Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
- reflect past, relatively small-unit, infantry-type operations under the French; the inherently mobile infantry nature of the present forces influenced by increased firepower; a capability for coordinated operations up to division and eventually corps level; and increased service and logistical support for the essentially infantry-type forces. Mobility and increased infantry firepower will dictate the utilization of essentially infantry tactics....The VNA [will] adopt a highly mobile tactical doctrine characterized by extensive movement and maneuvering of the main body with extensive mining and ambuscades.117
The preponderant evidence gleaned from ARVN experience against the Viet Cong supports the hypothesis that ARVN tactics, influenced by the factors listed above, rapidly evolved toward relatively large-scale operations, heavily reliant on increased prepower including artillery and air support, and away from "relatively small-unit, infantry-type operations," again reflecting U.S. practice, if not U.S. doctrine, in countering large-scale aggression.
The concept and tactics of the pacification mission, unlike those of countering aggression, required particular concentration on specialized methods of dealing with the local populace as well as countering insurgents. Thus the Saigon Military Mission reported that as a result of its teaching efforts,
- Troops were courteous, they had constructed a school and were holding classes for both children and adults with Army volunteers as teachers, they had helped rebuild the marketplace and church, they carried out active patrolling, and they had placed locked boxes to receive information and suggestions from the population. People responded to the treatment. In a few days they started being friendly with the troops (something usually reserved for Communist troops in Asian countries) and, after a Viet Minh hand-grenade attack on the marketplace, information about names and locations of the Viet Minh cadres started to flow to the Army from the people.118
In spite of this apparent good start, MAAG Country Statements from 1955 to 1959 are silent on the subject of training for pacification, although National Security Action, as pacification was then called, was actually underway. This is a reasonably good indication of how important this set of concepts and tactics was regarded by MAAG officers.118 In fact, quite the opposite was the case: MAAG reports constantly complained of the diversion of the Vietnamese Army from unit training to pacification, without suggesting that specialized training in the tactics of this mission might be useful.119 The clear inference is that the orthodoxy of U.S. tactical doctrine prevailed.
4. The organization of the defense establishment in general reflected the U.S. practices insofar as it was feasible to persuade the Diem
