Urban Warfare Project John Spencer

In this episode, John Spencer is joined by Samuel Bendett. An analyst with the Center for Naval Analyses, he specializes in Russian unmanned military systems and artificial intelligence. In the conversation, he discusses his work tracking Russian technological advancements. He also describes various unmanned aerial and ground vehicles Russia is experimenting with for urban combat and explains how lessons learned from Russia's recent experiences fighting in Syria is impacting Russian force development.

In this episode, John Spencer is joined by Dr. Sokwoo Rhee. The Associate Director of Cyber-Physical Systems Innovation at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, he is currently leading the Global City Teams Challenge, a program that aims to create a replicable and scalable model for collaborative incubation and deployment of Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems solutions to improve the quality of life in smart cities around the world.

In this episode of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined the Colorado Springs Police Chief Vince Niski to discuss urban policing. In the conversation, Chief Niski explains the basics of urban policing, how the size of the police force and frequency of patrols in dense urban areas is determined, technologies that can be used to assist in urban policing, and recommendations for the military about advising police forces.

This episode features a conversation with Nicholas Marchuk, the special operations forces training and testing development lead at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center. Unlike other US Army urban training sites, Muscatatuck is not a mock city, but real urban terrain that includes everything from a five-story hospital, a jail, and a water plant to urban pattern-of-life features like a closed cell phone and cyber network.

In this episode, John Spencer is joined by Dr. Saskia Sassen, the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. She is the author of eight books, including Cities in a World Economy and The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, and the editor or co-editor of three books, most recently Cities at War: Global Insecurity and Urban Resistance. She joins to discuss her research on global cities, a term she coined to describe cities in which a multiplicity of globalization processes assume concrete, localized forms.

This episode features a conversation with Col. David Gardner, the commander of the Operations Group at the Army's Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana. He explains the types of urban training available to units, including attacks against the mock cities of Shughart-Gordon and Dara Lam. He also describes some of the challenges he sees units most frequently confront during their execution of large-scale urban training exercises.