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is
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so we're in a huge israeli training
facility called sailing
and this facility is basically designed
to help people
learn how to deal with urban combat
based on the schematics of gaza
if you've ever watched a kind of
dystopian sci-fi movie you'll know that
the future of the planet is basically
one enormous sea
and that's why urban warfare is so on
vogue wars are no longer going to be
held across
large planes with two armies approaching
it's going to be
sporadic and it's going to be in
complicated scary urban situations
as warfare moves into urban settings
conventional armies have struggled
as insurgent forces utilize the density
and irregularities of the city as a
defensive terrain
after all a traditional army can't march
through tiny streets
and as such much of their battlefield
power is negated
in israel conflict is an almost everyday
occurrence battles with enemies like
hezbollah and hamas
were fought along the lines of
traditional military combat with heavy
casualties on both sides
that was until the second in davada in
2002
where israelis fought in nablus
redefining the very battlefield of war
by using urban warfare combat techniques
to take the city
the israeli military rather than using
the streets
where troops were vulnerable to
guerrilla tactics did something much
more surreal
and superhuman they began to walk
through walls
marked by a low number of israeli
casualties this postmodern approach to
urban warfare
was heralded as a great success and
embraced by israeli military planners
but the combat resulted in very public
civilian casualties
and immense collateral damage to train
soldiers in the fundamentals of urban
warfare
israel broke ground in 2005 on the urban
warfare training center in se
lim built with labor and significant
funding from the us military
the 45 million facility is one of the
largest
and most technologically advanced of its
kind in the world
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this might look like an arab town but
it's not
it's built by the israeli defence force
in order to make sure that their troops
are the best urban fighters in the world
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modern warfare doesn't take place in
open fields like it used to be
and we realized that we have to change
the scenery that we're training
do you have a fake name for this town
yeah it's called balladia
yeah which means like a city in arabic
so it's a real city with street lights
and and everything
this is the mosque in ballardia norfolk
city yeah
um and unlike a mosque in gaza i guess
we can go in yeah sure
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wow yeah it's huge 600 houses
one square kilometer in size
we're trying to to make the city even
feel like the
city life and everything we use the
mosques to
call the praise for five times a day for
the daily praise
we gotta practice as real as we can get
as we'll see that in
real action balladia spans nearly five
thousand acres
with all of the basic structures and
amenities of a town with the help of
simulation experts
the chameleon city mimics locations in
lebanon
gaza the west bank or syria depending on
the day
here the israeli military practice and
hone the latest techniques of urban
warfare
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this is weird we're basically standing
in the middle of a
gunfight yeah pretty much right now
they're just facing the
first few squads of the enemy
to try to booby trap some of the houses
and
what other booby traps do you mean just
snipers waiting or
bombs or bombs bombs in cars lots of
bombs
and snipers that sort of thing we didn't
find in modern armies so we have
to be updated all the time because if we
won't do that we won't win the battle
training is vital israel may have gained
the upper hand utilizing urban warfare
techniques at nablus in 2002 but it was
hezbollah
during the 2006 lebanon war that proved
to be better trained
as they seized the advantage in villages
and urban areas
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it's about a half a mile between here
and the town they've got to make sure
there's absolutely no enemy competence
on route
so slowly but surely they're running
forwards uh
clearing the area and then they're going
to end up in the middle of a city
running up and down stairs blown up
walls and
uh generally themselves
what these guys are going through is
effectively the future of
warfare less and less are there going to
be
regular wars with two armies facing off
against one another
instead it's going to be small squads
storming cities
and facing unseen enemies right let's go
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i'm not sure i'd fancy my chances of
taking a city after running across
this desert
i've made it up to the town borders
the next step is getting in without
getting shot
okay so the most important thing they're
doing here is they're avoiding the
streets
if you were in guards or the streets
with booby trap there'd be snipers
everywhere
what you've got to do is basically make
tunnels through the buildings you've got
to go through walls over walls
you've got to break through into
people's living rooms bust their way
through there
it's strange it's where the private
space suddenly becomes public space it
becomes
the theater of war
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so they discover that there's a
terrorist outside so they're securing
the building
so they've shut all the doors they've
got all the windows covered and
everyone's freaking out
you have to be really sharp because
everything is a threat
a window is a threat stairs are a threat
the rooftop is a threat so down there
you can see the main road
the most dangerous place for these guys
because there's no cover whatsoever
they're making their way from building
to building always avoiding open spaces
and that's that's going to be the
reality of the future you've got to
avoid the streets otherwise you're going
gonna be
shot by a smartphone
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come on
so the objective today was to capture
this guy back here in the t-shirt
and he was playing the baddie so they
charged in
he started letting off some rounds but
then neutralize them
urban warfare is actually the
basic thing that we train for these days
in the
idf we see that most democratic
countries
not fight against each other but against
terrorist groups
unfortunately we have lots of experience
but we would prefer to gain most of our
experience in training not in fighting
obviously
but i think natto and the u.s army
gained a lot of experience in the
last few years in afghanistan and iraq
which is pretty similar
it's a change that will affect the
entire western world to build more
facilities in order to
to prepare ourselves for the next war
the challenges are endless i mean the
danger is endless
15 years ago 10 years ago the urban
fighting would be only for special units
but now it's come to day-to-day training
it's our
biggest mission it's it's it's wherever
we go whether it's
lebanon if we go to gaza if it's to the
west bank
wherever we go it's urban fighting i've
been here three or four times and every
time i've yet there's been
an army from a different country coming
to china we have seen the marines i've
seen the un training here i mean
militaries from all over the world come
and
train here the second you go into urban
fighting you just go into a wall there
are people above you so you've got
people above you people behind you
people on the side
person can be a meter away from you and
you won't know that he exists
so the danger and the challenges come
from every single degree
what would you do if you go into a house
and there's a woman there and
she says that she's by herself and you
have to go and you know there's a bomb
what do you do do you shoot you're not
shoot it's something we look to prevent
in any case and in
every price but the one thing we have is
to protect our lives
we as soldiers have a mission to protect
our country and protect ourselves
and to fight for anyone who's willing to
come up against us
as long as they progress we have to
progress and if we progress they have to
progress
and i'm 100 sure that all the other
armies and all their terrorist
organizations that we fight to gains are
progressing
and therefore our tactics also changing
so i think the progression will never
stop
even with a new training facility and
greater focus on urban combat
israel might not be able to get the drop
on his future opponents
as israelis train in seyalim hezbollah
continues to fight alongside the
government in syria
undoubtedly developing and learning new
urban warfare tactics
how the idf's training in simulated
villages will measure up to hezbollah's
real world experience
is a big question but what's certain is
that urban warfare will continue to
mutate and evolve
in a response and counter response cycle
with no foreseeable end in sight
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so
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you