Quote Originally Posted by Tom Odom
What I particularly like about your comments above was the point that old TTPs remain in the tool kit. New TTPs do not mean emptying the toolkit. But that is a hard lesson that many have to learn the hard way.
Yup. Yet again, it is something that too many who should know better fail to comprehend until it hits them in the face. Effective trend analysis requires that you maintain the full picture of the historical pattern - it is dangerous to discard anything in the mistaken belief that a "trend" is a linear development. As I stated earlier, threat TTPs evolve in the pressures of the the combat environment to meet our countermeasures. But it ain't a linear process - there are a variety of feedback loops involved.

Keeping to open sources, there was an article last month (in USA Today, of all places) that spoke to this topic. Titled Pressure-triggered bombs worry U.S. forces, it discussed the bad guys' return to pressure initiated systems when our countermeasures began to significantly impact their use of wireless initiation systems.

The quote by the MI officer at the end of the article says it all: There's a tendency to think of the insurgency as a bunch of guys running around the desert with Kalashnikovs. These are a group of dedicated professionals trying to improve their craft.