Air campaigns in Cambodia and Laos

U.S. military operations in Southeast Asia began earlier than often realized, just as it is little realized that the priority of the John F. Kennedy administration was Laos, not Vietnam. The first raids were small, although there were eventually huge B-52 area raids, as well as specialized attacks along the Ho Chi Minh trail.

The often covert missions operated under quite special rules of engagement. A US forward air controller, by a MACV  SOG officer, was told "If I decide that there’s no way we can effect your rescue [in Cambodia], I’ll order the gunships to fire at you to prevent the enemy from getting their hands on you. I can’t risk having any of the [recon] teams compromised if they take you alive."

Laos, 1961
The U.S. Air Force created on April 14, 1961, the 4400th Combat Crew Training Squadron (CCTS), code named “Jungle Jim.” The unit, of about 350 men, had 16 C-47 transports, eight B-26 bombers, and eight T-28 trainers (equipped for ground attack), wih an official of training indigenous air forces in counterinsurgency and conduct air operations. A volunteer unit, they would deploy in October, to begin FARM GATE missions.

"FARM GATE" was supposedly derived from the military slang expression for a soldier killed in battle: "He bought the farm".

In October, a U.S. Air Force special operations squadron,, part of the 4400th CCTS deployed to SVN, officially in a role of advising and training The aircraft were painted in South Vietnamese colors, and the aircrew wore uniforms without insignia and without U.S. ID. Sending military forces to South Vietnam was a violation of the Geneva Accords of 1954, and the U.S. wanted plausible deniability.

The deployment package consisted of 155 airmen, eight T-28s, and four modified and redesignated SC-47s and subsequently received B-26s. U.S. personnel flew combat as long as a VNAF person was aboard. FARMGATE stayed covert until after the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Remote sensing, in the broadest sense, began with US operations against the Laotian part of the Ho Chi Minh trail, in 1961. Under CIA direction, Lao nationals were trained to observe and photograph traffic on the Trail . This produced quite limited results, and, in 1964, Project LEAPING LENA parachuted in teams of Vietnamese Montagnards led by Vietnamese Special Forces.

The very limited results from LEAPING LENA led to two changes. First, US-led SR teams, under Project DELTA, sent in US-led teams. Second, these Army teams worked closely with US Air Force forward air controllers (FAC), which were enormously helpful in directing US air attacks by high-speed fighter-bombers, BARREL ROLL in northern Laos and Operation STEEL TIGER. While the FACs immediately helped, air-ground cooperation improved significantly with the use of remote geophysical MASINT sensors, although MASINT had not yet been coined as a term.

The original sensors, a dim ancestor of today's technologies, started with air-delivered sensors under Operation Igloo White, such as air-delivered Acoubuoy and Spikebuoy acoustic sensors . These cued monitoring aircraft, which sent the data to a processing center in Thailand, from which target information was sent to the DELTA teams.

BARREL ROLL
[from the abstract] "Barrel Roll (1968-73) was the US air campaign conducted over northern Laos in support of the Royal Laotian Government (RLG). Although the campaign supported US national policy in Southeast Asia (SEA), it was constrained by US military strategy and objectives in South Vietnam and responded to North Vietnamese military strategy and objectives. The mission of Barrel Roll was to conduct air operations in support of the RLG by
 * 1) interdicting enemy supplies moving through northern Laos and
 * 2) providing air support for Laotian ground forces fighting the North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao.

The last four years of Barrel Roll-from November 1968 to February 1973-hold especial interest due to changes in US national and military strategy in SEA. An examination of air operations relies on the "campaign model" found in Department of Defense Joint Publication 3-0, Doctrine for Joint Operations. It answers five questions: Why is the campaign conducted? What is to be accomplished? How will it be accomplished? How much resource is applied? and What are the results? Results are assessed in terms of effects and effectiveness of airpower. Effects are the direct or immediate outcome, for example, the destruction of a target. Effectiveness examines the indirect outcome at the operational or strategic level, including defeating the enemy in battle or achieving theater objectives. From the perspective of achieving objectives, Barrel Roll was an effective air campaign in support of national, strategic, and operational objectives in SEA"