U.S. military strategy and doctrine failures in the Vietnam War

Vietnam: A Bird's Eye View of the historical and strategic past of U.S. Operations

Strategic Setting

The territory of the former French colony of Vietnam was occupied by two opposing armies, that of the North Vietnamese, armed by the Soviets, and the South Vietnamese, backed first by the French, then later by the Americans. Vietnam at the time of the conflict was divided into two opposing nations, as Korea is, still, to this day. (Phan, 2002)

Opposing Forces

Ho Chi Minn, a communist nationalist led the North Vietnamese. The United States Air force was devoted to training the VNAF (South Vietnamese Air Forces) to fight for this evolving independent nation, an objective that was not achieved.

Employment Concepts

Another less well publicized aspect of the analogies of World War II and the Vietnamese Conflict is the use of the carpet bombing that proved so successful in trampling the remnants of Nazi Germany, and so ineffective in taking Vietnam. True, the tactical focus of Vietnam was largely a land war. Techniques such as carpet-bombing supplanted strategic land objectives in the theater of operations. This was also true of World War II. But rather than being waged against an already dispirited populace, Rolling Thunder was waged against an opposition force rallying to the cry of freedom, in its eyes, from colonialism. It thus failed partly "because North Vietnam was immune to conventional coercion due to its applied revolutionary warfare" (Phan, 2002) and the graduated increases in intensity of the campaign proved a colossal failure, as it gave the North Vietnamese time to regroup, recoup their assets, and boosted their morale in their able to endure against America forces.

Joint/Coalition Operations

By the time the U.S. was becoming deeply involved in the campaign, the French were already withdrawn. "Rolling Thunder" begin on March 2, 1965 as a largely independent initiative, and was primarily designed to intercept the North Vietnamese supply base. It was an independent strategic interdiction campaign designed to disrupt the flow of Soviet supplies, as the North Vietnamese had few resources of their own at the time. Thus, although painted as an alliance between South Vietnam and America in the press, it was by and large an independent effort. "Operation Freedom Train began in April 1972 in response to the North Vietnamese Army's massive Easter Offensive invasion. Freedom Train consisted of U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine strikes against North Vietnamese targets. The operation was renamed Linebacker I in May 1972." (Phan, 2002) Again, in all of these missions, the United States armed forces dominated, the only variation being that the air force took temporary prominence over the usually dominant land conflict.

Command & Control of Air Assets

Cargo skips like Sky hawks manned with machine guns, cargo ships, and lightly armed planes designed to mark targets were all deployed. The North Vietnamese by and large stayed above the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) so air superiority over the South was not a concern. Rather the air was used as a way of driving the North Vietnamese from their bases. Until 1968 the major strategic objective was to intercept the South supply route on the Ho Chi Minn Trail. After that, it was too coarse the North Vietnamese to sigh a peace treaty, the major goal of the later Linebacker I and Linebacker II campaigns. Unlike "Rolling Thunder," these targeted Hanoi and Hopakong and allowed less time for North Vietnamese 'resting and regrouping.' Some believe that if the U.S. had pursued a similar strategy from the beginning it might have 'won' Vietnam, although this is debatable.

Lessons that U.S. Forces learned in Vietnam as they apply to the six points above Not all of the U.S. missions were failures. Throughout the war, the air forces were used for reconnaissance missions, airlifts, interdictions, and refueling, as well as carpet-bombing missions. B-52s were the major crafts used in successful interdictions. One of the most successful operations was the use of tactical airlifts to drop supplies. Search and rescue missions by 'Jolly Green Giant' crafts resulted in the successful rescue of 3, 883 Americans. But these individual missions did not satisfy the overall strategic objective. Thus, the two major lessons learned are firstly, one must understand the loyalty of ground forces when using even carpet-bombing techniques, as the opposite effect upon morale can be had upon an emotionally cohesive populace. Secondly, after an understanding of history, carpet-bombing must be specifically timed so as not to let the enemy have time to regroup. Historical analogies are far from perfect, as both the domino theory and the application of the Berlin bombings to Vietnam illustrate.