[Editor’s Note: Army Mad Scientist welcomes back Dr. John Ringquist, 2025’s “Maddest” Guest Blogger! In this fictional piece, Dr. Ringquist sets the scene in the 2030s as the post-colonial fractured nation of Nitenia battles a rebel insurgency in its megacity, Emong. The rebels, known as the Eko Republic, utilize asymmetrical tactics and increasingly proliferated technologies (such as drone swarms) to turn the battle into a full quagmire for the federal state.
Dr. Ringquist creates a complex hybrid battlefield where the state not only has to contend with the rebels, but also organized criminals, a hostile population, and foreign mercenaries. Through his focus on the tactical and operational challenges that a conventional force faces in a contested, littoral urban environment, he demonstrates why the United States Army could adapt its operational structure and mobility to successfully win in such a theater — Read on!]
Taking ground and holding it mean different things in a hybrid battlefield. The stinking heat of the city was almost overwhelming. Despite having the best tech in the world and plenty of intel support, a city of thirty-eight million souls was a formidable operating environment. The government’s tenuous hold on the city was slipping – less than 10% remained in its hands – the
rest wrestled away by a combination of ethnic militias and gangs under Black Axe leadership determined to carve it up into their own fiefdoms. These competitors possessed weapons just as lethal as the government, technology as good (in some cases better), and people as fired up to defend their turf. The United Nations responded to the situation in Nitenia through its usual attempts to foster mediation between factions, while inserting Peacekeepers into a tinderbox about to explode. Blue helmets watched nervously from fortified compounds while factions shifted their loyalties and resources across the massive city’s footprint. 
Conflict over the past two years had sucked in every lesson learned from brushfire wars across the world to be distilled to
the situation that Nitenia faced in 2037: a failing state that lost its monopoly over violence years prior, a religious reawakening fueled by digital prophets, and urban guerrillas as versed in Mao as much as they were in Russian hybrid warfare lessons from Sahel states. The city was under siege from within, drones prowled the skies and hunted targets like mechanical birds of prey from mystic realms heavy with harmattan dust or steel-gray clouds.
The Emong Effect
The fall of the central Nitenian state began with an attempted coup in 2025 that nearly toppled the democratic government. By itself it was not a radical break from Nitenia’s past, one marked by eleven total coups since independence from the United Kingdom in 1960. It was however the slow and inexorable breaking of the dam holding back all of the military and local leaders’ frustrations with the government’s failed attempts to combat the various insurgencies that ravaged Nitenia between 2000 and 2025.
In 2033 a coup succeeded in toppling the government and replacing it with a military junta. In turn, the junta rapidly lost control of the security situation as whole regions began to pull away from the state. Military task forces failed to restore order through violent crackdowns, and breakaway states formed their own armed forces from militias or the standing armies of traditional chiefs. Organized criminal groups sensed weakness and pounced on the state’s oil and gas resources. By 2034 the United Nations deployed NITEMIL to Nitenia in an attempt to counter the influx of weapons and mercenaries that were recreating the historical conditions of the Kurani War, a previous rebellion against the state in the 20th century.
Fighting in cities is an enormous undertaking, though it had to be done. Emong was where the best port, road, and rail arteries led into the body of Nitenia, the nation’s economic heart. Isolating the new Eko Republic that had taken up residence there meant taking the city and breaking the rebels’ contact with the world and sympathetic allies. Historians know that the initial wave of amphibious operations began with forces in the Central and Eastern Naval Commands still loyal to the Nitenian state. These forces had been trained to support land operations in the preceding decade and had even conducted amphibious exercises against targets in Emong the decade prior. However, plans can fail and despite the best wargame preparations and planning, the unexpected can change the calculus of war in a flash.
The attack, code named OPERATION GUDUMAR KARFE was met by the fierce resistance of millions of Emongians that no longer saw common cause with others in the once-united Nitenia. As had happened in prior years to numerous conventional forces across littoral African states and along Eastern Europe’s coasts, Nitenia’s naval forces were met with new technologies and asymmetrical tactics that lashed out with unexpected fury. 
When Nitenian Navy vessels launched rigid hull inflatable vessels to insert commandos into the city, Eko’s own Special Forces from the defunct Special Boat Services deployed against them in a ferocious seaborne battle that witnessed anti-tank and air-to-air missiles repurposed as anti-ship weapons. Swarms of locally produced drones rose from the rooftops of the city; a mix of surveillance and attack drones armed with a melange of military mortar bombs and home lab-produced incendiaries. Thousands of drones connected with helicopters, aircraft, and ship radars. The Emongian drone operators that died under a rain of naval gunfire and missiles were replaced by others that continued sending forth swarms of drones day and night. Forward Looking Infrared-equipped surveillance drones located targets and sank ships while the night was illuminated by Emong’s burning slums. The ensuing battle was fought for almost four days and resulted in the annihilation of both groups’ naval forces and most of the Nitenian Air Force. 
A separate contingent of Nitenian land forces that tried to enter the city through airborne assault were surrounded and taken prisoner by Black Hand gang militias. The armored rush into the eastern parts of Emong ended in a flaming debacle as vehicles faltered under a relentless series of drone attacks at the hands of Ukrainian and Libyan mercenary operators. The same tactics made famous in northern and eastern Ukraine played out against both Soviet-era armor and newer Chinese vehicles. The Nitenian artillery and aircraft lashed out against the tanks’ tormentors, but piles of burning tires defeated observers within minutes. Nature stymied efforts to bypass the Emongians’ hastily dug obstacles and minefields. The network of marshes and canals at the outskirt of Emong proved as impassible as any complex manmade obstacle. The coup de main had failed. 
The decisive event that secured the Eko Republic’s justification for independence was its replication of the Ukrainian Operation Spiderweb attack on Russian airfields in 2025, this time against the Nitenian state. Eko commandos carefully crated and transported domestically produced attack drones from the factories in Emong to northern Nitenia. The facilities that once supplied Nitenia’s Air Force with drones capable of dropping hundreds of kilograms of munitions used their stockpiles of material to create every possible heavy lift drone for the attack. While the United Nations tried to maintain the peace, the Eko Republic commandos tucked their drone crates into the compounds of northern sympathizers.
When the attack took off from these compounds, linked by mesh communications and some of the best technology that the “Eko Silicon Valley” engineers ever devised, surprise was complete. There was no need for Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses, the bomb drones were accompanied by unarmed reconnaissance drones that used their electronic warfare pods to overwhelm the local defenses. The bases in Kaiuji and Banadu were hit hard and without spares, the Nitenian state was left without an effective air arm. Their once powerful aircraft now rotted in the sun. Federal state defeat earned the Eko Republic’s independence.
Implications
The implications for the U.S. Army on a hybrid battlefield from a scenario like this are clear: multiple tactical and strategic dilemmas may exist at the same time and in the same space. Asymmetric warfare should be expected from forces operating in megacities where armed gangs can outnumber conventional militaries and overwhelm them through swarm attacks in confined spaces. Civil Affairs efforts will be a vital part of campaigning. Fighting in mixed environments such as cities that have semi-aquatic floating slums, deep canals, and extensive mid flats can exhaust bridging and mobility support assets and confound weapons systems that can create mass casualties in cramped areas if not carefully employed. Cities that have millions of potential irregular forces can pose threats to conventional force logistics and force a multi-dimensional fight that favors urban defenders. Route security, force mobility, and medical evacuation could all come under attack. Further, consider the potential use of human shields and mobs to block mobility and shield combatants.
In this scenario, the Eko Republic’s forces utilized organic technology and production to create weapons as well as aggressive tactics to neutralize conventional force advantages. Future battlefields will also contain elements of cognitive warfare, identity politics, AI C5ISR, and cyberattacks. The guerrilla may overcome shortfalls in weapons and exquisite systems with solutions sourced from the internet. The technologies referenced all exist in the present day. The weapon systems are already in existence and lack only a reason to deploy them. The implications for this scenario are especially important to consider when we look at the number of littoral cities where combat action could occur in the future. Amidst the high technology and AI aspirations, the next war may be fought like the current one in Ukraine in a battlefield framed by mud, urban spaces, and key terrain embodied in the city’s people. Planners could consider that future war may also be networked, broadcast, and filled with innovations that disrupt assumptions.
If you enjoyed this post, check out the T2COM G-2’s Operational Environment Enterprise web page, brimming with authoritative information on the Operational Environment and how our adversaries fight.
About the Author: Dr. John Ringquist is a retired military officer of thirty-five years Army service. He writes about technology, security, and military topics, and is working on a book about new technologies and the future of war.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of War, Department of the Army, or the U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command (T2COM).
