Urban Warfare

Two weeks ago our company was given the special opportunity to learn some of the basics of urban warfare in one of the world's largest Urban Warfare Training Centers (according to our commanders, it is basically unheard of to start learning about urban war during basic training). The article below might help to give you a better idea:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1167467790418

I think due to some scheduling issues the "city" was available and our Company Commander didn't want to pass on the opportunity.
I will definitely say that is was the most interesting week I have had in the army. The city has various sections that help to demonstrate various Arab cities. For instance, some cities have buildings that are more spread out while others may be more crowded.
We started out learning how to enter a room individually. The process basically entails placing the neck of the gun on the doorframe and slowly rotating so that you can see 90 degrees of the room (without exposing your body in the doorframe). We then moved on to pairs and eventually groups of four. As the week progressed we also learned: how to move through the city as a team (i.e. - one person keeping an eye on roofs, someone navigating, someone always looking behind, etc.), various formations for crossing open sections of the street that leave you vulnerable, how to get your team over 15 foot walls (both with and without a ladder), and how to set various types of ambushes.
Towards the end of the week we were given two opportunities to practice what we had learned. On Wednesday we were broken into small groups and given paintball guns, which were almost identical to our normal M-16s. After breaking into teams we practiced how to enter a room in pairs, while the rest of the group acted as the enemy. I don't know how realistic the paintball exercise actually was, but it was definitely fun!
Thursday night was the culmination of everything we had learned. There are four teams in the company and each team was given a mission that they had to complete. My team was told that they had received information about a terrorist who was smuggling in weapons. Our commanders sat us down and showed us aerial photos of the city. They broke us into three small groups of four, explained which house we would be going to, how we would get there, and what each group's job would be. There was one group who would be setting up in a house across the street and keeping look-out/cutting off an escape route. The second group was going to set up in an alleyway across from the house and cut off a second possible route. The third group, which happened to be my group, was responsible for entering the house and making the arrest.
It was considered a small test to see what we had learned, and it was taken pretty seriously. We were given blanks, painted our faces, pretty much the whole nine-yards. When we got to the house the "terrorist" opened fire on us right before we entered the house. We ran in and returned fire and simulated throwing a few grenades for good measure. After we killed the terrorist we were informed that one of the members of the team had been wounded (apparently something that had been planned in order to check whether or not we knew what to do if someone was wounded). We opened the stretcher and proceeded to make our way out of the city.
When we finished the mission we were told that the team had done really well and apparently the terrorist, who knew that we were coming, hadn't seen us and was genuinely surprised when we got to the door. After the drill I got the opportunity to be a terrorist for one of the other teams, which was also a lot of fun.