Fm 31 28 Fouo Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat 1 December 1999 25 May 2026
The tactics in FM 31-28 were state-of-the-art for 1999, but two decades of continuous war in Iraq and Afghanistan drastically changed how the U.S. Army approaches urban combat.
To understand the significance of FM 31-28, one must look at the geopolitical climate of 1999.
Efforts via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for FM 31-28 (1999) have yielded mostly redacted responses. However, known excised portions include: The tactics in FM 31-28 were state-of-the-art for
The manual introduced the concept of "acoustic shadowing" – using the echoes between buildings to mask movement. It included decibel tables for suppressed weapons vs. background urban noise (e.g., a subway train passing at 30 mph generates 95 dB, acceptable for M4 with suppressor).
By 1999, the U.S. Army recognized that future wars would not be fought solely in the German Fulda Gap or the deserts of Iraq. Instead, conflicts were moving into sprawling megacities: Mogadishu (1993), Grozny (1994-95), and the ongoing Balkan peacekeeping operations. For Special Forces, whose primary mission was Unconventional Warfare (UW) – training guerrillas in denied territory – the urban environment was a nightmare. How do you run a resistance cell in a city of 2 million, under pervasive surveillance, with vertical terrain and civilians everywhere? SF teams were taught to transition between these
Unlike conventional doctrine (surface/sub-surface), FM 31-28 divided the city into:
SF teams were taught to transition between these zones every 15-30 minutes to avoid pattern tracking. and certain JSOC elements.
The document was marked FOUO, not Secret or Top Secret. FOUO is a handling caveat, not a classification. This meant the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) were sensitive but did not involve cryptographic or intelligence sources. According to declassified records, FM 31-28 was restricted because:
Because foreign intelligence services could use this information to harden their cities against SF infiltration, the Army restricted distribution to Special Forces units, SWC instructors, and certain JSOC elements.