Most talk of the US's impressive kill ratio in the Vietnam war. They would argue that the US won the mainforce war with their superior technology but lost the domestic and international political war. But Paddy Griffith argues a different case as he focuses on the weaknesses of the US's technology and tactics which ultimately led to a slow and uncertain mainforce victory which inadvertently led to a unfavorable domestic and international political slant towards their war effort. In his argument, the US's tactical and technological superiority over the NVA was by no means overwhelming.
Firstly, Griffith argues that the US did not succeed as they thought that they would in the area of surveillance. Surveillance is of paramount importance when faced with an enemy based on guerrilla tactics. The physical constraints of the environment gave strength to the NVA's already elusive nature due to the denseness of the jungle and the cloak of the nights. Chemical defoliation and large scale land clearing helped but did little to improve the overall situation. Aerial surveillance also failed to penetrate the canopy. The unmanned sensors of the Mcnamara wall seemed to deliver the promise of penetrating the canopy and saving manpower. However, maintainence of the unmanned sensors and the need for follow-up action meant that it was only an auxillary and never a subsitute for the soldier on the ground. Proponents for the wall talk of the success of FSB Crook and its success with its sensors but similarly impressive kill-rates were also accomplished by FSBs with no sensors.
Next, Giffith turns to examine the lethality of US forces in mobile warfare with the enemy. General Westmoreland in late 1965 put forth the doctrine of "Search and Destroy" in order to capture the initiative in the war effort. But the problem was that the enemy was near impossible to locate before he sprang an ambush. Preparatory fire was thus used in order to flush out any NVA before US forces landed anywhere and also to boost US force morale. However, this was counterproductive as it signaled their arrival and the NVA knew when to hide and where to later attack. As a rule of thumb, US forces thus still found themselves ambushed by the NVA who had good fire discipline and would pin down the US forces with their initial initiative. The US forces would then reply by slowly escalating the level of their return fire (small arms to MG to mortar to Artillery/ Air strikes) Popular media protrays this escalation of firepower as utterly devastating on the NVA. Griffith argues otherwise. Firstly, fire orders were not accurate given that the fog of war was given a boost by the dense jungles. Artillery fire would then suffer from hesitance and/ or inaccuracy. Also the NVA would smartly close in with the US forces thus only their extended flank and rear columns (if any) would be vulnerable to US supporting arms fire as they would not risk hitting their own. Mortars also needed clearings and these were hard to find in the jungles. Heliborne support fire suffered from low aerial visibility. If the US forces threw smoke signals, the NVA would follow suit so as to confuse the pilots. Also, heli-borne support fire suffered from the inherent technical need for helicopters' high maintenance hours (thus there would often be too little and too few). Fixed wing support fire carried bigger payloads and thus needed larger safer ranges and so they mostly served as interdiction and/or counter-battery work.
Griffith then moves on to debunk the myth of the next chain in the alleged US tactical and technological superiority chain: its mobility. Or rather, air mobility as was the case in the Vietnam war. Air mobility rested on the sturdy backs of the helicopters. However, heli-borne operations suffered from many constraints. Helicopters needed LZs and the jungle terrain made their options scarce. LZs had to be cleared laboriously and maintained. LZs also needed to be "cold" lest helicopters would be lost to NVA sniping fire. Thus security was another issue. Heli-borne troops in dense jungles also tended to be lightly armed and their much vaunted mobility reverted back to foot mobility once they landed. Of course, they still had immense advantages of speed over their foot-slogging predecessors but their mobile advantage must not be exaggerated. LZs tended to be out of operation areas since they would be too "hot". This also meant that when casualties needed to be evacuated, US troops would have to fight their way out of sticky encirclement situations in order to reach their LZs in a mad-scramble to disengage.
Fourthly in a connected line of thought, Griffith then goes on to contemplate the extra-tactical dimension that the political necessity of evacuating their wounded placed limitations on US mobility. Many operations were virtually halted as it became necessary to secure the evacuation of casualties. Real time effort and attention which could have been used to pursue the NVA would then be needed to pull them back to the LZs.
Thus because of these reasons, he surmises that the US forces often did not "fire and manoeuvre" but instead the US infanrty simply found the NVA and then "manoeuvre and fire". They puckered down, made an all-round defence, ordered for supporting arms, sat tight, fought desperately out to evacuate their wounded and did not pursue the NVA. Thus the NVA were seldom decisively beat in mainforce war and this protracted the conflict.
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