The History of the Airborne Forward Air Controller in Vietnam

The US Department of Defense predicts that ground forces of the future will wage tomorrow’s wars by replacing large numbers of personnel and organic firepower for advanced technology and superior maneuverability. Those forces must be prepared to face an unconventional enemy who will operate in small, lethal units interspersed with the civilian population rather than facing coalition forces with massed formations. This scenario of blurred lines of battle and difficulty determining friend from foe resembles very closely what the US military faced in Vietnam.

This study will address the successes and failures of United States airborne forward air controllers (FACs), particularly in Vietnam, and whether combat lessons learned were passed from service to service or historically from conflict to conflict. The FAC mission has not significantly changed since the end of the Vietnam War, and a thorough study of operational and tactical lessons learned by those aircrew will significantly enhance today’s FACs ability to find and destroy dispersed enemy forces in a wide array of environments.

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Military-to-Military Cooperation with Vietnam

Southeast Asia is a key crossroads of the Pacific Region, and conducting military-to-military cooperation with Vietnam directly supports our vital interests in this region.

Southeast Asia is a mixture of religious and cultural dynamics. It has many natural resources, to include large oil reserves in Vietnam’s territorial waters, and potentially larger oil reserves around the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. These islands have been laid claim to by six Asian nations, of which China and Vietnam are among them. Additionally, China's growing economic prowess and attempts to increase influence in Southeast Asia make her a competitor to U.S. regional interests.

The United States reestablished direct diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1995. Since that time we have signed counter-narcotics and civil aviation agreements as well as a Bilateral Trade Agreement with them. Vietnam continues to cooperate with the emotional issue of fully accounting for U.S. missing in action from the protracted Vietnam War.

The United States must continue to develop and further our relations with Vietnam. It is in our best interest to expand in the areas of humanitarian demining, regional security through military-to-military relations and cooperation on counterterrorism, as well as expanding economic cooperation. Expanding our relationship with Vietnam will assist in providing additional stability to a region fraught with potential powder kegs of instability.

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America in Vietnam: Containment Lost

This research project examines world events leading up to United States involvement in Vietnam with the purpose of determining whether these events were instrumental in the shaping of the decision to enter the conflict.

These events include the actions of nations, governments and individuals. The period of examination is limited to the years of the first Truman and first and second Eisenhower administrations.

This research will determine whether the United States' decision to enter the war in Vietnam was to protect her vital national interests or interests so skewed by the effect that world events had on political decision making that the interests were neither national nor vital.

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Civil Defense Forces in Counterinsurgency: An Analysis

This study examines the effect of civil defense forces on a counterinsurgency campaign through a study of the Civilian Irregular Defense Group in the Republic of Vietnam. This study challenges a common U.S. Army viewpoint on counterinsurgency that conventional combat power, training a host nation’s national security forces, and expenditures on large civil reconstruction projects are the Army’s main contributions to counterinsurgency operations. This study is a chronological study that outlines the U.S. Army’s major successes and failures in the refinement of counterinsurgency doctrine. This study uses two major research strategies: (1) qualitative analysis of counterinsurgency theory and U.S. Army counterinsurgency doctrine of the 1960s, and (2) a chronological study of the Civilian Irregular Defense Group. Further, operations are evaluated using the four major principles of counterinsurgency: unity of effort, securing the population, isolating the insurgent from sources of support, and winning the support of the population. After examining counterinsurgency theory, doctrine, and operations in the Republic of Vietnam this study reveals that civil defense forces are a decisive in defeating an insurgency when properly balanced with conventional combat power. Additionally, a civil defense force assists in regaining area control, denial of support to the insurgents, and the restoration of government authority to an area.

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