Into The Breachman agement

An Assaulter’s guide to doors.

- John Chapman

In the world of professional assaulters,few subjects cause more arguments, questions, and ass-ache than the management of doorways. There’s a constant battle between force protection and the aggressive violence-of-action mentality. Balancing I don’t like getting shot with get in the room and face shoot them is a difficult task indeed, and knowing which is more important depends on your mission.

“Having run a couple of schools where CQB was on the menu,” says Justin Dyal, a retired USMC lieutenant colonel, “I think doorway procedures kicked off more heated arguments among instructors than probably any other two topics combined.” 

Students and teams tie themselves in knots on this subject when they lose sight of their actual mission, focusing too heavily on one side or the other of the “don’t shoot me” versus “I get to shoot you” scale. The most effective way to deal with this constant friction is to develop procedures based on clear principles, applied on a sliding scale based on the mission at hand, the priority of life, and the specific circumstances. One of the challenges with managing doorways is the number of variables that surround them. Variations in the space available outside the door, whether the door is open or closed, whether the door is a push or pull door, and what side of the door we end up on during our approach. Our training goals for handling doors is to create a few sets of procedures that apply to the widest array of doorway configurations we’re most likely to encounter.