I was hoping to produce these once a term, but then skipped 2023 totally and only did one in 2024! Will aim for 2 a year from here on. They summarise what I've done since the last report, and what I hope to do by the next one.

Nov 24 - PDF Newsletter

Dec 22 - PDF Newsletter

Jul 22 - PDF Newsletter

• Made and released a video of my VCOW introductory talk on Wargaming Urban Conflict
• Wrote my first battle summary on Ortona
• Wrote the first full rolling synposis of the thesis
• Wrote a provisional Introduction for the thesis (bit long at 8000 words!)
• Made changes to Christmas in Hell to make it Christmas in Hell v1.5 and played it at COW2022 - see blog post
• Set up Obsidian as my Personal Knowledge Management/Second Brain tool - absolutely loving it still, see my Medium article.
• Wrote and submitted my research plan
• Drafted two very short satellite papers, probably destined for The Nugget initially but will post here once I'm happy with them
• Hit 150 wargames on the database
• Finished listening to every episode of the Urban Warfare Podcast and read a fair number of books and articles
• Played Battle for Donetsk, Battle for Hue, Battle for Mosul, Tango Down and Storm Over Arnhem - see urban_wargame_reviews
• Goals for next term:
  • Get the Research Plan approved
  • Start working on Ethics, and hopefully get it submitted
  • Write the Urban Development Chapter/Section of the thesis
  • Start writing the History of Urban Warfare chapter
  • Start writing the Historiography of Urban Warfare chapter
  • Start work on at least one satellite paper for publication
  • Do another video
  • read more books/articles, watch more video lectures, play more games, work up CiHv2/my own Storm Over Arnhem derivative game, and perhaps Rubble Town, a card game based on the CiH/SoA mechanics.

A few things that are particularly interesting me so far and may guide the work:

• I don't want to get stuck in CQB/FIBUA, tactical person to person fighting.
• I'm more interested in Bn/Bde level operations in the urban environment, where they can be fully combined arms and even Joint.
• I'm deliberately referring to the topic as “urban conflict” as I'm interested in the effects based approach - i.e. can you seize the city by other means then fighting for it - this goes right back to Sun Tzu
• I'm also interested in the notions of “city plus” - a modern city may have a large and dispersed hinterland which reaches back even to other countries (for instance migrant workers from the Indian sub-continent working in Qatar)
• And of course city-as-system and city-as-organism
• I'm very interested in the experience of the civilian population and how we can act to best protect them (again by probably not entering the city in the first place)

Game wise:

• I'm particularly interested in manual games - even if delivered on something like Roll20/Tabletop Simulator
• I think I'm also interested in games which could be readily played by the formation/unit itself, in a reasonable (half day?) timescales and with no external support - otherwise things just won't scale - but I need to build the case for that
• I'd love to do a game from the civilian point of view