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No Pressure

No Pressure. We’ll Get Out on Time. Technology and People’s War: U.S. Efforts to Disrupt the HCM Trail, 1966-68. Operation Rolling Thunder Fails to halt re-supply to the South SECDEF McNamara seeks options. Turning to Technology.

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No Pressure

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  1. No Pressure We’ll Get Out on Time

  2. Technology and People’s War:U.S. Efforts to Disrupt the HCM Trail, 1966-68

  3. Operation Rolling Thunder Fails to halt re-supply to the South SECDEF McNamara seeks options

  4. Turning to Technology JASON study group concludes, 30 August 1966, “the bombing of North Vietnam was ineffective and therefore [it is] recommended that the barrier concept be implemented as an alternative means of checking infiltration.”

  5. Recognizing the enemy’s resourcefulness and tenacity, the scientists observed: ‘[W]e anticipate that the North Vietnamese would learn to cope with a barrier built this way after some period of time which we cannot estimate, but which we fear may be short.... Thus we envisage a dynamic ‘battle of the barrier,’ in which the barrier is repeatedly improved and strengthened by the introduction of new components, and which will hopefully permit us to keep the North Vietnamese off balance by continually posing new problems for them.”

  6. “On the battlefield of the future, enemy forces will be located, tracked, and targeted almost instantaneously through the use of data links, computer-assisted intelligence evaluation, and automatic fire control. I see battlefields or combat areas that are under 24 hour real or near time surveillance of all types. I see battlefields on which we can destroy anything we locate through instant communications and the almost instantaneous application of highly lethal firepower.” - General William Westmoreland, 1969

  7. Highest Possible Priority September 15, 1966 - Secretary McNamara signs memo establishing Joint Task Force (JTF) 728, with the unclassified designation “Defense Communications Planning Group” (DCPG). LTGen Starbird, Director, Defense Communications Agency (DCA) directed by McNamara to create “An infiltration interdiction system, to stop (or at a minimum to substantially reduce) the flow of men and supplies from North to South Vietnam ... to be designed, produced, and put in place in South Vietnam and Laos as a matter of highest priority.” SECDEF directs “system [be] installed and in operation” within 12 months.

  8. Initiation of “Practice Nine” “The barrier may not be fully effective at first, but I believe that it can be made effective in time and that even the threat of its becoming effective can substantially change to our advantage the character of the war. It would hinder enemy efforts, would permit more efficient use of the limited number of friendly troops, and would be persuasive evidence both that our sole aim is to protect the South from the North and that we intend to see the job through.” - McNamara Memo to LBJ

  9. Anti-Submarine Warfare In it’s standard configuration, the SP-2E was designed for anti-submarine duties. In its anti-infiltration role in Southeast Asia, however, the U.S. Navy reconfigured the aircraft and commissioned an OP-2E Observation Squadron, designated VO-67. Designed to drop submarine detection devices, called sonobuoys, the OP-2Es would be called upon to fly relatively low and slow over the jungles of Vietnam and Laos dropping newly developed sensors.

  10. Sensor Development ACOUBUOY, early acoustic version, attached to a parachute, designed to hang in the jungle canopy. SPIKEBUOY, electronically identical, but designed for hand emplacement by ground teams. ADSID, seismic version, delivered from the air without a parachute and, intended to bury all but its antenna. Hybrid ACOUSID , combined acoustic and seismic capabilities, also buried itself upon impact.

  11. Use of Munitions Standard “Gravel” mines Button bomblets, “aspirin-sized,” act as “triggering” devices to activate nearby sensors. Anticipated monthly deployment on the Ho Chi Minh Trail of some 13 million Gravel mines and another 25 million bomblets Expected that U.S. fighter-bomber aircraft would use more than 10,000 Dragon Tooth mines per month against infiltrators and vehicles

  12. Creating the “Air” Piece January 1967 – SECDEF activates Navy OP-2E squadron to “drop” specially designed “buoys.” October 1967 - 21 EC-121Rs and nearly 1500 officers and men arrive for duty at Korat Air Base. 553rd Recce Wg. November 1967 - 8 OP-2E aircraft and 298 men arrive for duty at Nakhon Phanom Air Base. VO-67 Observation Sq. * 23 O-2 aircraft already at Nakhon Phanom. 23rd Tass Sq.

  13. December 1967 – 9 CH-3 helicopters, 201 men arrive at Nakhon Phanom. 21st Helo Sq. December 1967 - 19 A-1E aircraft based at Pleiku, South Vietnam, moved to Nakhon Phanom with 135 men. 1st Air Commando Sq. May 1968 – 20 F-4D aircraft deploy to Ubon Air Base with 556 personnel. 25th Tac Ftr Sq.

  14. Infiltration Surveillance Center July 1967 – Construction begins at Nakhon Phanom (where political and technical conditions were favorable). September 1967 – “Dutch Mill” completed. Complex consisted of a 20,000-square-foot operations center, a 5,600-square-foot communications building, and a building for six 200-kilowatt generators. Mid-October - Some 400 personnel working at the facility under the command of BGen William P. McBride. According to an official Air Force history, “Because of crash personnel recruitment, many officers and airmen arrived without prior training. Consequently on-site training was begun ... IBM computer programming, key punch operations, sensors and munitions management, communications, intelligence analysis, weather reporting, and in other specialized tasks.”

  15. Battle of the Barrier November 25, 1967 - Task Force Alpha conducts first operational testing OP-2Es, assisted by O-2s, drop 24 sensors in the Mud River sector. Seventeen of the sensors successfully transmit to an orbiting EC-121 - which relays information to ISC. Accuracy an issue. Some sensors land as much as 4 miles from their intended targets and other sensors could not be located at all.

  16. Excessive sensitivity also a problem, as “ambient factors such as animals (especially frogs), thunder, and other sounds were triggering most of the activations.” Procedures are refined, including the installation of bomb sights in the OP-2Es and the use of MSQ-77 radar vectors. A1E aircraft finally began dropping gravel mines on December 27. Nevertheless, the rules of engagement required that a FAC verify the target, a daunting task in the dense jungles of Laos.

  17. ADSID

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