Innovations enhance urban warfare training

Australia’s infantry soldiers will be better prepared for urban warfare with the introduction of innovations such as the Dismounted Austere Shoot House (DASH), enhanced urban training aids and the new Urban Operations Exponent Program. 

The DASH, funded through the Army Minors Program, supports evolving training requirements through an engineering process to maintain safety and range performance, while facilitating safe and realistic urban live‑fire training.

WO2 Phillip Brown, of the School of Infantry Urban Training Team (SOI UTT), said the DASH featured modular partitions enabling the deployment of training grenades and breaching tools, such as shotguns, for methods of entry (MoE).

“The DASH supports breaking in and fighting through a single-storey building. It has supported the development and refinement of infantry urban tactics, techniques and procedures, including close-quarters battle, method of entry and command and control. These skills contribute to what is required to win the complex urban fight,” WO2 Brown said.

The development of the new MoE breaching doors has been driven by ground‑up innovation, originating with training team instructors and executed with Directorate Land Ranges staff.

The breaching door system incorporates a sacrificial insert made from plywood or corrugated plastic and fitted within a modified door frame. It replaces traditional solid-core doors and allows the use of significantly smaller explosive charges while still achieving the desired training effect.

Sgt Casey Morrison, of the SOI UTT, said the system could be rapidly refurbished, allowing for quick reset-and-repeat serials, increasing training throughput while maintaining realism.

“This is about developing appropriate targets and policy to address risk for our combatants, which we can do through reducing the training or the target medium, or reducing its thickness,” Sgt Morrison said. 

The use of reduced explosive charges also lowers soldiers’ exposure to blast overpressure.

Capt Lachlan Roe, also of the SOI UTT, said it trained soldiers to operate against near-peer adversaries in contested urban environments as part of the integrated force.

“This new training marks a starting point for our soldiers to develop their core skills over their career and become well-rounded and more lethal operators in the urban environment,” Capt Roe said.

“With more than 50 per cent of the world’s population living in urban environments, and approximately 2.3 billion people living in urban areas within the Indo‑Pacific region, our infantry needs to be competent and confident operating in those environments.

“If we don’t have standardised training, it essentially risks our soldiers having fragmented, unit-specific procedures and tactics, which are born out of necessity rather than a standardised framework that we can all operate from.”

Lt Edward Toohey, of 3RAR, was part of a multinational regimental officer basic course undertaking their first urban operations training at the School of Infantry at the Singleton Training Area, NSW.

“It is a lot more dynamic than I thought it would be,” Lt Toohey said. 

“This package is being rolled out across the RAR, and when DASH live-fire facilities are available, this will enable advanced training outcomes. I think that is going to make us a lot better across the board.”