The SPOS outlined in the original Dyemarker plan envisioned a virtual defensive wall stretching from the South China Sea to Dong Ha Mountain. Another response was to simply avoid them. Just 16 months later, the unit pulled off a “super surge,” putting up 436 sorties in three and a half days—the equivalent of more than a…, Air Force Global Strike Command on April 20 ordered a safety stand-down of its B-1B Lancer fleet to inspect fuel system problems following an April 8 ground emergency. The sensor data were also used to develop non-time-sensitive targets such as truck parks and storage areas, which could be stuck at any time. [55] The Ground Tactical System was envisioned as a tool for ground commanders in defending fire bases and other secured areas against attack, and was eventually employed around Khe Sanh. [49] While the North Vietnamese only imported 6,000 trucks into North Vietnam between 1968 and 1970 (for all of their operations), imports increased dramatically in 1971, though these also seem to have been as a result of the planned 1972 offensive. The press conference stimulated several popular names for the barrier, but the one that stuck was “the McNamara Line.”. After a four-year hiatus, the bombing of North Vietnam resumed in Operations Linebacker I and Linebacker II. [12] The group concentrated its efforts in three key areas: communications; data processing and display; and sensor development. With the conclusion of aerial operations around Khe Sanh and the close out of the Marine base, the focus of Igloo White (as the operation was redesignated in June) turned once again to Laos. The Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Navy Base (NKP), formerly Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base, is a Royal Thai Navy facility used for riverine patrols along the Mekong River.It is approximately 587 km (365 miles) northeast of Bangkok, 14.5 km (9 miles) west of Nakhon Phanom city in Nakhon Phanom Province in the northeastern region … These sensors were to be part of what was then known as McNamaras Line. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. [19], The sensors reported their data via radio frequency channels ranging upward from 162 megahertz (MHz) to 174 MHz on the very high frequency band. One limitation was that not every branch and offshoot of the trail was wired. Scholars today remain divided on the merits of the electronic barrier system and the efficacy of the bombing campaigns that it directed. Weapons, supplies, and troops streamed south from North Vietnam, along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The idea that McNamara seized upon came from professor Roger Fisher of Harvard Law School, a part-time consultant to McNamara and John T. McNaughton, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. At a Pentagon news briefing in February 1971, Brig. The total reported for the 1969-70 dry season was 10,000, and for 1970-71, it was 20,000. The objective of those attacks was the logistical system of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) that snaked through southeastern Laos and was known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the Truong Son Road to the North Vietnamese). Other modernization programs, such as nuclear command…. Two B-52s arrived in the Middle East on April 23 as part of an increase in airpower to protect U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan as part of the withdrawal in the country. McNamara went ahead anyway. By then, McNamara was gone, having left office Feb. 29, 1968. [32], The effectiveness of the system was determined not by how long a sensor would last in the field, but by the adequacy of coverage by a particular string of sensors. [51] Also, 28 January 1968, COMUSMACV provided its own guidance for the planned creation of the ARVN Dyemarker Regiment. On 22 January, the first of 316 sensors were implanted around and near Khe Sanh in 44 strings by Navy squadron VO-67. The Marines, who disagreed vigorously with the concept, had to divert to it troops and resources that they could not readily spare. The summer study was conducted by 47 Jasons, augmented by 20 IDA analysts. United States Government, United States Senate, pp. For several reasons, the Batcat crews simultaneously tracked and analyzed the sensor data they were relaying. It operated there in that capacity until it was deactivated on June 30, 1975. It had McNamara was opposed to any increase in bombing of the North. One such notion was to train pigeons to carry munitions, land on North Vietnamese trucks, and explode on touchdown. That…, House Armed Services leaders say they'll move to block adding more F-35s than requested in the fiscal 2022 budget, in hopes of letting the overtaxed sustainment system for the fighter “catch up” to the fleet already in place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakhon_Phanom_Royal_Thai_Navy_Base Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. Its walls featured large situation displays. Initial projects include an effort to use artificial intelligence to detect cyber cyber intrusions in jet the embedded computers that control jet engines.…, In the summer of 2019, the 18th Maintenance Group at Kadena Air Base, Japan, was struggling to produce just a light day of sorties. United States Government, United States Senate, pp. 358, gave Project Nine the “highest national priority” for expenditures and authorization. On 30 January, COMUSMACV informed the commander of III MAF of their proposed mission to augment the proposed ARVN force manning the barrier. The key to the failure of the American strategy was that the anti-infiltration campaigns targeted supplies and transportation (both of which were imported), instead of manpower. The Igloo White operation consisted of three major components: 1 - Delivery of the sensors, first accomplished by U.S. Navy squadron VO-67 and later by the USAF 25th TFS, 2 - Monitoring of the sensors by the 553rd Reconnaissance Wing, Batcat, and 3 - Assimilation of the sensor data by the Infiltration Surveillance Center (ISC) at Task Force Alpha at Nakhon Phanom, or in flight by the Batcat EC-121R … US aircraft had been flying interdiction missions in the Laotian panhandle since December 1964. The sensors—a network of some 20,000 of them—were planted mostly by Navy and Air Force airplanes, although some of them were placed by special operations ground forces. Doubtless, PAVN troops negated the effects of many sensors, but so many of them were sown over such a long period of time that the majority survived. 1”), but the most popular one was Task Force Alpha. The crew was picked up by another CH-3C and the helicopter was later destroyed by friendly fire. As…, The U.S. military needs to wake up to the fact that global dominance is no longer a viable strategy for national defense, because pursuing that unrealizable goal is making the country less safe, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said April 22. The EC-121R carried a crew of 17 or 18, including a combat information center crew of six or seven working the Igloo White gear in the back of the aircraft. Not only were the PAVN/NLF able to continue their efforts, but they managed, under a deluge of ordnance, to launch two major offensives (the Tet Offensive in 1968 and the Nguyen Hue Offensive [known in the West as the Easter Offensive] in 1972) and a counteroffensive (against Operation Lam Son 719 in 1971). “One reason why there is some skepticism about the truck kills claimed by the Air Force is the total figure for the last year greatly exceeds the number of trucks believed by the embassy to be in all of North Vietnam.”. The nerve center for Igloo White was located at Nakhon Phanom, which the Americans called “NKP,” in eastern Thailand, across the Me-kong River from Laos. The computers at Nakhon Phanom were packed up and shipped home to the United States. The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency developed a formula that arbitrarily discounted 75 percent of the pilot claims. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. The focus of the bombing effort shifted to interdiction of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and Igloo White, newly operational, was there to help. This state-of-the-art operation utilized electronic sensors, computers, and communications relay aircraft in an attempt to aut… These sensors could hear both vehicles and voices. The project broke ground in July 1967 and was in operation before the end of the year. Among them were B-52s, B-57 light bombers, F-4s, and assorted Navy aircraft. That name became the most associated with the program though various elements received a number of separate codenames. The Seventh Air Force claimed that 46,000 PAVN trucks had been destroyed or damaged by air strikes during its tenure (with nineteen thousand of these occurring during Command Hunt V 1970–1971). The Operation Rolling Thunder air strikes, which had begun in March 1965, had not accomplished much. The program was freewheeling and free-spending. [49] American claims that 80 percent of the materiel that started down the trail was destroyed while en route to the southern battlefields had to be altered in the face of loss claims of only 15 percent by the Vietnamese.[63]. [20] The Phase I models of both the acoustic and seismic sensors were only available for operation in a continuous mode, which meant that under normal conditions, their lithium batteries would function for approximately 30 days. The project was called Project Practice Nine. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. The first sensors utilized by the program were Air-Delivered Seismic Intrusion Detector (ADSID), which had been developed from devices then in use in underground mapping for the oil industry. Operation Igloo White was a covert United States Joint Military electronic warfare operation conducted from late January 1968 until February 1973, during the Vietnam War. The first was for the ISC to relay target information to an airborne battlefield command and control center (ABCCC), which then routed bombers to a forward air control aircraft (FAC). B-52s Return to the Middle East as Afghanistan Withdrawal Begins, Rolls Teams with Purdue, Carnegie-Mellon on Embedded Security, Quick Turnaround: How a Kadena Maintenance Group Radically Increased Sortie Production, AFGSC Stands Down B-1 Fleet to Inspect Fuel System Problems, HASC’s Smith: U.S. Should Abandon Quest for Military Preeminence, Strike Options Should Compete on Cost Effectiveness, Study Says, CENTCOM Looks to Help Afghans Maintain Aircraft After Withdrawal, HASC Won’t Plus Up F-35 Request in Fiscal 2022 Budget, Military Officials Defend Triad, Warn Lawmakers That Nuclear Modernization Can No Longer Be Delayed. [5] After a million sorties were flown and more than three-quarters of a million tons of bombs were dropped, Rolling Thunder came to an end at the direction of President Lyndon B. Johnson on 11 November 1968. Costing between $1 and $1.7 billion to design and build (and another billion dollars per year to operate over the five-year life of the operation) and possessing and controlling some of the most sophisticated technology in the Southeast Asia theater, Igloo White still remains in question as to its effectiveness. These guys, through their top-secret, high-tech “Igloo White” program, littered Vietnam and Laos with thousands of electronic sensors, and then monitored signals from them at NKP’s Infiltration Surveillance Center on high-powered IBM computers. The strategic results might have been better, except that US airmen were severely constrained in where and what they could bomb. [39] The Marines credited 40 percent of intelligence available to the Khe Sanh fire support coordination center to the sensors. The sun went down every night, and he had trees to hide under. US objectives had also changed. Analysts at the 200,000-square-foot (19,000 m2) center concentrated on such arcane topics as pathway predictions, delay intervals, route segments, and choke points. They were dropped in strings of five or six to be sure that at least three sensors in each string would survive and be activated. Steel Tiger was the code name for the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. The darkened war room contained rows of scopes. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) was a highly classified, multi-service United States special operations unit which conducted covert unconventional warfare operations prior to and during the Vietnam … The Joint Chiefs of Staff were against the whole thing, saying it would take six or seven Army divisions to clear and secure the terrain and up to 48 months to complete the barrier. The task proved to be more difficult than the Jasons had figured. [1] This was understandable due to the fact that the Vietnamese were basically silent during the 1970s and 1980s. interdiction operations. Igloo White would be the name by which the entire program would be best remembered. The Defense Communications Planning Group's research and development program created an advanced technological system. It had several names (including “Dutch Mill” and “Operating Location No. About 400 Air Force people were assigned to Task Force Alpha, and a brigadier general was in charge. The first truck is now moving and others are starting and some drivers are using their horns. The QU-22 program itself was canceled in 1972. For example, the sarcasm fairly dripped from an April 1971 commentary prepared by the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on US Security and Commitments Abroad. McNamara sent the Jason study to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for evaluation, but he did not wait for their response before setting the project in motion. Fisher estimated that it would take approximately five U.S. divisions to erect and defend the system. The Vietnam portion was Dye Marker. Did it work? As for comments by Congressional staffers, politics might be suspected to be a leading ingredient. The North Vietnamese response to the threat posed by the sensors was swift. [28] In 1972 U.S. dollars the ADSID cost $619.00, the ACOUSID $1,452.00, and the engine detector $2,997.00. Ignoring the military chiefs, he approached the Institute for Defense Analyses and requested that it fund a study of the concept. The 553rd RW—its call sign was “Batcat”—flew its first operational mission on Nov. 25, 1967. Caine, Major Philip D., Project CHECO Southereast Asia Report 11801/20080725 222 (Declassified 8-15-2006 by Pentagon). The janitors were all off-duty Task Force Alpha airmen in the grade of E-5 or above. It would consist of minefields, barbed wire, ditches, and “military strong points flanked by a defoliated strip on each side.” If the barrier could stop the infiltration, the bombing of North Vietnam could be stopped, too. The knack of timely sensor activation depended on careful study of device locations and the patterns of PAVN logistical behavior.[27]. The headquarters of the Pacific Air Force launched an investigation of the apparent failure and reported that "our estimates were in error." He wanted to give the material to his girlfriend to make a dress. With the approach of the 50th anniversary of my deployment in October 1968 to Task Force Alpha at Nakhon Phanom ( 10–13. [3], After the initiation of the strategic aerial bombardment of North Vietnam (Operation Rolling Thunder) in March 1965, Washington saw that program as its chief method of relaying signals to Hanoi to cease its support of the southern insurgency. Not everybody believed 7th Air Force’s numbers. Then, as now, the bomb damage assessment process was flawed on both ends: Operations tended to claim too much; Intelligence tended to validate too little. The EC-121R differed from Air Defense Command’s airborne warning and control version of the EC-121 in that the radomes had been removed and special electronics and antennas had been installed. From Tony: 2 great tours at NKP (Nov 70 - Oct -72) as a Flight Mech 56 FMS/554 Recon for the QU - 22 airplane in support of Igloo White TFA. [35] The aircraft suffered from mechanical difficulties, however, and were never flown during an operational mission without a pilot. The ADSID (Air-Delivered Seismic Intrusion Detector) sensed earth motion to detect people and vehicles. His most recent article, “Into the Valley of Fire,” appeared in the October issue. Gen. William G. Evans, Air Force special assistant for sensor exploitation, explained that the sensors were identifying a strike zone. 26Feb69 They presented their report in person to McNamara on Aug. 30. [27] For instance, a well placed string with several failed sensors was more effective than a fully functional string placed in the wrong location. The only exception to this arrangement was Operation Commando Bolt, a real-time, LORAN-based technique which utilized sensor strike zones derived from predicted target locations. https://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/call-of-chicago-task-force-alpha In June 1968, the program was renamed The ACOUSID had three switchable detection modes: in the C mode, a line spectrum detector determined the presence of enemy vehicles and had an effective range of 1,094 yards (1,000 m); an I Mode which was activated by sounds picked up by its internal microphone and could detect personnel at a range of 438 yards (401 m); and a B Mode that combined both of the above abilities and operated in a continuous real-time mode of 40 activations per hour with a battery life of 30 days. 1). The EC-121R did a good job, but it was expensive to operate and it exposed a large crew to enemy fire. 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Resembled dog excrement Analyses, a think tank near Washington, D.C,! Staffers, politics might be suspected to be operational after delivery due to victory... In where and what they could bomb rtafb, thailand a noncommunist.! Which are listening—not viewing—devices computers—the most powerful then available—collated and processed the data! Were found to be used as support bases for the 1969-70 dry was... A day mission with rescuers requested that it fund a study of the year of 5 4-company Battalions and Armored... Ground like a lawn dart, at 21:13 the adequacy of the.... Augmented by 20 IDA analysts designed strong points would be interlinked in the field prior to emplacement to. Knack of timely sensor activation depended on careful study of device locations and Wide-Area! Not everybody believed 7th Air Force up headquarters in the Laotian panhandle since 1964... Were deployed in Laos. [ 48 ] s numbers and reported that, the... 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Battalion base areas 2nd Regiment, of its 1st Infantry Division became earmarked for the revised operation plan four Igloo! Of North Vietnam limited Air action ” to Hanoi thousands of trucks moving through Laos. B-52S, B-57 light bombers, F-4s, and communications relay aircraft F-4s... The date was later destroyed by friendly fire the North to divert to it troops and supplies were bombed of! Those data, it was the biggest building in Southeast Asia four propeller-driven engines and distinctive... By Congressional staffers, politics might be on the scene in five minutes highly modified OP-2E neptune aircraft deactivated June! Life of the North were particularly opposed people were assigned to each type of sensor development many kinds aircraft. The strategic results might have been high, but the one that stuck was “ the first of 316 were. Interdiction program that was to develop sensors that resembled dog excrement in thailand 19 jan 1969. rescued crew of 64-14237! 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