1: Fatal Funnel
Definition: A “fatal funnel” is a term often used by law enforcement and military personnel to designate a choke point. These are thresholds or areas of transition, such as doorways, stairwells or hallways, where there is no cover or concealment, and movement is limited. For example, moving through a doorway is considered a fatal funnel.

2: "Pie a corner"

Definition: As you approach the area to be searched, find the reference point/axis and slowly move across the entry point or area given, when possible, having no less than 2-3 feet of distance away. You should be identifying anything that can be considered a person or a part of a person down to a shoe, sleeve, sock, eyeglass frame, pants, etc.
Video Demonstration: (Not My Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=84&v=-kYtbzapxD0&feature=emb_title


3. Owning the Room:

In order for you to win the intricate battle of room clearing, you need to own the room. If you don’t, your enemy will, and they will more than likely win. Be confident every time you commit yourself (and your team) to clearing a room. Every corner you clear, you need to own. That means every angle you take should be a crisp, sharp, and dominant movement.
Room Clearing [media.giphy.com]

4. Fire Superiority:
Definition: Fire with greater effect than that of the enemy because of its greater accuracy and volume, making possible advances against the enemy without heavy losses. This means if rounds start flying ensure your target and pick up your rate of fire this will allow your enemy to be suppressed and allow for your team to move and clear.

5. Violence of Action:

Violence of action typically wins the day. You need to become violent enough fast enough to end any fight as quickly as you can. The longer a fight goes on, the greater the chance that you will get hurt. So, if you end up in a fight, it is your goal to end it quickly. Put your opponent out of the fight using only the amount of force that is reasonable for the situation.
Finally, do not be that guy in the background. If you walk into a fight between two other people, get out of the way. Because you do not know what is happening, you should not pick a side, but you should certainly get out of the way.
John Chapman VOA

6. Speed Kills:

Finally, as you’re “running” the walls, it’s really walking. If you have to shoot on the move, only move as fast as you can shoot accurately. Don’t be in such a hurry that you’re out of control. You’re there to control the situation. Be smooth. Here’s an old tactical saying to put in your toolbox: “Smooth is fast and fast is smooth.”

7. Fields of Fire:

Get through the fatal funnel, then clear the near corner. You have to be close on the heels of the guy/gal in front of you or you won’t be able to protect his/her backside as soon as they’re in the building. The key here is to maintain personal responsibility for your area and sectors of fire—the field of vision you can feasibly shoot at accurately. Accordingly, wherever your muzzle goes, that’s where your eyes should be. Think eyes, muzzle, target.

A pair of operators clear a room In CQB, speed matters. Get through the door, clear the near corner (or “dig” the corner by walking close to it), walk the walls, and look for the next threat. The greatest threat may be a person, but it’s also any uncleared areas.

Tactics is the single most important things as a solo or team player can have in their arsenal. Keeping your head level in a situation where the situation is everything but level can be the line between surviving close quarters and MOUT Operations.

When clearing many hallways think of this as a road there are two lanes and you are the driver to stay in his lane as your partner should as well. This is probably the easiest way to remember the tactics and help your team pick up sack on the fly if you see an issue in movement. You nor your partner should be crossing lines of fire unless you apex on a door to stack. Crossing lanes of fire has certain uses.

BE AWARE! Under stress you will flag your team when crossing each other conducting MOUT Ops. It is nearly impossible not to and in the blink of an eye you can take a teammate out just don't do it.

When conducting room clearing it is imperative that you clear your immediate corners and ensure you are using the path least resistant. This will allow you to maintain violence of action and maintain committed to the fight and ending the threat.

"How should I enter the room left or right?"
Remember to be flexible. Once inside, things have a tendency to change based on new information and real or perceived threats. Instead of planning on who goes left or right (criss-cross or button-hook) once inside the door, follow this simple rule of thumb: go the opposite way that the person in front of you went. In a hasty entry, you’ll never have time to plan anyway. Again, go the opposite way through the door that the person in front of you went.

Most tactics are dependent and almost always vary on the size of the element and the size of the team clearing rooms.

Distinguishing Threats
Every time you clear a room, there’s a risk that you’ll encounter an enemy whose intent is to take your life. You need to come to grips with that reality before you commit to clearing a room. Being too nervous before entering a room can be deadly, as confidence is a key factor when it comes to owning the room.

With that being said, not all people that you encounter in a room are threats. You can’t just shoot anyone you see in a room. You need to know how to distinguish between threats, and non-threats in a split second. This is where training comes into play. The next time you go to a range, use targets that represent civilians, as well as enemies. Using these types of targets will help train your mind to distinguish between friendly and enemy faster.

As far as legitimate threats are concerned, there is an order of precedence that you need to follow in order to accurately engage your threats in order. To simplify this, I’ve broken down the threats you might face into three categories; immediate threats (a threat that should be neutralized immediately), intermediate threats (threats you neutralize after the immediate threat), and non-threats (usually innocent bystanders who are caught in the crossfire).

Immediate Threats
These threats are your number one priority. An immediate threat can be classified many ways. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll boil it down to three. The first type of immediate threat is an enemy that’s shooting at you. This enemy is your top priority (obviously), because if you don’t neutralize him first, you’re already out of the fight before you start.

The second type of immediate threat is anyone showing the intent to cause harm to you or your team within 5 feet of you. These hostiles are within combatives (hand-to-hand combat) range, and should be dealt with accordingly. A simple, yet effective way to handle a close quarters hostile is to strike them with the muzzle of your weapon like a spear. This method is called a “muzzle thump”, and can kill an enemy if used correctly. At the very minimum, it will back them off enough to be able to acquire your target and engage them accordingly.

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The third type of immediate threat is anyone anybody aiming their weapon at you. You can’t read minds, so if they are aiming their weapon at you, you must assume that their intent is to kill you. Always assume the worst-case scenario when clearing a room, not doing so can result in you (or your team mates) being on the receiving end of a painful death. Don’t give verbal warnings to anyone aiming their weapon at you when you’re clearing a room, at that point they have committed to causing you harm. It’s up to you to neutralize the threat accordingly.

Intermediate Threats
These types of threats are still to be considered as potential threats, but not necessarily dangerous enough to warrant being classified as an immediate threat. Once the immediate threats are neutralized (if there is any), intermediate threats should be your next concern. Just like immediate threats, intermediate ones can be classified many ways. The first type of intermediate threats are people that either have a weapon, or have easy access to one. These threats should be given a verbal warning to get on the ground. If they don’t understand, use your non-firing hand and signal for them to get down. If they don’t, handle the threat accordingly.

The second type of intermediate threat is animals. You don’t know if these animals are trained to attack, or if they feel threatened enough to attack you. Animals have unpredictable behavior, and if they do attack you it can take you out of the fight for enough time to distract you from other potential threats. Don’t be afraid to shoot an animal if you must. However, don’t be inhumane. Don’t shoot an animal just because they’re in the room, and if you must shoot one make sure you kill it.

Non-Threats
Don’t make the mistake of assuming non-threats are not dangerous. A non-threat can quickly become an immediate threat at any given notice. The purpose of classifying someone as a non-threat is to manage your priorities of engagements. Most non-threats are innocent bystanders that just happen to be on the receiving end of your speed and violence, and will comply with any direction you give them to avoid being hurt.

There is no simple description of a non-threat, however most of them look scared, and are weaponless. They usually get on the ground immediately after you enter the room. To help with this process, every time you enter a room to clear it, you need to give loud and clear instructions to everyone in the room to get on the ground. Once you breach the first door, any enemies inside already know you’re there. Be loud, and be violent. Anyone who is still standing and acting in an aggressive manner can be placed in either the immediate, or intermediate threat category (depending on the situation).


Most of the time, people who don’t wish to fight back will willingly get on the ground. Don’t just leave these people behind as you follow along to the next room. Make sure somebody secures them and has eyes on them. If you’re by yourself, carrying flex-cuffs or even zip ties can help mitigate the risk of them potentially becoming immediate threats. Simply restrain them using one of two items I mentioned above, and move on. For added effect (only if you feel that they could present themselves as a threat), knock them unconscious by muzzle thumping them, then move on.

Clearing a Room Alone
Clearing a room (or rooms) by yourself can be extremely dangerous. It’s impossible to see all four corners at once, so it’s imperative that you take advantage of the angles of view that a doorway offers you before you even enter the room. Once a door is open, and you’re standing outside of it, you can see inside the room slightly. Use this to your advantage, and clear that section before you enter the room. This way, when you enter, you can clear the area that you couldn’t see.

If you must, you can engage targets from outside of the room. Once you do, you need to enter the room shortly after. This prevents the enemy from setting up a defensive position if there are more in the room. Once you enter the room, make sure you don’t lower your barrel as you pass through the door and button-hook to your first corner. This adds more time to your reaction, should a threat present itself. Keep your barrel up, and quickly side-step through the doorway and own the first corner. As you pass by the door, shoulder-check it to make sure nobody is behind it while you clear your first corner.

When you’re clearing each corner of the room, never lower your muzzle. Your barrel should go where your eyes go, make it an extension of your body. Make sure you check the ceiling last (unless a threat presents itself there first). Sometimes, enemies will drill a hole in the second floor to look down into the room from the ceiling. A lot of times, this causes the person (or people) to lose their life.

If you can help it, try not to clear a room alone. The bare minimum requirement to successfully clear a room is two people. To maximize security, a four-person team is the most ideal number to have to clear a room.

Clearing a Room with a Team

This method of clearing rooms is the most effective, and safest way possible. In a team (two to four people), you maximize security along with speed and violence. Every member of the team has a vital role that they need to follow in order to make the process of clearing a room effective. Make sure whoever you have in your team is trustworthy and efficient. You don’t want somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing in a room with you when you’re relying on them for your safety.

During the entire process (except outside of the room in the stack) of clearing a room with a team, each team member’s point of aim should never come closer than three feet of another team member’s barrel. This ensures that nobody is flagging (pointing your weapon at a team member) anyone. Fratricide (friendly fire) is a major risk factor in the process of clearing rooms. One slip up, and you could end up killing a team member, or vise-versa
The Stack

To efficiently enter a room in an organized manner, your team must get in a stack. A stack is when your team lines up (one in front of the other) on one side of the door. Make sure that nobody in your team is rubbing up against the wall, as this can alert anyone inside of your specific movements. The stack is extremely important, because every member in the stack has a specific sector of fire that they are responsible for watching. This maximizes security, and effectiveness of your team as you prepare to move into the room.
After the Room is Cleared
Once the room is deemed secure, the most senior person in the team (number two man) will get an “up” from the team. Getting an “up” is a term to describe making sure everyone’s okay. Usually the number two man will initiate the “up” by saying “status”. Following the command, the number one man will say “one up”, followed by the number two man saying “two up” and so on until the number four man states he’s up.
You don’t need to get a status from everyone in the team unless there was resistance in the room. If you clear the room with no issues, and the room was empty, don’t waste time by getting an up. The purpose of getting an “up” is to make sure everyone is able to follow on to the next room if there is one.

Follow-On Rooms
If you enter a room, and you are the first person to notice a door (or doorway) leading to another room, make sure you clear your sector first. Once you’ve cleared your sector, call out “door” followed by the direction in which the door is to the room. For example, if the door is at the 12 o’clock of the room, you would call “door front”. After you call out the door, you need to pull security on that door, and hold your security.

If you’re the number two man and you have the better vantage point on the door, you are now the number one man for the next room. This is why it’s important for everyone to practice playing different parts in the stack. Once there are follow-on rooms, you will rarely be in the same order as you were in the beginning in the stack.


Once the initial room is clear, have everyone stack on the person who has the better vantage point of the doorway. You do not have to re-stack on the wall by the next door, just stack behind the person who has the better vantage point and flow into the next room like you did with the initial one. Initially, this may seem like a lot of information to retain and perfect. With enough practice, however, you’ll find that your team will gradually find a rhythm and flow together more easily.

In any combat scenario, you’ll quickly learn about Murphy’s Law, “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”. When clearing a room, this law tends to show its ugly face more often than not. Everyone has a plan until the first shot is fired, then it all goes downhill from there. When room clearing, it’s imperative to be able to adapt quickly to any adversity that you’ll face (and you WILL face many adversities when room clearing).

If your weapon malfunctions, or you run out of ammunition in your magazine, take a step closer to the center of the room, take a knee, and call out a word that you and your group come up with to show that you’re temporarily out of the fight. For example, if your weapon malfunctions in the middle of an engagement, after you’ve stepped in and taken a knee, call out “down”. This lets your team know that you’re temporarily out of the fight and to assume your sector until you are good to go.

Never just stand back up once your weapon is good, call out a predetermined word such as “up” and wait for a teammate to give you the go-ahead to stand back up. The reason you want to take a step away from the wall towards the center of the room, is so the next person behind you can get past you without having to go in front of you to assume your sector. If an enemy is within striking distance when your weapon malfunctions, handle it accordingly while using hand-to-hand combat to neutralize the threat.

Often times, while the number one man enters the room, he will get shot. This will cause him to fall, sometimes in the doorway. If this happens, step over him and continue clearing the room. If the number one man goes down, you now have a three-man stack and you will clear the room normally, just without the number four man in the picture. For example, the number two man will assume the number one man’s responsibilities and so on until you reach the number three man.


Only after the room has been successfully cleared, will you render aid to your fallen teammate. It may suck having to step over your buddy who’s hurt, but if you stop clearing the room to help him, you’re risking more men going down because they aren’t engaging the immediate threat in the room.

Securing a Building
I’m not going to go too far into detail about securing a building, because this article pertains to room clearing. However, it’s important to know what to do if you have enough people to secure the outside of the building that you’re entering with your team. If the building is large enough, you will need at least two teams to leap-frog rooms to maintain enough security. That is a completely different ball game.

If it’s a smaller building (like your BOL) and you have more than four people, have the remaining people secure the outer perimeter of the building to increase your level of security and safety. There’s two types of outer-security; relaxed, and tight. With relaxed security, your outer-security personnel will push further out from the building, and create a circle (if there’s enough personnel) on the outer perimeter facing outwards.

For tighter security, you can have your personnel positioned on a corner of the building, facing the direction of the most likely direction of an immediate threat (i.e. the area opposite from which you came). Outer-security can play a major factor in the success of securing your BOL if there are other looters nearby. This allows the team clearing the room to concentrate on the inside of the building, instead of what’s outside.

Communication
Communication is key when it comes to the success of room clearing. Before, during, and after you clear a room, your team should be constantly communicating (hand signals, or verbally) to ensure that everyone is on the same page. Failing to communicate when room clearing can lead to fratricide (friendly fire), thus completely ruining the mission. Make sure you practice communication techniques with your team, and develop hand and arm signals.


Chem-lights are a great item to carry on you in your BOB, because you can use them to mark a room that has been cleared if there are multiple rooms. A green or blue chem-light is the universal signal for “all good” when room clearing. Once a room has been cleared, and your team is ready to follow onto the next, crack a green or blue chem-light and drop it in the first doorway. This lets any follow on friendly personnel know that the first room is secure and they can move in if necessary.

Weapon Attachments / Configuration
Although you can clear a room successfully with an AR-15 (or any rifle) with just iron sights and no added equipment, weapon attachments make the very delicate art of room clearing much easier. Whichever way you want to configure your weapon is your own preference.

Number One Man
As the number one man, whichever way you go into the room is your choice. However, I recommend button-hooking into the room (entering the doorway, and making a 180-degree turn to clear the corner on the same wall you were stacked on). This allows the number two man’s weapon to enter right behind you without having to move his muzzle to avoid flagging you, as his weapon will be on your outside shoulder while in the stack.

Once you enter the doorway, no matter what’s in the room (unless it’s a trap) you need to keep moving! Otherwise, you’re screwing over the people behind you, trapping them in the doorway while you all get shot at. If you see a trap, call it out immediately and move everybody out of the room as fast as you can. Other than this exception, once you’ve entered the doorway, you’re committed to that room. Your team’s life depends on it.

After you’ve dominated your first corner, don’t spend too much time concentrating on it. Move your sector of fire along the same wall until you reach the far corner on the same side. During this transition, you should be moving along the wall until you’ve reached the first corner that you cleared. Then, while you transition your point of aim to the far corner of the room on the opposite side, move about three feet along the wall after the first corner you’ve cleared.


Number Two Man
As the number two man, you should be in the door, moving forward from your position in the stack to the corner nearest the door immediately when the number one guy flows in. Just like the number one guy, you need to dominate the corner you’re assigned to. If the number one guy doesn’t button hook, you will. You should always end up on the opposite side of the room as the number one guy. This way, two sides of the room are cleared simultaneously.

As you dominate your first corner, move along the wall (while not directly rubbing against it) and transition your point of aim to the far corner on the same side as the first one. Your movement should match the number one man’s identically. When both you, and the number one man are set in your final positions, your sector will end up overlapping his. This increases the amount of the room covered by both of you. Remember, your point of aim should never come closer than three feet off the number one man’s barrel.

Number Three Man
As the number three man, you should flow into the room immediately behind the number two man. As you enter the door, side-step in the same direction that the number one man went and clear the center of the room. Don’t worry about the near corner, as the number one man has already cleared it. Your movement will stop before you reach the near corner, this way you’re on a separate wall than the number one man.

After your movement has stopped, your final sector of fire will be in the center of the room, to three feet off of the number two man’s barrel. You may need to adjust the position of your barrel as you enter the room to keep yourself from flagging the number two man, which is fine. Just remember that as soon as you can, you need to resume your normal firing position as you enter the room.

Number Four Man
As the number four man, you’re the last person to enter the room. Normally, you’ll be back-stepping as you move to the door, then finally turning around to enter the room. You won’t be in the room at the same time as the number three man, which is fine. However, you need to flow in as close as you can to him. You will go to the same side as the number two man, and follow the same movement pattern as the number three man, stopping before you reach the near corner.


Your sector of fire as you enter the room will be the center of the room (so the main part of the room is cleared four times). After you’ve cleared the center, you will visually clear the ceiling in its entirety while remaining in your final position. After you’ve cleared the ceiling, you will turn around and face the door (without exposing yourself), and pull security to ensure no threats come in behind you.