How did EOF rules help or hurt your unit down range?

I felt like there was this little dude standing next to me with a clipboard checking whether I went through all the steps before I fired my weapon. I finally disposed of that guy and used an easier standard "If you don't want it seen on CNN...don't do it"

I do agree with what you said CPT Kletzing, but its also unfortunate that its all circumstantial. Some areas and EOFs hurt units more than helped. Waiting 20-30 minutes to have your arty approved to fire because it now has to go through battalion rather than the CO causes more damage and more casualties. Grunts and officers on the ground are trained to do that, so why be babysat by a command? Mind you that's a command that approved your training for that as well.
There are many rules put in place for damn good reason and I support them, but there are some so ridiculous that they cause a hindrance on the effectiveness in combat. Do we want to win the hearts in minds? Yes of course. But don't do it by being 'sooo careful with who can do what' in combat that in turn you cannot even engage the enemy in time. Keeping moral and ethical values in an army is great in the moment, but it can unnecessarily kill an army the same way and defeat their purpose at that time.

Proper EOF kept me from shooting an afghan army pickup driver with a lead foot. I might have won a hypothetical fight but our lives would have changed substantially. Probably for the worse.

Some things are just better left to demonstrating effectiveness by describing firs hand recount of events, I will share one of the toughest challenges I faced as a 1SG in Iraq during the surge.

I thought about this since answering it, and the answer really depends on the period covered, the EOF & ROE was somewhat of a fluid situation. While some things always remained constant (you ALWAYS have the right of self defense), some deviations occurred during the deployments which led to confusion and at one point led to some being a little trigger shy when faced with a legitimate target.

We were aligned in Company Task Force Configuration, so we had a tank platoon with us from our brothers in 1-37 Armor, 1st Platoon (callsign "Shady") was with us, they demonstrated their combat resilience & resolve by being able to operate with their Abrams as well as in up-armor HMMWV's, sometimes switching vehicle platforms throughout the day based on mission location and destruction requirements requested.

SPC (P) Daul was the platoon top gun, a gym rat, clever, and at times could be a smart ass, but always really into the mission was killed when hit by an EFP - it was a challenge to keep this platoon together and to keep them from unleashing hell. The platoon had recently lost their medic (SGT Almazon) killed 27 August 2006 when the HMMWV hit an IED and completely destroyed the vehicle. SGT Almazan was a very eager medic and was a true professional, the challenge to keep the platoon grounded in the escalation of force measures was a tremendous challenge. Some will say that we are professionals and we execute our missions as professionals, but until you fight together and lose 10 of your own brothers in arms, that you see everyday, that you see at their best and at their worst, you can cast your stone of contempt but the challenge is hell to try to keep these Soldiers to remain on course, to continue to use these Escalation of Force Measures and these Rules of Engagement.

I am not interested in hearing your thoughts of how disciplined your unit was and how much better they may have handled it, all experiences are different, and the challenges for this platoon was tremendous, and quite frankly numbing!

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/apdaul.htm

I never had any issues with the EOF rules themselves, the way they were managed on the other hand.......

For example, while the EOF allowed for such non-lethal methods of getting another vehicles attention on a convoy, a pen-flare for example, a policy requiring an AR 15-6 investigation any time an EOF event occurred, including non-lethal occurrences, put lives and/or Soldier's integrity at risk. Soldiers and leaders either chose not to report the incident in order to save the hassle of the investigation or chose not to utilize EOF allowing enemy fighters to harass them more easily. Either way the Army, the Soldier and the country lose.

EOF is important... I will not say that it is not a necessity, I will however say that it hinders and puts lives at risk and in real danger when combined with the ever evolving ROE's... For example "Do not fire unless directly fired upon"; that statement right there takes the 5 "S's" of EOF and pretty much turns it into us yelling at the insurgency and they know it, they know we can't do shit unless they pull the trigger... They can point their weapons, scout the shit out of our squad movement, move from fire point to fire point without consequence... It ties our hands and kills our Soldiers... I'm tracking that there are those that abuse EOF/ROE... And they can be prosecuted just as easily as they are now... So why make it so GD hard for us to do our job?

ROE got the Vic behind me blown up and got our gunner (LCpl Erickson) killed by a SVBIED. We weren't supposed to interfere with their everyday living and that let vehicles pass by us at will...I think it hurt more than helped. I understand why they are there, just don't agree with most of them.

I was in a fire fight about once a week with my marines, EoF never seemed like a problem for us.

Escalation of force hurt too many units, because in a moment when you have to resort to deadly force, leaders misinterpret the EOF, and, run the whole process, getting soldiers confused, and killed.

EOF are for police officers not for soldiers. As soldiers are job is to make the enemy to surrender by any means possible. If you don't believe that, take a look at WW2 if EOF was in effect then we wouldn't have drop the atomic bomb and the war lasted years longer