Combat

Lore & Background

Combat may be benign and recreational, as in combat sports and mock combat. Hand-to-hand combat (melee) occurs at very close range, attacking with the body or a melee weapon, and is divided into clinch fighting, ground fighting, and stand-up fighting. Military combat involves two or more opposing military forces meeting in warfare, and can include guerilla groups, insurgents, and governments.

Reader's Guide

Combat is a fundamental concept in human conflict, ranging from individual fights to large-scale wars. Its significance lies in its dual nature: it can be destructive and governed by laws such as the Geneva Conventions, or recreational and regulated by rules like those of combat sports. The article notes that combat effectiveness requires personnel to be trained, armed, equipped, and funded. Military combat situations are classified by size and geographical area, with terms like duel, skirmish, battle, and campaign used depending on context. Understanding combat helps in analyzing historical and modern conflicts, as well as the legal and ethical frameworks that attempt to limit its harm.

Did You Know?

• Combat may be armed (using weapons) or unarmed (not using weapons).
• Hand-to-hand combat includes clinch fighting, ground fighting, and stand-up fighting.
• Military combat can involve guerilla groups, insurgents, and domestic or foreign governments.
• Combat may comply with or violate local or international laws, such as the Geneva Conventions.

The Shanghai Roots of Modern CQB

Close-quarters combat has existed since the earliest days of warfare, but the modern discipline traces its intellectual lineage to a single figure: Assistant Commissioner William E. Fairbairn of the Shanghai Municipal Police. Following the 1925 May Thirtieth Movement, Fairbairn was charged with building a dedicated auxiliary squad for riot control and aggressive policing. Drawing on techniques from a range of martial arts practitioners, he distilled them into a system he named "defendu." Its guiding principle was brutal effectiveness paired with relative simplicity for new recruits. The method blended less-lethal and lethal options—point shooting, firearm combat, and improvised weapons like chairs or table legs. During World War II, Fairbairn was recruited to train Allied special forces, expanding the system's lethality and renaming it the "Silent Killing Close Quarters Combat method." It became standard training for British special forces, and he published his textbook Get Tough. U.S. officers Rex Applegate and Anthony Biddle studied the methods in Scotland and carried them to Camp X in Ontario, where Applegate later published Kill or Get Killed in 1943. Training under this framework reached British Commandos, the First Special Service Force, OSS operatives, U.S. Army Rangers, and Marine Raiders.

From Postwar Stagnation to the Munich Catalyst

For decades after World War II, infantry tactics for urban warfare and close-quarters fighting saw almost no evolution. The special forces monopoly on modern CQB was broken by a tragic event: the 1972 Munich massacre. In its aftermath, Western counterterrorist units—including the Special Air Service, Delta Force, GSG 9, GIGN, and Joint Task Force 2—developed structured CQB tactics centered on firearms. Their goal was to assault buildings quickly and precisely while minimizing harm to hostages and friendly personnel. These closely-knit units shared tactics and trained together frequently. The SAS put these methods to use during the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege. By the 1980s and 1990s, CQB techniques had filtered down to police tactical units like American SWAT teams. Yet regular infantry still lagged far behind; as late as the 1990s, some manuals described room clearing with the same basic approach used sixty years earlier—throw a grenade, then assault with automatic fire. The special forces held CQB as essentially a hostage-rescue specialty, and it was not widely taught to line troops until the urban battles of the 1990s, including Mogadishu, the Bosnian War, and the First Chechen War, proved the gap was dangerous.

Fallujah and the End of the Special Forces Monopoly

The First and Second Battles of Fallujah during the Iraq War stand as the watershed moments that finally forced CQB into the hands of regular infantry. U.S. Marines, under intense pressure to seize the city from insurgents, relied on conventional combined arms and fire support rather than proper close-quarters training and equipment. The result was devastating: numerous civilian and allied casualties, and severe damage to the city itself. Similar struggles emerged in Afghan towns and cities during the War in Afghanistan, making a proper approach to infantry urban warfare an urgent priority. CQB tactics began to be taught more broadly to line troops. However, this shift was not without friction. Scholar Anthony King notes that some special forces units express open disdain at regular infantry receiving CQB instruction, particularly in organizational politics and budget disputes. A unit equipped for CQB training demands expensive gear and dedicated facilities, consuming funding that could otherwise support other units or programs. The tension between elite and conventional forces over who owns close-quarters combat thus became as much a political and financial battle as a tactical one.

CQB Across the Ages: Defining Encounters

Close-quarters combat has shaped the outcome of conflicts across centuries and continents. At Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864, Civil War soldiers from both the Northern and Southern armies were repeatedly driven into brutal hand-to-hand fighting with swords, knives, bayonets, sticks, and bare hands. In January 1879, the Battle of Isandlwana in the Anglo-Zulu War collapsed into close combat when British forces exhausted their ammunition, resulting in a decisive Zulu victory over a modern army. A century later, in October 1986, the Special Actions Unit of the Royal Malaysia Police resolved the Pudu Prison hostage crisis using batons and rattan canes after the Prime Minister ordered a non-firearms resolution; the five armed prisoners were arrested. In May 2004, near Amarah in southern Iraq, the Battle of Danny Boy saw British Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders ambushed by roughly 100 Mahdi Army insurgents. Reinforcements from the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment were also caught in an ambush, and electronic communication failures compounded the chaos. These episodes, spanning three centuries and four continents, illustrate that CQB remains a defining and often decisive dimension of armed conflict.

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