In this episode, John Spencer is joined by Stuart Lyle, urban operations research lead at the United Kingdom’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, for a discussion on one of the most overlooked but critical aspects of preparing for future war: urban warfare training facilities. The conversation includes a survey of major urban warfare training centers across NATO member states, including live-fire defensive buildings, subterranean training complexes, trench systems integrated into urban terrain, and facilities designed to demonstrate the real effects of weapons on buildings, cover, and urban infrastructure. Spencer and Lyle examine the persistent challenge of balancing scale and realism in urban warfare training, examining whether existing facilities—even the most innovative ones—adequately prepare soldiers for the realities of high-intensity urban combat. They discuss what current training sites get right, where they fall short, and what militaries must do to better prepare for the decisive battles increasingly fought in cities.
In this episode, John Spencer is joined by Major General Ross Coffman, director of Army Futures Command's Next Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team. He...
In January 2022, John Spencer traveled to the UK to observe a British Army Warfighting Experiment. The experiment was one of many that allows...
Observers watched the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War closely, searching for indicators of the character of warfare on tomorrow's battlefields. The lessons extracted have covered advanced...