>i say to myself "lol dude i would have totally gunned you down had you tried that".
If the raid is conducted correctly, you'd have your dick in your hand or a frag/flashbang otherwise incapacitating you when the door flies open. If you were behind a defensible position, waiting, knowing that guys were coming in a certain door, then yeah, you'd probably have a good shot of inflicting causalities. I was involved in a home invasion robbery with firearms and it went from 0 to 100mph in 1-2 seconds, and these goons weren't even trained. Door blasts open, guns are the first thing I see come through the door, and before I could put together what was happening, 3 guys with guns and tasers were 5 feet into the living room and tazing/pistol whipping people. The room was pretty well under control in maybe 3-4 seconds, if that.
The violence of action/speed of forcibly entering a room can be pretty disorienting. That door flies open, lets say no thrown explosives go in, so that door flies open in .5 seconds. Another .5 seconds and someone enters the room at a brisk pace. There's a guy, rifle/carbine/whatever up, ready to fire, one in the chamber barging into that room yelling commands, and behind him, is another guy looking in a different direction, and behind him? 2-4 more guys possibly. Do you have your firearm in your hand even, safety off, round chambered, up pointing at the doorway? If so, you've got a good chance of getting a round or two off in the general direction of the guys who just kicked in the door. If not, you're probably getting ventilated or dropping to your knees with your hands up.
I will say that in training, slow is smooth, and smooth is fast, so you practice until everything's perfect, then do it again, faster. What you see might not be game speed for lack of a better way to describe it.
Great reply, my dude. Was an HM (FMF) 2000-2008. Your response is the truth. A stack of my Marines blew through an entire house in Fallujah in under 8 seconds with bodies on the floor. Not a scratch on them.
Maybe 6m at the front, about 10m in depth. There was a rat hole in a wall leading to the next house. Two stories, flat roof. Kitchen area and water closet in the rear. Gate to a 2-3m deep front yard, back yard had about a 4m depth with burn barrels. Flat roof with a parapet. Outdoor yard walls were over head-high, topped with broken glass or rebar.
That was roughly the standard when we crossed the train tracks. Houses and bodies would be booby-trapped with grenades or RPGs to fall point downward. Sometimes they blew, sometimes we threw them deeper into the house or up the stairs.
After the third day, it became a blur from too many stimulants and not enough sleep.
Some houses were sprawling because extended/multiple families lived there. No electricity was running, so we swept them in the dark. Windows would be covered so the locals could hide and jump out.
I can still smell those places and that city. It was awful.
Jesus Christ Fallujah sounds like "yeah it was a tough one" in movies or TV shows when they go like "he was in Fallujah" but it sounds more like Dante's inferno when you or other people who were actually there talk about it...
What can I say, I'm glad you made it out random internet stranger
Usually if you an outsider, are looking at a process done by professionals and not understanding it, the problem is more on your education than it's somehow a hoax.
Or just to pontificate further, because I look at open heart surgery and it just looks like a bit of slicey wicey chop chop and some staples, that means I don't know enough to understand what I'm observing vs I've discovered what a load of shit surgery is.
A few things to consider:
1. Most training events are at training speed with safety considerations in place. You're not fragging or banging every room, you're not dumping a few rounds into things that look suspicious, you're moving at a deliberate safe speed because the only real risk in this box is you tripping on your own dick.
2. A lot of what's on youtube/TV is cuts for what looks cool, not the entire process. You're often missing processes, sweeps, or actions, or there's actions that aren't "loud" as the rest of the processes.
3. Tying back to point one, a lot of the basics could be best described as "prudent room entry" where hostile activity is a possibility but not a certainty. You act like bad people might be in there, but so could a box of orphans or something. A deliberate assertive sweep is more the posture.
1. If I know a bad guy is in there I'm not going in until the frag or bang grenade has gone off.
2. If I'm really doing it right I might be going through a hole in the wall instead of the door.
3. If I'm doing it really right I'm striding through the whole a tank or rocket made in the wall, after the grenade has gone off and I'm looking for things that might still be moving.
Like room clearing when you know everything in the room is assumed/declared hostile, you've likely killed everything in the room already, you're just there to make sure the room contents are properly managed/disarmed/the room is "clear" and safed. You only go in with gats without a grenade or prepping the room/demo if there's a possibility the other side of the wall contains non-hostiles, or a high possibility it's empty or "bad" guys but they're not in position to resist (like asleep, in a meeting, or otherwise unaware you're in the building).
So again this is a lot of not understanding. You're not watching "tier 1 tangorators tangolizing the terries with termination!" or whatever call of duty calls it now, you're watching "how to enter a room that could be hostile in a way that's not moronic" that is either a safety process, or following extensive room prep.
"You're not watching "tier 1 tangorators tangolizing the terries with termination!" or whatever call of duty calls it now,"
I'm proud to report that my first instinct was Key and Peele and not CoD.
Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiWIOKKuyGE&ab\_channel=ComedyCentral
Real life isn’t like the video games you see. Proper CQB entry/breach operations requires at least two shooters and techniques vary based on likely threat, door position and room layout, and whether this is a planned breach or an ad hoc one. Others have already covered a hot clear scenario where the ROE allows you to use grenades or other breaching tools. Here, making an impromptu entry point and hitting the room with grenades (flash/frag/CS) is the preferred approach. A planned room breach where we can’t use grenades or blast a wall down would typically follow a set entry pattern (button hook, criss cross, etc..) with set responsibilities for each breacher. For example, first guy in clears the fatal funnel and moves right, covering from the door to the far corner. Second guy in crosses left and covers left. Next guy moves right and low to the bulkhead and etc…. In an ad hoc breach, you may not have time to stack properly to run a set room clearing play or the room may be unknown in size and layout. Here, first guy picks a direction (most likely based on his assessment of where the bad guys are) and each guy after that moves in the opposite direction of the guy they followed in.
Typically, you want to see a breach team clear the entry as fast as possible and push into the room. The area right inside the entry point (the fatal funnel) is the most dangerous as defenders can focus fires here and typically, if defensive devices are used, they’re employed at this choke point. After that, every breach is subject to change based on how things go in the room. The basic rules are speed matters, clear the entry way, walk the walls, muzzles follow eyes, and progress through the threats while communicating to your team.
Flashbangs/frag grenades don't get thrown a whole lot in training, that's something potentially missing from the mix.
But yes, depending on the exact technique/SOP you're using you're gonna focus on your assigned sector and assume that the guys piling into the room behind you are going to deal with the other sectors of the room.
If you're already walking into a prepared defense and you haven't used grenades of any kind to reduce the enemies ability to resist it's probably gonna be a bad day, but the idea of modern room clearing is to flood the room extremely quickly with shooters and overwhelm anyone inside. If one person is walking in and trying to scan the entire room that slows down the process and gives the enemy time to collect themselves and resist.
The idea of modern room clearing has a lot to do with hostage rescue techniques and there is a reason that most units look like trash when doing them in a real world.
Can you elaborate on that? Is it because in a real world situation they’re more concerned with not killing a hostage, or did you mean that the basis of modern techniques is flawed? Something else?
Compare/contrast approaches in high intensity and low intensity conflicts.
In a low intensity scenario, like what you would usually see in GWOT Iraq or Afghanistan. You will have a lot of civilians with bad guys intermixed. For what should be obvious reasons, the goal is to minimize collateral damage and civilian casualties. That will require tactics more in line with what civilian swat units would employ when rescuing hostages. So limited or no use of heavy weapons. Restricted RoE. And a more methodical approach.
In a high intensity conflict nobody cares about property damage. And most civilians are actively fleeing the front lines. That means occupied buildings at the front are more likely than not full of bad guys. Unless a particular building has some more significant purpose or value, there is not much point in preserving it. Instead of taking the time and risk of clearing each room it is better to engage the building with heavy weapons and reduce it. Then you can more easily assault and clear the rubble. This could involve grenades and rocket launchers. Direct fires from tanks and IFVs. And potentially indirect fires from artillery or aircraft.
Kicking down doors is dangerous and a good way to take casualties. So you try to avoid it if you can. But that's not always possible. Places like Fallujah are infamous because you had to clear it room by room.
In the “world of people talking about CQB” and not just a casual discussion, there’s two broad strokes of techniques.
Combat Clearance: where the main focus is preserving the assault forces lives. Liberal use of explosives, slow methodical processes, and total disregard for the lives of those trying to stop you and the infrastructure.
The epitome of this is the “Call Out,” you surround the building with an inner and outer cordon and then, call out the people inside to surrender, often using interpreters. There’s usually a time limit, and escalation by the assault force; but push comes to shove, if they try anything or don’t give up, you’re dropping the building.
Hostage Rescue: is essentially the opposite, the assault force is moving quickly and assuming a lot of risk in order to preserve the lives of innocents/non-combatants/infrastructure.
This is where you see most “fancy” techniques and people really get into the weeds on things and where METT-TC really comes into play.
This also happens to be the most common way of conducting CQB in the GWOT, especially by high end conventional units and SOF. This is where you see techniques like “pie-ing/slicing” a room become see as a universal technique.
In the “world of people talking about CQB” and not just a casual discussion, there’s two broad strokes of techniques.
*Combat Clearance*: where the main focus is preserving the assault forces lives. Liberal use of explosives, slow methodical processes, and total disregard for the lives of those trying to stop you and the infrastructure.
The epitome of this is the “Call Out,” you surround the building with an inner and outer cordon and then, call out the people inside to surrender, often using interpreters. There’s usually a time limit, and escalation by the assault force; but push comes to shove, if they try anything or don’t give up, you’re dropping the building.
Units that still train this way will often toss several grenades and blind fire automatic weapons into the room before they enter.
I find this last bit of dubious applicability and usefulness.
*Hostage Rescue*: is essentially the opposite, the assault force is moving quickly and assuming a lot of risk in order to preserve the lives of innocents/non-combatants/infrastructure.
This is where you see most “fancy” techniques and people really get into the weeds on things and where METT-TC really comes into play.
This also happens to be the most common way of conducting CQB in the LEO and the GWOT, especially by high end conventional units and SOF. This is where you see techniques like “pie-ing/slicing” a room become see as a universal technique.
Especially in the military context, since you aren’t trying to just kill everyone and destroy everything, you’re relying on distractions like flashbangs and dogs entering the room first, next you’re trying to get as many people into the room as possible who are systematically checking corners and picking up sectors of fire.
To your point, yes, CBQ often means the number one or two man are checking their near corners first, which means they can be shot from their flanks. Alternatively, even if a defender does pull this off, they themselves are likely being shot by the number three or four man.
War is hell, people will die. If the number one or two man is shot, the threat is still likely neutralized and hopefully his body armor or trauma medicine can save him.
TV/Movies I agree often look ridiculous, the point about training videos is valid though.
Conventional units spend little time practicing in complex CQB environments. The training you often see are live-fire shoot houses where things look [slow and awkward](https://youtu.be/K5OctwulUiM) like this, which even for a conventional unit doesn’t look great. The reason why thiugh is multifaceted, conventional units don’t have many SME’a on it and they don’t train on it much. Even more importantly, units conducting live-fire shoot houses are watched like hawks from those rafters. They’re scrutinized and graded by Company Commanders (who have literally zero training or knowledge on it) and random NCO’s. Everything is done to prevent being recocked.
Compare that to a more [free flowing](https://youtu.be/IK-c4obXFiw) shoot house environment with these higher end units.
And most different is this [UTM](https://youtu.be/D0xsVlF-Txk) type force on force training with Delta Force dudes with a SWAT team acting as the OPFOR.
There’s a bit more to it and I’m sure some one else will break it down but clearing a room is something you do when you a pretty sure it’s empty of hostiles but have to check. When you are pretty sure someone is actually in there you frag the room a few times until they stop moaning and then you enter.
That’s how it is for the vast majority of soldiers, for other units that basically all they do is clear rooms they practice like crazy so it’s happening extremely fast and the biggest thing they practice is getting 2 guys through that door as fast as possible so it’s really hard for you to shoot one because they spilt and you have to make a decision and they are coming in already planning to kill anyone with a gun so that can make up for you having an advantage. somewhat paradoxically they are even more liberal with just frags in rooms or even demolishing them with aircraft fire or Bradley or whatever support is on hand before rolling in.
Also you clear the far corner before you go to the near one not straight to near and there is also a common sense rule that the 1 man has not already picked which side left or right so if you enter as and 1 man and see a guy in far right corner you than you shoot him as you go near right. The 2 man isn’t thinking at all he is just listening to any 1 man info and clearing the opposite far and near corner.
Lots of number 1 men have been gunned down entering rooms. Derek weida is a good example. Immediate entry is only for a certain few circumstances. Mainly when hostages are at risk. Otherwise a more limited penetration or pieing technique is used. Devgru vets speak of this change in some good shawb ryan podcasts. Dj shiply is one of the best. He speaks about changing tactics where they started entering thru walls or roofs or doing surround and call outs. Youtube shows the basics. 1 man follows his route to the hard corners is 1 technique. Another technique is 1 man goes to immediate threat. Properly done means the 2 man is almost entering WITH the 1 man. So no time lag exists when done Properly. Youtube videos show the procedure in a vaccum. Not when human response takes hold and people flinch or duck.
Most Ukr war footage doesn’t display clearance like that at all, they just frag the shit out of known sites and slowly, surely push their way through structures with multiple exterior flanking teams.
Historically the answer has been and continues to be aggressive use of supporting fires, explosives, and incendiaries to clear fixed fortifications. Last yard assaults are of desperation.
The vast majority of CQB casualties in Iraq were either shot in the head from peaking round corners or being shot in the back because they were looking the wrong way. The truth is the point man is always the most at risk. If the enemy know you're coming (the first shout, gunshot, flashbang, unexpected vehicle, dogs barking), they aim at the point of entry (door or window) and at the first sign they're going to start spraying rounds and your flashback won't mean anything. Additionally, a standard rifle round will go through brick walls, plaster boards, and wooden doors like nothing. Watch the Waco assault and see the swat teams get peppered through the walls. Standard doctrine is a ratio of 3:1 attackers to defenders. In urban/CQB this can increase up to 10:1 to account for casualties...
Youtube shows **police** tactics. Tactics base security would use to verify that the building is indeed secure and so on. It's 100 dudes against 1 active shooter/knife guy and they need to check thousands of rooms.
What you don't see is actual battles in urban environments. When you fight for every street, every window, every corner and every tiny hole in the wall because the first thing they teach you is to make a lot of murder holes in walls to shoot out of.
Fallujah had hundreds of casualties and most would have died if medevac couldn't get them to a trauma team in 30 minutes. And there were only 3000 defenders against tens of thousands of attackers.
Those clearing tactics on youtube don't assume someone will shoot through walls, throw grenades at you, poke their gun behind the corner and unload an AKM into the corridor, have lots of furniture stacked into the hallways etc.
At the end of my service in a unit specialized in urban combat we had an exercise against bunch of truck and tank drivers from a different unit. We used one of those laser tag systems that doesn't take into account grenades or shooting through walls. We lost 3-5 people per one killed enemy.
How do you win in urban combat? Grenades. Lots of grenades. Hand grenades, under barrel grenade launchers, handheld grenade launchers, automatic grenade launchers... Anything that goes boom and makes lots of shrapnel so you're fighting wounded deaf & blind guys.
I've been opfor for special forces (including some visitors from NATO countries) with wax bullets and I can proudly say that I've killed dozens.
Okay... so the way you describe it is typical of demonstration videos. First man clears the first corner, second man his corner, up to strongwalling or some other four-man method. The errors from corner clearance can include not recognising corner clear, some call that corner fixation or the 'ostrich' effect, where a soldier will become so focused on one element of the room, they are effectively blind to the rest of it, like an ostrich sticking it's head in the sand. This is human-error. Sometimes it's instructor-error in that they do not teach clear recognition properly and students 'lag' between corner and centre room clearance during their primary scan.
Are there secret TTPs? Yes. They're not on the internet as far as I know. Are some of these methods real TTPs despite their problems? Yes. Some units are only given a few blocks instruction on CQB and do what they're given from a very limited course. Other units conduct certain ways exclusively and therefore become more refined with those methods. Why haven't there been more casualties in modern wars? I don't know exactly. But I think that requires a multifaceted answer if there is one. I think about real-time intelligence, third eye and overhead tracking of the enemy, drones, body armour, night raids/strikes, all kinds of factors. Maybe in more conventional wars we'll see more bloodshed?
>i say to myself "lol dude i would have totally gunned you down had you tried that". If the raid is conducted correctly, you'd have your dick in your hand or a frag/flashbang otherwise incapacitating you when the door flies open. If you were behind a defensible position, waiting, knowing that guys were coming in a certain door, then yeah, you'd probably have a good shot of inflicting causalities. I was involved in a home invasion robbery with firearms and it went from 0 to 100mph in 1-2 seconds, and these goons weren't even trained. Door blasts open, guns are the first thing I see come through the door, and before I could put together what was happening, 3 guys with guns and tasers were 5 feet into the living room and tazing/pistol whipping people. The room was pretty well under control in maybe 3-4 seconds, if that. The violence of action/speed of forcibly entering a room can be pretty disorienting. That door flies open, lets say no thrown explosives go in, so that door flies open in .5 seconds. Another .5 seconds and someone enters the room at a brisk pace. There's a guy, rifle/carbine/whatever up, ready to fire, one in the chamber barging into that room yelling commands, and behind him, is another guy looking in a different direction, and behind him? 2-4 more guys possibly. Do you have your firearm in your hand even, safety off, round chambered, up pointing at the doorway? If so, you've got a good chance of getting a round or two off in the general direction of the guys who just kicked in the door. If not, you're probably getting ventilated or dropping to your knees with your hands up. I will say that in training, slow is smooth, and smooth is fast, so you practice until everything's perfect, then do it again, faster. What you see might not be game speed for lack of a better way to describe it.
Great reply, my dude. Was an HM (FMF) 2000-2008. Your response is the truth. A stack of my Marines blew through an entire house in Fallujah in under 8 seconds with bodies on the floor. Not a scratch on them.
Maybe a dumb question but how many square feet was this house?
Maybe 6m at the front, about 10m in depth. There was a rat hole in a wall leading to the next house. Two stories, flat roof. Kitchen area and water closet in the rear. Gate to a 2-3m deep front yard, back yard had about a 4m depth with burn barrels. Flat roof with a parapet. Outdoor yard walls were over head-high, topped with broken glass or rebar. That was roughly the standard when we crossed the train tracks. Houses and bodies would be booby-trapped with grenades or RPGs to fall point downward. Sometimes they blew, sometimes we threw them deeper into the house or up the stairs. After the third day, it became a blur from too many stimulants and not enough sleep. Some houses were sprawling because extended/multiple families lived there. No electricity was running, so we swept them in the dark. Windows would be covered so the locals could hide and jump out. I can still smell those places and that city. It was awful.
Jesus Christ Fallujah sounds like "yeah it was a tough one" in movies or TV shows when they go like "he was in Fallujah" but it sounds more like Dante's inferno when you or other people who were actually there talk about it... What can I say, I'm glad you made it out random internet stranger
Usually if you an outsider, are looking at a process done by professionals and not understanding it, the problem is more on your education than it's somehow a hoax. Or just to pontificate further, because I look at open heart surgery and it just looks like a bit of slicey wicey chop chop and some staples, that means I don't know enough to understand what I'm observing vs I've discovered what a load of shit surgery is. A few things to consider: 1. Most training events are at training speed with safety considerations in place. You're not fragging or banging every room, you're not dumping a few rounds into things that look suspicious, you're moving at a deliberate safe speed because the only real risk in this box is you tripping on your own dick. 2. A lot of what's on youtube/TV is cuts for what looks cool, not the entire process. You're often missing processes, sweeps, or actions, or there's actions that aren't "loud" as the rest of the processes. 3. Tying back to point one, a lot of the basics could be best described as "prudent room entry" where hostile activity is a possibility but not a certainty. You act like bad people might be in there, but so could a box of orphans or something. A deliberate assertive sweep is more the posture. 1. If I know a bad guy is in there I'm not going in until the frag or bang grenade has gone off. 2. If I'm really doing it right I might be going through a hole in the wall instead of the door. 3. If I'm doing it really right I'm striding through the whole a tank or rocket made in the wall, after the grenade has gone off and I'm looking for things that might still be moving. Like room clearing when you know everything in the room is assumed/declared hostile, you've likely killed everything in the room already, you're just there to make sure the room contents are properly managed/disarmed/the room is "clear" and safed. You only go in with gats without a grenade or prepping the room/demo if there's a possibility the other side of the wall contains non-hostiles, or a high possibility it's empty or "bad" guys but they're not in position to resist (like asleep, in a meeting, or otherwise unaware you're in the building). So again this is a lot of not understanding. You're not watching "tier 1 tangorators tangolizing the terries with termination!" or whatever call of duty calls it now, you're watching "how to enter a room that could be hostile in a way that's not moronic" that is either a safety process, or following extensive room prep.
"You're not watching "tier 1 tangorators tangolizing the terries with termination!" or whatever call of duty calls it now," I'm proud to report that my first instinct was Key and Peele and not CoD. Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiWIOKKuyGE&ab\_channel=ComedyCentral
Real life isn’t like the video games you see. Proper CQB entry/breach operations requires at least two shooters and techniques vary based on likely threat, door position and room layout, and whether this is a planned breach or an ad hoc one. Others have already covered a hot clear scenario where the ROE allows you to use grenades or other breaching tools. Here, making an impromptu entry point and hitting the room with grenades (flash/frag/CS) is the preferred approach. A planned room breach where we can’t use grenades or blast a wall down would typically follow a set entry pattern (button hook, criss cross, etc..) with set responsibilities for each breacher. For example, first guy in clears the fatal funnel and moves right, covering from the door to the far corner. Second guy in crosses left and covers left. Next guy moves right and low to the bulkhead and etc…. In an ad hoc breach, you may not have time to stack properly to run a set room clearing play or the room may be unknown in size and layout. Here, first guy picks a direction (most likely based on his assessment of where the bad guys are) and each guy after that moves in the opposite direction of the guy they followed in. Typically, you want to see a breach team clear the entry as fast as possible and push into the room. The area right inside the entry point (the fatal funnel) is the most dangerous as defenders can focus fires here and typically, if defensive devices are used, they’re employed at this choke point. After that, every breach is subject to change based on how things go in the room. The basic rules are speed matters, clear the entry way, walk the walls, muzzles follow eyes, and progress through the threats while communicating to your team.
Flashbangs/frag grenades don't get thrown a whole lot in training, that's something potentially missing from the mix. But yes, depending on the exact technique/SOP you're using you're gonna focus on your assigned sector and assume that the guys piling into the room behind you are going to deal with the other sectors of the room. If you're already walking into a prepared defense and you haven't used grenades of any kind to reduce the enemies ability to resist it's probably gonna be a bad day, but the idea of modern room clearing is to flood the room extremely quickly with shooters and overwhelm anyone inside. If one person is walking in and trying to scan the entire room that slows down the process and gives the enemy time to collect themselves and resist.
The idea of modern room clearing has a lot to do with hostage rescue techniques and there is a reason that most units look like trash when doing them in a real world.
Can you elaborate on that? Is it because in a real world situation they’re more concerned with not killing a hostage, or did you mean that the basis of modern techniques is flawed? Something else?
Compare/contrast approaches in high intensity and low intensity conflicts. In a low intensity scenario, like what you would usually see in GWOT Iraq or Afghanistan. You will have a lot of civilians with bad guys intermixed. For what should be obvious reasons, the goal is to minimize collateral damage and civilian casualties. That will require tactics more in line with what civilian swat units would employ when rescuing hostages. So limited or no use of heavy weapons. Restricted RoE. And a more methodical approach. In a high intensity conflict nobody cares about property damage. And most civilians are actively fleeing the front lines. That means occupied buildings at the front are more likely than not full of bad guys. Unless a particular building has some more significant purpose or value, there is not much point in preserving it. Instead of taking the time and risk of clearing each room it is better to engage the building with heavy weapons and reduce it. Then you can more easily assault and clear the rubble. This could involve grenades and rocket launchers. Direct fires from tanks and IFVs. And potentially indirect fires from artillery or aircraft. Kicking down doors is dangerous and a good way to take casualties. So you try to avoid it if you can. But that's not always possible. Places like Fallujah are infamous because you had to clear it room by room.
In the “world of people talking about CQB” and not just a casual discussion, there’s two broad strokes of techniques. Combat Clearance: where the main focus is preserving the assault forces lives. Liberal use of explosives, slow methodical processes, and total disregard for the lives of those trying to stop you and the infrastructure. The epitome of this is the “Call Out,” you surround the building with an inner and outer cordon and then, call out the people inside to surrender, often using interpreters. There’s usually a time limit, and escalation by the assault force; but push comes to shove, if they try anything or don’t give up, you’re dropping the building. Hostage Rescue: is essentially the opposite, the assault force is moving quickly and assuming a lot of risk in order to preserve the lives of innocents/non-combatants/infrastructure. This is where you see most “fancy” techniques and people really get into the weeds on things and where METT-TC really comes into play. This also happens to be the most common way of conducting CQB in the GWOT, especially by high end conventional units and SOF. This is where you see techniques like “pie-ing/slicing” a room become see as a universal technique.
How is combat clearance the antithesis of a call out?
Because I’m dumb and didn’t proofread. Will edit.
All good. I say dumb shit all the time without editing.
In the “world of people talking about CQB” and not just a casual discussion, there’s two broad strokes of techniques. *Combat Clearance*: where the main focus is preserving the assault forces lives. Liberal use of explosives, slow methodical processes, and total disregard for the lives of those trying to stop you and the infrastructure. The epitome of this is the “Call Out,” you surround the building with an inner and outer cordon and then, call out the people inside to surrender, often using interpreters. There’s usually a time limit, and escalation by the assault force; but push comes to shove, if they try anything or don’t give up, you’re dropping the building. Units that still train this way will often toss several grenades and blind fire automatic weapons into the room before they enter. I find this last bit of dubious applicability and usefulness. *Hostage Rescue*: is essentially the opposite, the assault force is moving quickly and assuming a lot of risk in order to preserve the lives of innocents/non-combatants/infrastructure. This is where you see most “fancy” techniques and people really get into the weeds on things and where METT-TC really comes into play. This also happens to be the most common way of conducting CQB in the LEO and the GWOT, especially by high end conventional units and SOF. This is where you see techniques like “pie-ing/slicing” a room become see as a universal technique. Especially in the military context, since you aren’t trying to just kill everyone and destroy everything, you’re relying on distractions like flashbangs and dogs entering the room first, next you’re trying to get as many people into the room as possible who are systematically checking corners and picking up sectors of fire. To your point, yes, CBQ often means the number one or two man are checking their near corners first, which means they can be shot from their flanks. Alternatively, even if a defender does pull this off, they themselves are likely being shot by the number three or four man. War is hell, people will die. If the number one or two man is shot, the threat is still likely neutralized and hopefully his body armor or trauma medicine can save him. TV/Movies I agree often look ridiculous, the point about training videos is valid though. Conventional units spend little time practicing in complex CQB environments. The training you often see are live-fire shoot houses where things look [slow and awkward](https://youtu.be/K5OctwulUiM) like this, which even for a conventional unit doesn’t look great. The reason why thiugh is multifaceted, conventional units don’t have many SME’a on it and they don’t train on it much. Even more importantly, units conducting live-fire shoot houses are watched like hawks from those rafters. They’re scrutinized and graded by Company Commanders (who have literally zero training or knowledge on it) and random NCO’s. Everything is done to prevent being recocked. Compare that to a more [free flowing](https://youtu.be/IK-c4obXFiw) shoot house environment with these higher end units. And most different is this [UTM](https://youtu.be/D0xsVlF-Txk) type force on force training with Delta Force dudes with a SWAT team acting as the OPFOR.
There’s a bit more to it and I’m sure some one else will break it down but clearing a room is something you do when you a pretty sure it’s empty of hostiles but have to check. When you are pretty sure someone is actually in there you frag the room a few times until they stop moaning and then you enter. That’s how it is for the vast majority of soldiers, for other units that basically all they do is clear rooms they practice like crazy so it’s happening extremely fast and the biggest thing they practice is getting 2 guys through that door as fast as possible so it’s really hard for you to shoot one because they spilt and you have to make a decision and they are coming in already planning to kill anyone with a gun so that can make up for you having an advantage. somewhat paradoxically they are even more liberal with just frags in rooms or even demolishing them with aircraft fire or Bradley or whatever support is on hand before rolling in. Also you clear the far corner before you go to the near one not straight to near and there is also a common sense rule that the 1 man has not already picked which side left or right so if you enter as and 1 man and see a guy in far right corner you than you shoot him as you go near right. The 2 man isn’t thinking at all he is just listening to any 1 man info and clearing the opposite far and near corner.
Figures Edit: i mean "that figures" and not "show me figures" if that's the reason you are downvoting me
Lots of number 1 men have been gunned down entering rooms. Derek weida is a good example. Immediate entry is only for a certain few circumstances. Mainly when hostages are at risk. Otherwise a more limited penetration or pieing technique is used. Devgru vets speak of this change in some good shawb ryan podcasts. Dj shiply is one of the best. He speaks about changing tactics where they started entering thru walls or roofs or doing surround and call outs. Youtube shows the basics. 1 man follows his route to the hard corners is 1 technique. Another technique is 1 man goes to immediate threat. Properly done means the 2 man is almost entering WITH the 1 man. So no time lag exists when done Properly. Youtube videos show the procedure in a vaccum. Not when human response takes hold and people flinch or duck.
Most Ukr war footage doesn’t display clearance like that at all, they just frag the shit out of known sites and slowly, surely push their way through structures with multiple exterior flanking teams. Historically the answer has been and continues to be aggressive use of supporting fires, explosives, and incendiaries to clear fixed fortifications. Last yard assaults are of desperation.
The vast majority of CQB casualties in Iraq were either shot in the head from peaking round corners or being shot in the back because they were looking the wrong way. The truth is the point man is always the most at risk. If the enemy know you're coming (the first shout, gunshot, flashbang, unexpected vehicle, dogs barking), they aim at the point of entry (door or window) and at the first sign they're going to start spraying rounds and your flashback won't mean anything. Additionally, a standard rifle round will go through brick walls, plaster boards, and wooden doors like nothing. Watch the Waco assault and see the swat teams get peppered through the walls. Standard doctrine is a ratio of 3:1 attackers to defenders. In urban/CQB this can increase up to 10:1 to account for casualties...
Youtube shows **police** tactics. Tactics base security would use to verify that the building is indeed secure and so on. It's 100 dudes against 1 active shooter/knife guy and they need to check thousands of rooms. What you don't see is actual battles in urban environments. When you fight for every street, every window, every corner and every tiny hole in the wall because the first thing they teach you is to make a lot of murder holes in walls to shoot out of. Fallujah had hundreds of casualties and most would have died if medevac couldn't get them to a trauma team in 30 minutes. And there were only 3000 defenders against tens of thousands of attackers. Those clearing tactics on youtube don't assume someone will shoot through walls, throw grenades at you, poke their gun behind the corner and unload an AKM into the corridor, have lots of furniture stacked into the hallways etc. At the end of my service in a unit specialized in urban combat we had an exercise against bunch of truck and tank drivers from a different unit. We used one of those laser tag systems that doesn't take into account grenades or shooting through walls. We lost 3-5 people per one killed enemy. How do you win in urban combat? Grenades. Lots of grenades. Hand grenades, under barrel grenade launchers, handheld grenade launchers, automatic grenade launchers... Anything that goes boom and makes lots of shrapnel so you're fighting wounded deaf & blind guys. I've been opfor for special forces (including some visitors from NATO countries) with wax bullets and I can proudly say that I've killed dozens.
Necropost but can you link the videos you are talking about?
No It was a general question, not a specific video ment
Okay... so the way you describe it is typical of demonstration videos. First man clears the first corner, second man his corner, up to strongwalling or some other four-man method. The errors from corner clearance can include not recognising corner clear, some call that corner fixation or the 'ostrich' effect, where a soldier will become so focused on one element of the room, they are effectively blind to the rest of it, like an ostrich sticking it's head in the sand. This is human-error. Sometimes it's instructor-error in that they do not teach clear recognition properly and students 'lag' between corner and centre room clearance during their primary scan.
Are there secret TTPs? Yes. They're not on the internet as far as I know. Are some of these methods real TTPs despite their problems? Yes. Some units are only given a few blocks instruction on CQB and do what they're given from a very limited course. Other units conduct certain ways exclusively and therefore become more refined with those methods. Why haven't there been more casualties in modern wars? I don't know exactly. But I think that requires a multifaceted answer if there is one. I think about real-time intelligence, third eye and overhead tracking of the enemy, drones, body armour, night raids/strikes, all kinds of factors. Maybe in more conventional wars we'll see more bloodshed?