Neil, thanks for the example. Don't second guess yourself, s*** happens in combat. At least you made a decision.

As Ken said,

over and over sets up an easily exploited pattern. I always appreciated it when the evil enema displayed patterns in their futile attempts to shorten my days
We almost learned the hard way that routine becomes deadly. In early 2007, the threat changed inside the target house. The enemy learned not to fight directly. Instead, they would rig the entire house to blow.

For a time, we mastered the art of battle drill six. We lived by the mantra that "slow is smooth and smooth is fast." My teams could flow through a town seamlessly.

During clearance operations in the DRV, I chose an abandoned home to strong point. To date, we had cleared over 400 homes. Given the location and vantage point, it was key terrain. The location seemed ideal. It was all too inviting. Unfortunately, the enemy identified it as well.

After we secured the house, I had a platoon inside establishing our defense and a platoon outside consolidating. Still something felt odd about the house. In the past 48 hours, we had lost 4 paratroopers to a suicide bomber and discovered an EFP production facility.

An alert NCO continued to search discovering a wire hidden under a rug leading to a hidden basement. Inside the basement, the receiver flashed connected to over 1000lbs of explosives. Thankfully, the det cord was flawed. I would have lost at least 15 soldiers.

Another unit was not so lucky and lost 10 soldiers.

Afterwards, we adopted the crawl approach to clearing.

There is no golden egg with TTPs in sustained COIN. BD6 is not a thing of the past. The key is to be erratic, innovative, and decisive. Sometimes you storm the house; sometimes you call TPTs for surrender; sometimes you blow the house up. As long as you are anything but predictable.

We mastered a similar TTP for driving- always change the tempo. Sometimes we bounded; sometimes we sped; sometimes we crawled.

In any case, the enemy was perplexed and the casualty rate decreased.

v/r

Mike