Thinking I missed something, I looked up Lagos, Nigeria on Google Maps. I turned on terrain. Then ran a perimeter around the city. First "oh shit" moment is the 40 miles of coastline, the lagoon, the river. Good luck securing that, even with drones and minefields. The whole perimeter that I get is... 130 miles. Add into the mix is that Nigeria has just under 200 million people in it. that now see as a cause of kicking your invader ass out of the nation and saving their family behind this perimeter? Yea, now I get the OH SHIT. Bomb the harbour and they land on the beaches. Bomb the rail line (LINE, I see one on the map) and they smuggle goods in by foot and donkey. The highways look modern, but for a city that size there are not that many; LA has more highways than Lagos does. On top of that there are no natural harbours that could be taken over to support a long war occupation so the invaders would need to make a few, and defend them. Jesus, looking at this more and more no wonder they are all but throwing up their hands and saying "lol nope." It is one thing to think of something, another to SEE it. Saturation bombing Lagos would be a war crime. AS IT SHOULD BE. Hell, the French and Germans thought they could take Moscow and conquer Russia. The Russians just kept retreating until General Mud and General Snow took out the enemy. Conquer Lagos and now you have 180 million people walking into the forest and mountains only coming out to play guerilla just like the Vietnamese did. Looking into it from a video gamer history I'm almost wondering if we are beyond the "attack the city" school of warfare. I played "This War of Mine" this year. you play as the civilians in the middle of a city that is under attack and have to avoid both sides while foraging for food, supplies and keeping everyone sane and healthy. Multiply that by a few million. (Side note, the developers are Ukrainian which adds another level to the experience.) All you end up with is a few million people well trained in war tactics that now hate you. Then, I sat for a second and recalled Kowloon. Here was a city of 50-70K people that the authorities had fully surrounded and could not keep drugs and guns out of. Well defined borders with well watched and defined entry and exit points. Granted not exactly the same thing, but then again we cannot keep contraband out of jails and prisons. Hell the North Koreans built massive tunnels under the most fortified border on the planet. Yea, I now see the dread on behalf of the people who have to come up with the plans to deal with this in real life. Once again my brain takes time to process and the difference between reading and understanding jumps up to laugh in my face. This conversation has me wanting to play a game where you try to blockade a mega city. Play it from both ends; the invaders and the blockade runners.We can saturation bomb but we can't even saturation bomb
Even shittier, your greatest chance of declaring victory and going home is tied to your greatest effort to keep the infrastructure functional and the lives of noncombatants/bystanders/citizens/etc as undisrupted as possible and your options all start with "bomb the." The report - it's worth reading; I did, but it's been a while - concluded that for Cities of a Certain Size, it's not if you'll stumble into a perpetual quagmire, its whether you're tactful enough to keep the President from ever sending you there because sorry, honey, it already is. It basically says you can't even start with "here's where we'll build our massive $2b green zone fortress of solitude" because you will never hold territory securely enough to bother.Yea, I now see the dread on behalf of the people who have to come up with the plans to deal with this in real life.