NATO has stated their problem as such: “NATO is not sufficiently organized, trained, or equipped to comprehensively understand and execute precise operations across the maritime, cyberspace, land, air, space dimensions/domains in order to create desired effects in an emergent complex, urban littoral system possessing a dense, interconnected population.”
Interestingly, NATO’s RFP conveniently cites urban population statistics from the United Nations as its justification that are not exactly new. There will be 34 megacities by 2025 and 76 percent will be in the developing world, while more than 50 percent of SMART cities will be in the developed world.
“Projections by the United Nations indicate that by the year 2035 the world population will increase to 8.7 billion people, an increase of 1.4 billion people, and that most of this growth will take place in developing countries and in urban areas. Currently 80 percent of the global population lives on or within 100 km of the coast; this also will likely continue.
“The SFA1 2013 Report – including 2015 Interim Update Report and the FFAO2 2015 have identified this trend of urbanisation as a potential instability situation for NATO. The world as a whole passed the 50 percent urban mark seven years ago. Estimates are that five billion people live in cities with two billion of these living in slums. It is also estimated that 1.4 million people worldwide migrate to cities each week. Studies, based upon global demographic trends, suggest that an increasing percentage of armed conflicts will likely be fought in urban surroundings.”
The “obsolete” international force, as US president Trump once called NATO, is heading for an expensive overhaul, in requesting outside contractors to pitch concepts on military operations in urban areas.
The NATO Urbanisation Conceptual Study was delivered to the NATO Military Committee in March 2017, after extensive wargaming on the city of Archaria , in a complex scenario for 2035, originally created to provide a future operating environment.
“The wargame activity developed taking into account an overall scenario in which a NATO force, conducted a joint forcible entry operation into a large coastal city, urban operations and stability operations opposed by a conventional military force from a neighbouring country. Following the successful landing operation, the enemy conventional force dropped back to a hybrid/irregular warfare mode. After the warfare end and the re-establishment of a peace situation, a large-scale industrial facility created a major chemical venting incident generating mass casualties, widespread destruction and panicked movement of the population away from the affected area, with a concurrent widespread breakdown in urban order and essential functions,” NATO Defense College stated, on the war games held from 28 Sep-7 Oct 2016.
Last November, NATO members took part in the huge Iron Sword exercise that involved military action in urban environments.
In 2015, 27 regions worldwide fit the definition of megacity but projections by the US National Intelligence Council suggest that over the next decade and a half, urban growth will result in more than a dozen more, with many of them in Africa and Asia.
RAND corporation foresees that these megacities will likely be characterized by areas of lawlessness and large no-go zones, “making them ripe targets for violent non-state actor recruitment and funding activities”. Black markets, shadow governance, illicit economies and dark networks will prosper in these no-go zones.
“This will require, at a minimum, an ability to persistently monitor, collect and interpret — in near real-time — the millions of bits of data associated with cellphone communications, social media postings, financial transactions and the operational movements of these actors,” RAND concluded.
But The Intel Hub reported: “In February and March of 2012, US troops at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington were conducting training scenarios for a civil disturbance domestic quick reaction force. A series of photos of the drills shows US troops with crowd control riot shields on the opposite side of actors portraying what can only be described as American citizens.”