spartans_in_darkness

fOil 3Ee~ETHeOMINfiiXI
cameras, and a high-frequency direction finder
(Hilo Hattie). The C-54 flew with the L-20s, but,
unlike the army craft which had been configured
for local conditions, the Air Force's direction finder
functioned poorly in the radio environment of
short-range transmissions, low-power transmitters,
and short-duration procedures.t" The 3rd
RRU evaluation of the Hilo Hattie performance
underscored the need for ARDF platforms to be
developed with target conditions in mind. The Air
Force withdrew the C-54 and turned to the development
of a more effective system.:"
(S//S!) For the Army, though, the results
from the first experiments in March were so
promising that the command in Saigon now
could seriously consider tactical combat applications.
In April, COMUSMACV and the U.S.
ambassador approved an "Outline Plan for the
Location, Identification, and Destruction of the
VCCommunications Net" based on COMINT and
ARDF. The plan was sanitized and presented to
the chief of the South Vietnamese JGS. Initially,
the ARVN generals were skeptical; their prior
experience with D/F, essentially the inexact
MRDF system, had left them feeling that there
were too many limitations.
(~//~I) At the same time, the COMUSMACV
plan forced the cryptologic community to address
a long-standing question: whether it was more
important to preserve a VC radio station as a
source of intelligence, or to consider it a target
and therefore destroy it. This was not a new issue
- it had surfaced in February 1961during discussions
among the various
support to give t e
It t e pre urunary
successes of ARDF, and its ability to locate VC
stations, MACV saw that the issue needed to be
resolved as soon as possible.
(T~//~l) In response to a request from
Saigon, NSA identified sixteen VC stations from
which exploitable traffic was being intercepted
and graded them according to the value of each
station's intelligence.t'' Fort Meade further
refined this grading system stating that the loss of
nine of the stations would be a "serious" loss of
COMINT, while another three were rated with
such a high COMINT value that they could be
considered "untouchable." However, DIRNSA
maintained that no Viet Cong station was
absolutely untouchable and added that any decision
to advise the ARVN to attack a specific communications
station was entirely COMUSMACV's
to make. This cleared the way for the tactical
applications of COl\fINT. The final advice from
NSA on the matter was that COMUSMACV be
made aware of the potential intelligence loss that
would result from attacking a station whose messages
were being exploited cryptanalytically"
(TS//SI) If the ARDF results were passed to
the ARVN command, the program itself
remained under the administrative control of the
American cryptologists. In the earlier ASA and
Air Force operations during March and April,
NSA,which had viewed the aircraft as D/F assets,
pressed the JCS to put them under the operational
COMINT control of Davis Station. The JCS
agreed to this, and the ARDF aircraft, in essence,
became mobile outstations to the Whitebirch
Net. 4 8 This ruling adversely affected the Air
Force, which had considered the ARDF mission
separate from COMINT. The original Air Force
D/F crews were not indoctrinated for COMINT,
that is, they did not have the security clearance to
access COMINT information; therefore, they
could not participate. Direction finding operators
from the USAFSS were substituted for them.
Furthermore, the Air Force also had fully expected
to receive reports on the Hilo Hattie results
through regular Pacific Air Force (PACAF) channels
back to the Air Force's chief of staff, General
Curtis Lemay. However, this was not to be. 4 9 The
poor results of the Air Force ARDF platform, Hilo
Hattie, forced them to go back to the drawing
board.
(8//81) In late May 1962, the Vietnamese JGS
and MACV decided to test the effectiveness of the
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