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Military geography is a sub-field of geography that is used by, not only the military, but also academics and politicians to understand the geopolitical sphere through the military lens. Following the Second World War, Military Geography has become the “application of geographic tools, information, and techniques to solve military problems in peacetime or war.” To accomplish these ends, military geographers must consider diverse geographical topics from geopolitics to the physical locations’ influences on military operations and from the cultural to the economic impacts of a military presence. Military Geography is the most thought-of tool for geopolitical control imposed upon territory. Without the framework that the military geographer provides, a commander’s decision-making process is cluttered with multiple inputs from environmental analysts, cultural analysts, and many others. Without the military geographer to put all of the components together, a unit might know of the terrain, but not the drainage system below the surface. In that scenario, the unit would be at a disadvantage if the enemy uses the drainage system to ambush the unit. The complexities of the battlefield are multiplied in cases of urban warfare. :— Baron De Jomini〔p.215, Jomini〕 == Urbanistics == Due to the highly complex problems that urban development have given the military geographer, a term has been coined by Russian Colonel N.S. Olesik that can be applied to any military’s geography unit responsible for analyzing the urban environment: “military geo-urbanistics.” Fighting in the open country is much simpler; all that there is to deal with is the terrain, weather, and the enemy. However, urban combat involves much more than the weather, enemy, and terrain. The terrain is even more complex within urban areas, filled with many structures and transformations of the land by the inhabitants. Also, within urban areas the geographer must work with or work around the people. No matter the situation, there are always people that will cooperate. Likewise there are always those that will oppose, and there are also those that are caught between the two factions. The difficulties for any military conducting operations within urban areas begin with the man-made structures that are what make an area urban. The different buildings themselves bring forth their own difficulties; obviously, this is due to the different types of structures that make up an urban area. The most dangerous aspect of urban warfare for U.S. troops, are the roadside bomb, has become a deadly reality because of the narrow streets that convoys must use to get from one point to another within the confines of urban areas. Ambushes are more likely to be set up in or around heavily populated areas rather than the larger “industrial” locales that urban areas are set up around. In today’s wars this is common practice for guerrilla warriors often due to a western nation's unwillingness to bomb a neighborhood or hospital. In an urban area, especially cities, the dominance of air power is limited by the buildings’ ability to restrict visibility from the air and because of the possible collateral damage. During an urban operation it is almost impossible for there not to be any collateral damage; the people are just too close to the action. Also, with the theater of urban combat, there are some people that will oppose the invading force, and sometimes that opposition will be armed opposition. The armed opposition, of course, makes it very difficult to identify enemy combatants from civilians. This is the case in the ongoing Iraq war. In many cases occupying troops fight residents of the cities they are occupying. Insurgents often conceal themselves in the rest of the population and may employ vehicle bombs and suicide bombing. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「military geography」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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