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More push back about the ‘CQB’ virus

Forgive my snark:

OLD SCHOOL VIDEO HERE

Yes, its an old school video and it’s not perfect, but take a look at the environment for high intensity urban fighting. There is no room here for your ‘super slick’ over-stylized ‘button-hooking’ drills that are more appropriate for a SWAT-style hostage rescue situation where you are only going in to the house to 1) confirm that it is clear or 2) take down the psychotic guy with the knife.
Please quit going to retired SWAT trainers to get training and information on how to fight in a high intensity urban battle. This is not a self-motivated statement, because I do not myself have an urban facility, so I’m not in competition. I’ll teach you how I would do urban fighting if you like, but I prefer to concentrate on good solid basics that will stand you in good stead in all environments. I will not get on the ‘tacticool’ bandwagon.
If you are doing dynamic entry into rooms, and you are going through doors, the only way to gain an advantage is to put something in there beforehand to allow you to seize the initiative i.e. a grenade or a flash-bang or similar.
Otherwise, don’t go in there. Shoot the place apart from stand-off. Combat experience has shown that unless you are doing high intensity MOUT/OBUA, utilizing grenades/flash-bangs/entry charges and massive violence to seize initiative on entry, usually avoiding going through doors, then you are on to a loser.
The ‘hostage rescue’ style ‘CQB’ as taught by so many is not ideal unless, in quick summary there is 1) not really much of a threat and you are confirming clear or 2) you use overwhelming speed, aggression and surprise. That’s the difference between your local goon-squad SWAT department at the one end of the spectrum and a Tier 1 dynamic entry team at the other.
Why is that? Because combat experience is showing that, just like in the high-intensity urban fighting training video above, the big danger is barricaded enemy. That guy will not be impressed by your super-sick drills and will shoot you as you clear your corner. Guess what? SWAT don’t go in against a barricaded threat, they stand off.
If you have to go in and clear, you can try another combat proven technique: starting with the ‘call out’. Isolate the target house, usually with an L-Shaped formation which covers egress from all sides of the building yet does not threaten fratricide on your own guys – the ends of the ‘L’ must go past the ends of the building to achieve this. Then escalate force in order to try and get the target to give up, occupants to surrender, or whatever it is you want to achieve. You have the option to destroy the place from the outside if they did not cooperate and it was too risky to go in. 
If you decide you have to go in, then your best bet is to use violence of entry and don’t use the doors. Breach into the building and clear from the top down using massive violence and savagery. Smash the side wall in with a truck if you think it will be helpful to breaching.
If there is any reason why you have to clear the rooms but must refrain from massive violence but at the same time you suspect that there may be barricaded enemy within, then use a technique called ‘combat clearing’: this is where you don’t make entry into a room in the standard ‘CQB’ style. You don’t toss in grenades either.
Basically the technique revolves around the ‘slicing the pie’ technique. You have to get the door open first, which means some breaching action, but then you remain in the corridor and using the way you array your guys you gain line of sight gradually into the room using the ‘slicing the pie’ technique. There is a risk point as you flip past the door to get a view back into the other side of the room, and you have to keep the corridor ahead of you covered also. I don’t have a diagram, but its not that hard to figure out.
I paint a picture of realistic urban fighting at various points in my novel: ‘Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises’
Please, stop drinking the ‘Tacti-Koolaid.’
Live hard, Die Free.
MV