The setting isn't Iraq or Afghanistan, although it's designed to look like it. This is the live-fire "shoot house" at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, home of the 82nd Airborne Division. The shoot house is a plywood labyrinth of hallways and rooms populated by paper targets overlaid on bullet-absorbing armor. The targets include caricatures of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden wielding pistols and machine guns.

The facility is meant to prepare soldiers for the kind of close urban fighting that has characterized combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"They will enter and clear a room, practicing dynamic and mechanical breeches," says 1st Lieutenant Matt Utley from Delta Company. A "breech" is a forced entry through a blocked door. "It really simulates the current operating environment they're going to be working in."

Just a few years ago, these urban-fighting skills were practiced only by Rangers, Special Forces and other commandoes. The urban battlefield was considered too lethal for even the aggressive paratroopers. But new equipment and - more importantly - better training have turned all American infantry into urban fighters.

Adjacent to the shoot-house is a range where the paratroopers practice "reflexive firing." That is, shooting on the move at targets that appear beside or behind them. It's dangerous training: moving troopers firing live rounds on a crowded range. But with their instructors closely watching, the 2nd Battalion paratroopers rise to the occasion, poking 5.56-millimeter-diameter holes in paper targets using their compact M-4 carbines.

The carbine, a derivative of the M-16 rifle, is specially designed for close-quarters fighting. It has a short barrel, meaning it can be brought to bear more easily in tight quarters such as in a hallway. And it has rails for fitting laser pointers, lights and other devices that help a soldier see and aim inside darkened buildings. Following the collapse of the Army's next-generation XM-8 rifle program, the M-4 will eventually equip all active-duty soldiers.

Thanks to new weapons and training, these soldiers are more lethal than ever, according to Major Thomas Earnhardt, a division spokesman. "They can shoot a flying bird through the eye."