Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Close Quarters Battle

2015; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 42; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0095327x15588292

1556-0848

Anthony King,

Military History and Strategy

Many scholars have recognized the growing likelihood of urban military operations in the future. Understandably, given the seriousness of this prospect, most commentators have focused on the operational and political difficulties of fighting in cities. At the same time, precisely because of the intense challenges of urban operations, these scholars have also emphasized that urban operations increasingly require highly professionalized infantry and especially Special Forces. Nevertheless, they have tended to ignore recent innovations at the tactical level among these specialist infantry units. This article seeks to address this oversight. It examines contemporary developments in urban micro-tactics among Western forces. Specifically, this article addresses the dissemination of Close Quarters Battle techniques, originally developed by Special Operations Forces in the 1970s, to regular infantry in the last decade as a result of urban operations Iraq and Afghanistan. In this way, this article contributes to contemporary debates about professionalization in Western armed forces today.