[AWildC182]

In terms of military doctrine, one thing that really struck me recently was learning that urban areas are considered similarly to mountain ranges and water from a theater-maneuvering point of view. Your tanks will get bogged down in a town just as fast as if you tried to drive them through a swamp. With the rise of increasingly large urban centers, a modern conflict could be very different than the second world war... At least until the slaugherbots are perfected :P

[jandrese]

Urban combat is terrifying. In an open field a tank is pretty hard to counter since they can see further and shoot better than a person. It's very hard to hide, especially from IR.

In a city there is almost an uncountable number of places for someone to hide and launch an ambush. They can get extremely close to a target without being detected, which opens up a lot of options for anti-tank warfare. They can also block paths extremely easily (with say a dried up cement truck) and neutralize combat vehicles. They also have a good idea of where you will be when planting IEDs, unlike in a wide open field.

[azernik]

One big lesson of the Libyan and Syrian Civil Wars was that, in an even close-to-symmetric war, large urban areas modified for military use are more effective than purpose-built fortifications for defense.