You’ve heard it many times before: “We’re default aggressive!” But what does that really mean and how exactly do we live up to that mantra? ‘Aggressive’ is one of the most over and mis used words in the modern fire service, and because of that, confusion has been created in some people’s minds on how to live up to or exist around the many misrepresentations of what an aggressive firefighter or operation is or should be. This program looks at some of those misrepresentations, how they came to be, and how we can move past them to develop fire-ground doctrine that more effectively meets our sworn obligation to the public and each other. It outlines strategies and tactics that can be utilized by firefighters and fire officers to plan, organize, train for and execute safe and efficient fire-ground operations, becoming ‘default effective’, while not compromising our mission values personally or as a service in order to do so. Specifically, this program applies proven ideology, applied to the fire service, that allows us to gather incident intelligence, develop and maintain situational awareness, exploit available opportunity, gain and maintain control of critical territory, develop an effective incident tempo and maintain that momentum, gain control of fire development and limit its growth and how we can build upon those accomplishments to effectively and efficiently bring an incident under control and to a safe conclusion.