0 - The Black Vault

F THE
BDM CORPORATION
0 The Need For Trained Military Advisers And Pacification
Specialists, US combat units found themselves ill-equipped and
inadequately trained for handling the problems passed by the
pacification programs of the early and mid-1960's, Subsequent
formal training of officers in US service schools, coupled with
firsthand knowledge gathered from in-country experience (second
and third-tour personnel),
findlly provided the cadre necessary
to produce a significant impact on pacification in the late
sixties and early beventies.
3. Vietnamization
After the Tet Offensive in 1968, President Thiej and General
Abrams (then COMUSMACV) threw their support behind the buildup of the
territorial forces, the National Police and the attack against the vC
infrastructure. And so, some ten or twelve years after the initiation of
tVe insurgency against the RVN, there %.as a coordinated approach to the
security phase of pacification. Under the Nixon administration it was
called Vietnamization.
The US goal to increase the RVNAF's military might and ability to
hold off the enemy through the Vietnamization Program was thwarted in the
end by the RVNAF's increased dependence on continuing US military aid and
technical support. The more massive the aid, the more dependent they
became. The RVNAF soldier had been "conditioned" by the US presence to
rely on the almost ubiquitous air and artillery support in combat and had
forgotten "how
to walk," being used to vehicular and helicopter transportation
which became scarce after the US pullout in 1973. Former ARVN
leaders felt that their army had been organized along the wrong pattern.
It had gotten a big logistics tail and it
lacked the necessary equipment
and mobile reserve divisions essential to counter the NVA's final
assault.!65/
In light of the goals set by the Nixon administration, (i.e.,, the
withdrawal of US
forces from RVN and to bring about a negotiated settlement
of the war) Vietnamization has to be considered a success.
aspect was that it was a decade too late.
The unfortunate
5-72