Military Times FORT BRAGG, N.C. — It is darkness like you’ve never seen. The air you breathe could kill you in moments. All of your fire support — air, armor, artillery — is useless. The walls and ceiling could collapse. Communications will fail. A wrong turn leaves you utterly alone.
Going underground, in dark, tight spaces, can trigger feelings of helplessness in even experienced troops. It is the most primitive and close combat a fighter may face.
“You think you’ve been in a dark environment?” a former special operations soldier-turned trainer said. “Wait until you get into a deep underground facility and the power’s cut. That is scary.”
Welcome to the subterranean.
It is happening in Syria now. Iraqi forces faced it in Mosul. Russia, China, North Korea, Iran all boast complex facilities laced with reinforced command and control and the ability to deploy thousands of troops, tanks, missiles and even launch planes from underground runways.
As with guerrilla fighters in Vietnam, militant groups from Islamic State to Hamas to rebel groups in Africa have expanded their use of the underground, whether in remote caves or by burrowing their way through cities such as the city of Darayya, Syria, for what became tunnel-on-tunnel warfare with the regime.
“They’ve gone underground to match our overmatch,” said retired Army Maj. John Spencer, chairman of Urban Warfare Studies with the Modern War Institute at West Point.
In the Zhawar Kili complex, Navy SEALs encountered a cave system in the early days of the Afghan War. They thought it would take a day to clear. Nine days later they had searched 70 reinforced tunnels, destroying 50 of them, including 60 structures inside a facility that included a mosque, repair shops, a medical facility and communications center.
And that was far from civilian populations. Armies today do not have that luxury.