army has established an "Afghan village" within its Stanford Battle Area and

3717-578: Was further strengthened by the Ironbark Report, written by Colonel John Essex-Clark, in which he advised the urgent formation of a special counter-terrorist force within the Army. In August 1978, it was proposed to allocate the task of raising, training and sustaining the counter-terrorist force to the Special Air Service Regiment to follow similar lines from the British Army with their counter-terrorist team from within their SAS . The force

3780-413: Was no surprise that the greatest carnage of World War II—at Leningrad and Stalingrad—was the result of efforts to storm municipal fortresses". However, when liberating occupied territory some restraint was often applied, particularly in urban settings. For example, Canadian operations in both Ortona and Groningen avoided the use of artillery altogether to spare civilians and buildings, and during

3843-483: Was raised on 22 July 2002 in order to increase the ADF's domestic counter-terrorist capability. TAG (East) mirrors the original Tactical Assault Group, which was redesignated TAG (West). The dual basing enables the ADF to readily respond to simultaneous and geographically separate domestic incidents. At present there are two tactical assault groups, TAG East and TAG West. Each belongs to a different parent unit and each protect

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3906-528: Was the single largest and costliest urban battle ever, with it being seen as the worst and most extreme case of urban warfare. The Battle of Stalingrad saw all types of MOUT combat techniques. Historian Iain MacGregor states that the "evolution of urban, house-to-house fighting and defending these buildings and built-up areas was seemingly born in Stalingrad in the winter of 1942". The battle "occupies

3969-603: Was to be called the TAG and was to be commanded by the Commanding Officer SASR. On 3 May 1979, the Government approved the raising of a dedicated counter-terrorist force in the SASR, with final authorisation to raise the TAG given on 31 August 1979. The tasks allocated to the group included: The training began officially in March 1980 and the force became fully operational in the following May. In July 1980,

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