Both the actions in the Ia Drang Valley during the Vietnam Era and the more recent 9/11/01 can be seen through the prism of history as seminal events that have shaped and changed the way we have looked at operations that revolve around the relevant conflict of that era. Before the Ia Drang Valley campaign we had never met the North Vietnamese in open battle. Afterword’s our entire doctrine changed and would remain the same until post 9/11. What happened? How did it happen & why? What lessons can be learned and how have those lessons shaped our current thinking as we are immersed in today’s fight.
Having defeated the French 10 years before the Ia Drang Valley battle the North Vietnamese realized that the techniques they used to defeat the outmoded 40’s and 50’s warfare tactics and equipment used by the French needed to be revisited .
In the early 60’s the U.S. Army’s thinking was still largely how along with the other service branches they would meet and defeat the Soviet threat in a more modern version of World War II style battles. Largely the same approaches would take place with newer weapons systems substituting for those used to combat the AXIS powers. It occurred to some in the military and others in the government that while the Soviet threat was real another more stealth type approach was being unleashed by the forces of communism. The face of this communist state sponsored aggression would take the shape of low intensity conflicts fought in evolving third world countries whose indigenous population could potentially form the “sea” in which the insurgents could survive and grow their base of operations within. These brushfire wars, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushfire_war , would require a new military model to solve. Pentagon planners seized ideas from World War II airborne operations that utilized movement of troops via new helicopter technology vs. parachute jumps combined with forward based artillery power . This new air mobile doctrine would become our methodology for Vietnam and combined with low altitude combat air support form the basis of maneuver warfare that has carried us up until 9/11 and even beyond. Vietnam thus became a backdrop for classical small unit encounters not a war of large armies contesting far reaching battlefields. The battle at Ia Drang in November, 1965 allowed both sides to test and validate their methods and counters to the air mobile doctrine. Up until this encounter our dealings had been with “Charlie”, the Viet Cong surrogate of the Peoples Republic of North Vietnam. When you review these events and the lessons learned in the rear view mirror of history you see how wrong that people are when they compare today’s asymmetrical fight with that of the Vietnam Era. Today we are engaged with largely tribal societies who have no scope of loyalty other then economical and when convenient religious. There is no real political or ism involved. The radical element of the Muslim religion has high jacked the base and created a call for worldwide jihad. They choose to use the weapons of terror not conduct themselves with armies or even “named” small units. When the 7th Cavalry met the North Vietnamese forces in the Ia Drang Valley they fought against units of that army that had been in operations against the French 10 years before. What’s the point of mentioning this? It’s because it says everything about today’s fight. When we engage today with “bad actor”s, non nation state players, asymmetrical threats or whatever the popular politically correct term is for terrorist we are not encountering a group with an identity that has a traditional and carries with it traditional battle honors. It’s hard to award or even acknowledge terror groups who have no collective unit culture or “history” other then they formed and then look for the best opportunity to blow themselves up or in non the in thing just start shooting while in disguise as a member of the indigenous populations army or police force. This point alone demonstrates the vast difference between then and now. How should this shape then our thinking on developing a counter to the new threat. If one looks at the staggering demographics surrounding the Muslim world they will agree that diplomacy vs. overt classical military action is and should be the preferred route. With that said how can this be achieved? One promising avenue resides in the concepts of HSCB (Human Social Cultural Behavior) models and lessons applied to real daily world scenarios. Much has already been written in this area and the field while rather new as a standalone named discipline is just another morph of being able to deal with people and their problems from a position of understanding and inclusiveness vs. territorial and demanding. Perhaps an interesting scenario would be to not look at the current mid east situation and look to apply HSCB techniques but in retrospect review the Vietnam Era and understand where and how the techniques of HSCB could have been applying on a more formal and concise basis. Indeed psyops were conducted, intelligence collected and analyzed and models and decisions run and made. It was not though done as part of any grand or master plan however. http://www.dtic.mil/dticasd/docs/HSCB-news-spring-2009.pdf What if before the Ia Drang campaign HSCB techniques would have been put in place. Let’s say Human Terrain Teams would have been dispatched to interview village elders and evaluate the status of critical infrastructure. What if ground sensors and video coverage would have been utilized to validate information collected from interviews with the reality of the real time picture.Would not it be interesting to validate a scenario in this fashion and then simulate a variety of outcomes.
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