Underground Warfare Reimagined

About the Episode

For decades, underground warfare was viewed as a niche military problem. Today, it has become a defining feature of modern conflict. From Hamas’s extensive tunnel network beneath Gaza and Hezbollah’s underground infrastructure in Lebanon to Iran’s hardened missile facilities and the expanding subterranean systems in Ukraine, North Korea, and China, military forces are increasingly using the underground for protection, command and control, logistics, and maneuver. As drones, persistent surveillance, artificial intelligence, and precision strike make the surface battlefield more transparent and lethal, the strategic value of operating beneath it continues to grow.

In this episode of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer is joined by Asher Katz, cofounder and COO of Traysar Industries and a former member of the Israel Defense Forces’ elite Yahalom unit, one of the world’s premier organizations dedicated to underground warfare. Drawing on his operational experience in Gaza and his work developing next-generation subterranean technologies, Katz explains why underground warfare is fundamentally different from combat on the surface. The discussion examines the unique challenges of fighting below ground, the evolution of Hamas’s tunnel strategy, lessons emerging from Ukraine, why destroying tunnels is often far more difficult than locating them, and why militaries must rethink doctrine, organizations, and capabilities for this increasingly important battlespace dimension.

The conversation also looks beyond today’s battlefield to the future of warfare beneath the surface. Spencer and Katz examine the concept of the subterra domain, arguing that underground warfare should be viewed alongside land, sea, air, space, and cyber as a distinct operational domain. They discuss emerging robotic systems, autonomous technologies, and new approaches to subterranean maneuver that could fundamentally reshape future military operations. As adversaries continue investing below ground, the episode argues that success in future wars will depend not simply on defeating underground networks, but on learning to operate within them.