Room Anatomy

CQB is all about angles, by using the concepts we learned in the previous chapters we can then apply them to different and irregular rooms. Take a look at the diagrams below.

In this diagram, a 4-man team has flowed into the room and is now addressing the current highest-priority threats: The open spaces. Again, operator AOR’s are displayed with green lines.

The purple lines here are key: They are thresholds that don’t really exist. When we draw these imaginary thresholds, we see that this irregular room is really just a Box, L-shape, and Tubular room wearing a trench coat disguised as one room!

The only difference is that there aren’t physical doors separating them; the operators can still treat the thresholds as they would treat a new room with an opened door— or a busted down door, like in the “Strong vs. Weak side” figure 2.

You may notice that the rear man on the left side is doubling up on some of the right side point man’s AOR. This is because the rear man on the left has a view beyond the threshold that the point man on the right can’t see; this area is shaded in green. One could even say the rear man in the stack on the left is on the strong(er) side of the right stack’s room.

Despite making the right-side-point man’s job a little redundant, this is still effective security, as long as the rear man on the left surrenders the angles to the right stack when the right point man makes entry and takes control over the angles. Don’t point your muzzle at your friends’ backs, even if you think it’s for their own good.

You can even divide up L-shaped rooms into multiple box or tubular rooms to make your methodology simpler, like this:

In this diagram, there’s only one imaginary threshold, but it turns this L-shaped room into two Linear/Tubular rooms. This imaginary threshold is what the team in this case will address first, because open space takes priority over closed doors.

First and second man’s AORs overlap a little. This is okay, as long as the bulk of their potential isn’t wasted. Point man is covering the uncleared area, and the second man is covering a closed door that threatens them both.