Vir Alcan

By Eliran Feildboy, founder of Project Gecko

In today's tactical space, it’s a rarity to come across an empirically valid CQB system—let alone one created with human behaviour and interaction as its guideposts.

One such rarity is the ground-breaking ITCQB system. Unlike most modern systems, ITCQB focuses on real-life scenarios and on the diverse factors found in human-to-human encounters.

You might wonder why this matters if military and LE operators are trained to never be in the position of clearing a room by themselves.

Consider this hypothetical. You and your team just finished clearing a room. Everyone else has already exited and you’re about to do likewise when your eye catches sight of a hidden door in a far corner. No one saw it while clearing the room.

Now the team is tied up clearing the next room, which means the job of clearing whatever’s behind that hidden door falls to you—and it can’t wait because, potentially, the team’s ability to secure the entire structure hinges on you sweeping solo right now.

“Slicing the pie” is a technique for gaining information about what’s inside a room. It entails moving in a cone-shaped pattern around the apex of a room’s thresholds (usually its doors but also its windows).

At the beginning, you have zero visual information about possible threats or civilians inside. Likely all you have is audible intel gained from listening to the sounds and voices inside.

But don’t discount the intel you obtain with your ears: it may be sufficient to help you decide whether to engage or disengage.

A few pointers:

Among the things you control in a room-clearing situation is the angle of entry. This angle is “measured” from the apex of the door to the last visible line into the room.

Different angles present drastically different scenarios. Each scenario affects what you can control and do to the target's mobility inside the room.

The basic definition of angles in ITCQB is:

This is what you call an extremely thin exposure into the room. Typically, you encounter narrow angles first when walking alongside a wall that has a doorway built into it. You’ve entered the narrow angle when you can see the doorframe and slightly inside the room.

Although there may not be much acquirable intel awaiting in the narrow angle, there could be just enough to give you valuable insights as to what you’ll encounter in the remainder of the room.

For example, are there bloodstains on the floor? Is smoke reducing visibility? Are there voices coming from within (and, if so, how many)?

After entering the narrow angle, commence an orientation check.

Align your hips with the wall as soon as you enter the narrow angle and make sure your leading foot points to the door’s apex. Doing so will give you better exposure management, more cover, and enhanced body synchronisation of the door threshold. Most importantly, it will facilitate increased mobility because positioning your body with hips toward the wall allows you to stay fluid so you can move around the narrow angle better and bail out quickly if the situation requires it.

The next relevant angle is 45 degrees. This is your point of contact with the flank of the room even as you’re concealed by the room. You’re still gathering intel about the room—let's say different compartments, multiple doorways, or multiple targets.

Keep your gun down while slicing. This minimizes your exposure to the inside of the room and prevents triggering toe room.

This angle allows you to see the center of the room where people will most likely stand if we’re not engaging with them.

You may be acquainted with the term “fatal funnel” and have heard it used to denote the area between 45 and 135 degrees. But what exactly is a fatal funnel? It’s a term for areas where you are easily seen but cannot easily engage/disengage targets inside the room.

Despite the dangers inherent to the fatal funnel, the 90 degree angle can be a valuable asset in that it allows you to divide the room into two sections—one, the controlled area; the other, the uncontrolled area.

Image source: artofmanliness.com

However, the 90 degrees angle is trickier than the others. Even having your firearm turned down slightly still allows the target to see its muzzle before you enter. Exposure risk is worst when your angle is between 60 and 90 degrees.

A recommended solution is to snap as soon as you start to isolate to 90 degrees. Do this in a single step. It can leave a target who has seen your muzzle significantly less time to react. It can also prevent triggering the room.

In traditional CQB, angles beyond 90 degrees aren’t identified. They’re used in the ITCQB system to highlight the increasing danger of progressively opening the room.

From 90 to 150 degrees, you can reduce the possibility of exposure by compressing the weapon when closing in. Compressing is accomplished by bringing the stock up higher on your shoulder while keeping the barrel pointed down.

Compressing does not impede your reaction time. You’ll still be quick in presenting your weapon and, by keeping the line-eyes/weapon/leading-foot positioning, you won’t find it necessary to use the sight.

This is called the “hard corner.” Here, your goal is to cheat the angle and see as much of the room as you can.

As the final part of the angle approaches, you attack the corner—meaning you quickly step inside with your leading foot (flat and stable so you can bail out if needed) and align your weapon.

One final step: after securing the final angle, look back over your shoulder to make sure no threats are present and able to attack from behind.

Focusing on five key angles as the golden rule allows you to methodically and consistently clear rooms with high emphasis on minimizing your exposure and thus safety.

Strong fundamentals when slicing the pie are a necessity in both solo and team clearing a room. Once you understand angles and their relevance you can better understand what situation you can use for clearing stoppages, bailing out and proactivity.

In fact, the IRCTC stock has slipped 11.67 per cent or Rs 85.8 since December 14 last year. The value decline in a span of two months is nearly 50% of the losses the stock has incurred during the last one year.

Since February 16, 2022, the stock has lost 21.33% in a year.

In the current trading session, the stock of the tourism and ticketing arm of Indian Railways rose 0.08 per cent to Rs 649.40 against the previous close of Rs 648.90 on BSE. Total 7748 shares of the firm changed hands amounting to a turnover of Rs 50.25 crore on BSE. Market cap of IRCTC stood at Rs 52,012 crore.

In terms of technicals, the relative strength index (RSI) of IRCTC stands at 54.7, signaling it's neither trading in oversold nor overbought territory. IRCTC stock has a one-year beta of 1.3. This signals the stock has very high volatility and carries higher risk. The large cap stock is trading higher than the 5 day and 20 day moving averages but lower than 50 day, 100 day and 200 day moving averages.

IRCTC stock has a price to equity ratio of 55, which is higher compared to the industry PE of 50.45. This signals that the stock is overvalued compared to its peers.

However, the stock has been an outperformer in three years surging 114% during the period. IRCTC logged a 22% rise in net profit to Rs 256 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2022 against Rs 209 crore in the year-ago period.

IRCTC’s revenue climbed 70% to Rs 918 crore in Q3 as compared to Rs 540 crore in Q3FY22. The company announced interim dividend of Rs 3.5 per share.

EBITDA climbed 16.7 percent to Rs 325.8 crore in Q3 from Rs 279.2 crore in corresponding period of previous year.

Here’s a look at what analysts said about prospects of the IRCTC stock amid the current correction for the stock.

Ravi Singh, Vice-President and Head of Research at Share India said, “IRCTC shares are showing strength on daily and weekly charts. The MACD indicator and moving averages are in buy zone, suggesting a strong move ahead. Traders may take a long position in the range of Rs 620-630 levels for a target of Rs 690 level, with a stop loss placed at Rs 600 level from a near-term perspective.”

Jinesh Joshi – Research Analyst at Prabhudas Lilladher has assigned a hold call for the stock with a target price of Rs 679.

"All the segments were EBIT positive with internet ticketing reporting the highest EBIT margin of 84.2%. EBITDA rose 16.7% YoY to Rs 3,258 mn (Prabhudas Lilladher estimates Rs 3,181 mn) with a margin of 35.5% (Prabhudas Lilladher estimates of 36.2%) as against 51.7% in 3QFY22. The stock currently trades at 47.5x our FY24E EPS estimate of Rs 13.5. PAT rose 22.4% YoY to Rs 2,555 mn (Prabhudas Lilladher estimates of Rs 2,445 mn) with a margin of 27.8% (Prabhudas Lilladher estimates 27.8%) as against 38.7% in 3QFY22," said Joshi.

Abhijeet from Tips2trade said, "IRCTC stock price faces strong resistance at Rs 658 on the daily charts. A close above this level could be bullish and lead to targets of Rs 700-730 in the coming days. Support will be at Rs 601."

Also read: ITC, HDFC Bank, HUL, RIL and TCS: Retail investors owned Rs 5.71 lakh cr worth 10 stocks in Q3

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