Room clearing and more

[Imperial Grunt]

My two-cents.

The Marine Corps got rid of the MP-5 awhile back. The Force guys on the MSPF used to use it, but the M-4 is superior for military applications. Even on my police department, the MP-5 has been replaced with M-4s.

The MP-5 is a great CQB weapon, but it does not reach out or penetrate like a 5.56. It is good for hostage rescue since it is accurate and the 9mm rounds will not overpenetrate. However, most SWAT teams and CT teams have gone away from the MP-5, in favor of something like the M-4. I have read that Delta has coverted over to the HK 416.

Marines in the infantry battalions are issued the M-16A4, with specific MOS's rating M-4s. See the related thread on that. The M-16A4 is a little more awkward than the M-4 is confined spaces, but in most rooms it is no problem, and shooters are trained to short-stock and use other methods with the rifle when necessary. If you need a quick surgical shot, then you could definetely get that off faster with a M-4, but in conventional combat, that is almost never necessary, even on most special ops raids. You just need to kill the target, not put a round through the medulla-oblongata (or however it is spelled).

The MP-5 has almost no utility for a rifle squad. Its max effective range is less than 50 meters.

Regarding doctrinal tactics, the first assault element through the door is usually a fireteam. They take the first room and then another will move up through them. Bigger buildings require bigger assault teams. There are a million ways to clear rooms and buildings and each way has advantages and disadvantages. The key is teamwork.

Here is a video showing a fireteam leader working on a typical MOUT tactical problem: NCO Leadership

It is awesome that our Nation has so many fine young Americans in its service. It is even more awesome to have served with some of them.

[Sixxkiller]

The only reason a civilian SWAT team uses the MP5 over say an M4 (Which isnt the case anymore in most departments) is because the JHP round that is mostly used will not over-penetrate as their goal is to not shoot up the house and kill the neighbors.

The North Hollywood shootout changed a lot of departments thinking though and body armor is not common for criminals but usage has jumped in recent years. A MP5 while accurate has very little chance of defeating decent body armor, especially say an MP5A3SD which is the most common version used by Swat. Its also a better mount for the Surefire, but who cares about that hehe (Just me maybe)

But I must admit, I love the MP5, and for my money its one of the best weapons ever invented.

[tiny_tanker]

I've seen a few building raids by Stryker units, and the tactics seems to be the same every time. 1 squad is used to provide security and then they have 1 squad per floor. There is usually 1 to 2 squads providing cover from the surrounding buildings. It doesn't take long for a whole battalion to be taken up in the operation. I'd guess maybe 3 or 4 houses could be raided at once if they were all next to one another on the same block.

[civdiv]

The military went away from the MP5 as it limited them to just Close Quarters Battle (CQB), and was of little utility getting to and getting away from the buildings they are hitting. SWAT doesn't have to worry about getting to the target, the military does. In an outdoor shootout the MP5 is next to useless, but the M4 is good for all occassions. And one of the things that makes the MP5 so special is the inherent suppression system in the suppressed versions. A supressed MP5 is very quiet, with the round's report being actually quieter than the simple cycling of the weapon system. That is of little utility to an infantry squad.

Room clearing has, to a certain extent, been discarded in large scale operations. I'm not saying it doesn't happen a lot, but in future Falluja type operations the building is just blown. You just take too many casualties clearing rooms, regardless of how good you are. In Falluja I each house was cleared room by room. In Falluja II houses where resistance was encountered tended to be leveled with satchel charges. Now, Falluja

was evacuated during both operations, so it was really sort of a free fire zone. If you take sniper fire from a building on patrol and want to take down the building (as in assualt it, not to destroy it), the ROE is such that you usually can't just flatten the building.

Sure, CQB still goes on, especially for Special Mission Units going after High Value Targets (HVTs). But they usually have some element of suprise while the infantry squad working its way house to house down a street doesn't have much element of suprise.

Top down clearing has several advantages, some of which have been mentioned. Mainly, gravity is a huge bonus. Try kicking a grenade UP a staircase. Part of the advantage is psychological. Another advantage is the fact that the terrorist might not have planned for it. And still another advantage is line of sight. You can look out a window or through a peephole, you can't see what is on the roof. This sight issue works both ways. If you enter a building and the enemy runs out the back door, you probably can't shoot him. If you climb onto the roof and he runs out the back door you make rasberry jam out of his back. Also, it's a lot easier to see a booby trap under the light of day on a roof than it is to see in a room with no lights. You can hide a booby trap easily under the floor in a room, but it's more difficult on a roof.

civdiv

[Battlefront.com]

Try kicking a grenade UP a staircase.

Honestly, I'd rather not try kicking one DOWN a staircase either. I like my feet right where they are... attached to my ankles

Great discussion.

Steve

[civdiv]

Building clearing is very complicated, and it's interesting in that the basic tactics change every couple of years. I can only speak for the Marines, but our tactics prior to Iraq were pretty much acquired from SWAT. Since then tactics have changed as law enforcement tactics are very different from what encountered on the battlefield.

Regardless of evolution, somes basics remain the same. And keep in mind these tactics are from the SpecOps side, regular infantry probably won't use all of these tactics. CQB starts with the seizing of the entry point via simple door kicking or an actual breach. The breach point is ALWAYS controlled throughout the room clearing. It is sort of a safe haven. There is always a security element there, so if you run into trouble, say, get you and your buddy wounded, you always know where aid will be present. Like the breach point all hallways are also continually controlled by a security element. It doesn't do much good if you clear a room and then some terrorist in another room runs across the hall and reoccupies it.

Room clearing itself is usually done in two man teams. Whomever gets there first stacks at the doorway. It used to be there were designated two man teams that never broke up. Like Rommel said, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Casualties and the friction of war made this unworkable, so this evolved into you just teaming up on the fly. If you saw a guy stacked next to a doorway, you just ran over and stacked with him, signalling you were ready by kneeing him in the butt. You never entered a room w/o a back up. Whether there was a door or not didn't really matter (A disclaimor here. I have seen a lot of videos where they stacked more than 2 men, and the first guy kicked the door but didn't enter, the guys stacked behind him ran past him and entered the room. I am told this is because if a guy sprains his ankle kicking the door, you don't want everyone waiting for him to hobble in. Also, this applies only to exterior doors, not to flimsy interior doors. If it's an interior door the door kicker enters the room.). The first guy used to cross the doorway, but the Marines did away with that a few years ago and the lead guy picked whether he crossed the doorway or 'button hooked' the doorway (Ended up on the opposite side of the wall he stacked on). The second guy merely went where the first guy didn't. When you entered the room obviously you engaged any target you saw, but your first responsibility beyond that was to 'dig' the corner, meaning clearing the corner of the room behind you. If a door was present an additional responsibility of the guy on the side of the room where the door was to wedge the door with his boot just in case someone was hiding behind the door.

When engaging targets the goal was two rounds, center mass, within about 4 inches and within .5 seconds. The reason for this was hydrostatic shock. As rooms were cleared they were marked in the doorway. Marking was usually chemlights with different colors to indicate cleared room, dead terrorist, intel stuff, wounded/dead Marine, etc. I know, seems callous, but in a CQB situation you don't stop due to casualties. Your buddy gets drilled entering the room you don't stop clearing. You continue to clear until the building is secure and only then do you tend to casualties. If you cleared a room and there was another doorway that's what you cleared next. If you lost your back-up in a room and there was another room you went back into the hallway and stacked on the room yet again until someone backed you up, and then cleared the same room, and then moved onto the second room (Does that make sense?). If it was a simple room (With no ajoining rooms) you moved back into the hallway, after announcing 'coming out' AND getting a reply from the hallway security detail, and then you moved to the next room.

That's the simple, barney style version. There is much more to it,

civdiv

[ April 12, 2007, 07:37 PM: Message edited by: civdiv ]

[PLM2]

I think as long as you have standard ways of clearing and ability to adapt to many different room setups.

The first person is supposed to make a decision once he goes in, he first covers the area immediately in front then turns to the left or right depending on the room layout, then the number 2 man goes in after, reclears the front then goes the other way, then the 3rd man comes in and clears some other area and the number 4 man might come in and watch the door. If someone engages a target or has to knock someone down, then the person behind him covers his area everyone entering the room very fast and coordinated-like. Maybe even rocking back and forth all tightly pressed against each other before going through the door, with the last man kicking in the door to maximize the speed at which the first man gets in the room.

Problem is rooms can be crazy different, interconnected with all sorts of directions you can be shot from including potentially from windows or places you cannot see. And booby traps can be very hard to find in a rush. I would never want to have to room clear, it requires the element of surprise too much. Sad to think some people have died clearing rooms that could have just been blown apart from down the road

[Imperial Grunt]

Like I said, there are a million ways. CivDiv is describing a dynamic assault that the MSPF of a MEU or a JSOTF SMU would use to take down a specific target against a specific threat.

The MOUT tactics that Marine rifle squads use are more deliberate, though similar. I sent Steve a copy of Annex A of MCWP 3-33.5 MOUT. That info is what is taught at 1st MarDiv MOUT Instructor School and at SOI, and is the foundation used by Marine infantry units. I would not write-off future MOUT and building clearing operations such as Fallujah 1 and 2, the Army has been saying "just blow the building" as its MOUT TTP for decades. And blowing the building sometimes makes things worse. Blowing specific buildings from which heavy resistance is encountered will happen, but it takes someone to find those buildings the hard way usually, and after it is hit, it still has to be cleared.

When I commanded a rifle company in a raid against a Baath party compound during OIF 1, we did it very deliberately and it was really an assault. We occupied a buidling that was our LD. I had two M-1s to isolate the flanks of the compound. I had a support element set up as base of fire, to include two sniper teams as well as machineguns and SMAWs. The assault platoon was reinforced with demo teams from the assault section. SMAW rounds took out the doors and entry points. Breaching charges were used to get into gates and to open major doors. The squads cleared the rooms from the ground up (no way to go top down), leap-frogging through each other as the platoons cleared each building. Frags were used on the first room usually and when deemed necessary. Our SOP was to use 4-man clearing teams, unless the room was expected to be small.

And as a historical note, in the 60's, when the LAPD formed the first SWAT unit, they went to the Marines for urban warfare training and guidance, and then developed SWAT tactics to work in LA, for high-risk police operations. In the 80's, the Marine Corps turned back to SWAT to update and refine its MOUT doctrine. Its like a circle!

[whaco]

Sorry I bumped this one up, but great vid. I was hoping that dog would run during the first part of the firefight but am upset it did not.

I was not aware that these troops were facing such dangerous conditions clearing houses and rooms in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bit of an eye opener for me personally. :eek:

[Stoppelhopser]

I am a little surprised about all the discussion of the men inside the house.

Even we at the German Air Force in the eighties with just a basic 6 week infantry training used standard gestures and kept totally quiet in the field. Also seems to a layman like me like some angles were not that well covered and a sniper working from another roof would have got at least one of them.

On the other hand it all went well and these are much more experienced soldiers than I ever was and certainly know how to act right.

[JaguarUSF]

Originally posted by sross:

The preferred method of entering any structure is through a self created orafice.

CMSF has a "blast" command available to squads equipped with explosives. This are (pun intended) a blast to use...the AI never seems to expect an attack coming from a wall. Suckers!

[JaguarUSF]

On a semi-related note, I'm playing a scenario where I saw a Syrian sniper prone outside of a building throw a grenade through a window at a machine gunner, who in turn threw a grenade back at him killing him. It was so cool, I felt like I had to share.