spartans_in_darkness

Tap SEeRETNeaMINTIIX1
(SHSn On 1 February 1963, the TEO was
deactivated and the .J7/ Joint General Staff
(J7/JGS) organization was formed. Essentially,
this gave the South Vietnamese military COMINT
effort more independence in operating and
recruiting qualified staff officers and technical
personnel. This new freedom encouraged the J7
to develop Low Level Voice Intercept (LLVI)
teams which added a tactical supplement to a
slowly growing field station capability. In fact,
one of these teams would provide intercept and
linguistic support to the U.S. Marine SIGINT support
team stationed inside the base at Khe Sanh
for the duration of that siege in early 1968. 3 8
C£//81) As part of proposed joint U.S.-ARVN
COMINT operations, South Vietnamese Medium
Range Direction Finding (MRDF) sites were integrated
into the ASA's Whitebirch D/F system.
The first site, located near Ban Me Thout, under
the supervision of an American noncommissioned
officer, began operating in November
1961. Eventually, as many as four Vietnamese stations
would join the Whitebirch network which
targeted communications in the southern region
of the country as far west as the Cambodian and
Laotian borders.
(SnSI) The effectiveness of Whitebirch's
operations was always questionable.i" In fact, its
very considerable shortcomings compelled the
United States to pursue ARDF as a substitute.
Many of Whitebirch's problems were due to poor
equipment, poor baseline location of its stations,
and the awful atmospherics of the region.
Another one of its fundamental problems was the
poor work by the personnel assigned to the
Vietnamese stations which were part of the net.
Technically overwhelmed, the Vietnamese personnel
simply couldn't produce quality D/F
returns." By 1966, Whitebirch was reorganized
as a High Frequency Direction Finding (HFDF)
system. One of the provisions for the change was
to exclude the ARVN D/F stations from the new
Whitebirch. The Vietnamese went off and formed
their own MRDF net.
(~//~n Realizing the shortcomings of their
separate MRDF network, the Vietnamese also initiated
a small ARDF program. The J7leaders met
with their American counterparts and in July
1963 signed an ARDF agreement that would get
their effort literally off the ground. The
Vietnamese part of the bargain required that they
supply the planes, crews, and organize an effective
security program. The Americans promised
to provide the intercept and D/F equipment,
training, a "flash" facility for coordinating direction
finding missions, and the necessary technical
steerage information, such as frequencies and
callsigns. Besides that, the Americans also
retained an operational control of the aircraft."
(SHSn In early 1964, the Vietnamese conducted
a series of successful tests with four U6-A
(Beaver) aircraft - the same plane that ASAtried
in 1962 - using modified H-Adcock antenna
arrays. By summer of that year, the J7/JGS had
(V) ARVN
V-6AARDF