Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
with certainty much further concerning the quality or quantity of Bloc aid during this period. Reports of the presence in North Vietnam of Soviet-design small arms, artillery, tanks, and trucks were received regularly by U.S. intelligence, but the proportion of these which were supplied by the Chinese could not be established. U.S. estimates held that Soviet aid predominated up until about 1960, and that thereafter Hanoi looked increasingly to Peking for supply of such items, as well as for ammunition of all types.90 By 1964, except for some remaining stocks of French weapons, all NVA mortars and recoilless rifles were reported to be of Chinese manufacture. Similarly, small arms such as SKS 7.62 mm rifles and K-53 and K-54 7.62 mm machine guns, though of Russian design, were thought to have been supplied by China. For heavier, more complex items (e.g., armored vehicles, heavy artillery, antiaircraft systems, aircraft, and the like), the DRV remained dependent on the Soviets.
- 3. The French Arms
In South Vietnam, the most significant military development in the immediate aftermath of Geneva was the withdrawal of the 200,000 men of the French Expeditionary Corps by 1956, apparently removing with them an estimated $200 million worth of undetermined kinds of military equipment from $1,308 million in MDAP materiel furnished them by the United States during the period 1950–1954. How precisely this draw-down affected the ceilings envisaged by Articles 16 and 17 of the Agreement was, of course, never established.91 The attention of the DRV and the ICC thereafter was fixed on the Republic of Vietnam's Armed Forces (RVNAF), and upon the United States military assistance program for RVNAF.
- 4. RVNAF Revitalized
The French brought the Vietnamese Army into being in 1948, its strength in 1949 being reported as 25,000, led by French officers and noncommissioned officers.92 That strength rose eight-fold during the war, to 50,000 in 1950; 65,800 in 1951; 150,000 in 1953; and 200,000 in 1954, including 1500 navy and 3500 air force personnel. Dien Bien Phu and its aftermath resulted in widespread desertions, especially from Vietnamese units being moved from north to south during the regroupment.93 Thereafter, under urging from the U.S., French officers and noncommissioned leaders were withdrawn, and a combined U.S.-French training mission was established to develop the national army. New force structures for military and paramilitary forces evolved, with particular emphasis upon headquarters, staffs, and logistic limits. Strengths for the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF), for the same years given above for DRV armed forces, were as follows:
