0 - The Black Vault

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THE BOM CORPORATION
.3. Concepts for Planning Withdrawal at the Field Command 22/
By way of background, the MACV staff had prepared contirigency
plans for a number of probable circumstances, such as troop withdrawials
Jnder non-hostile conditions that would take place if the Paris Peace Talks
were successful and hostilities were terminated, There was no long-range
planning by the staff, however, for redeployment of forces under continued
conditions cf hostilities, Analysis of the president's announcements
clearly revealed his intent to drawdown US
force levels in South Vietnam at
a fairly steep rate to show the American public substantial progress with
his Vietnamization program by the 1972 election year.
Unfortunately, the field command, MACV, had to continue to implement
the campaign plan with no advance knowledge of when the president
would arnounce the next withdrawal,
the amount of croops involved, or the
period of time available to MACV for execution of the president's decision.
Prior to the development of a long-range redeployment plan,
earlier, the withdrawal planning effort was
referred to
conducted in a reactive and
hasty planning mode. At most, COMUSMACV was advised less then 24 hours
before the announcement was to be made.
Within hours following the presidential
announcement the joint staff would request MACV to advise or the
units designated to redeploy, strengths and spaces involved, redeployment
dates and impact assessments. Needless to say, this hasty reactive planning
and implementation of redeployments within a constrained time frame, while
concurrently conducting military operations, was disruptive,
and not without risk to the continued security of the command..
At the field command level, the guidance of COMUSMACV was essentially
as follows:
inefficient
ensure that a balanced force concept was maintained
throughout the redeployment period; as ground ccmbat forces depart, ensure
the maintena.nce of capabilities essential for strategic and tactical combat
air sorties -- these were to be the only reserve immediately available to
the commander for influencing operations when necessary; and ensure that
the US units withdrawn do not eliminate a mission-capability requirement of
the approved RVNAF force structure.
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