Need military help Vietnam War in Nexus D20

[El Mahdi]

Technically, PJ's aren't special ops even now. The Rescue Mission and Rescue Units have been something that the Air Force has never quite figured out what to do with. Rescue Squadrons have been shuffled back and forth between TAC/ACC and AFSOC for years. PJ's definitely have special ops skills, and are oft times attached to special ops units and teams, but they are officially part of ACC today and not AFSOC.

But yeah, the Greenfeet tradition goes all the way back to Vietnam (along with the Jolly Green Giant mascot). I've definitely left my fair share of green feet around the world (painted and stickers).

 

[garrowolf]

well it's listed as special operations on wikipedia.

 

[El Mahdi]

Yeah. It's kind of the same thing as with Marine Recon. It wasn't officially part of special forces either (though I always thought they were). Now (as Olgar's pointed out) there's actually a dedicated special operations Force Recon, but most Marine Recon are just part of other units now.

PJ's freely float between Rescue Unit assignments (which are not special ops, and are where most PJ's are assigned), and Special Tactics Unit assignments (which are special ops, but doesn't have that many "assigned" PJ's). Confusing it even more is that Rescue Units have been bounced back and forth between ACC and AFSOC a number of times, though currently they are ACC and look like they'll be staying there. Also, PJ's are farmed out from Rescue Units to special ops teams with significant regularity - especially over the last ten years. A number of PJ's from our Rescue Squadron were in theater (Afghanistan) with special forces units long before Rescue Squadrons were deployed to the theater (SrA Cunningham was one such).

Saying PJ's are special forces is like saying Marine Recon is special forces. Technically they are only special forces when part of a special operations unit or team.

But that's not to say they don't have many of the same skills. Like I've said before, PJ's go through training very similar in difficulty and hardship to SEAL training - and in some aspects may even be harder. They can shoot like a SEAL and perform a field tracheotomy while treading water in a hurricane. They are certainly some serious dudes.

 

[haakon1]

I used to run RECON for years . . .

From an RPG perspective, the Special Forces that mattered in 'Nam were:

US Army
-- Special Forces (Green Berets). Main mission was organized CIDG (Civilian Irregular Defense Groups) and MIKE Forces (Mobile Strike Forces), mostly made up of ethnic minorities in the Highlands (montegnard tribes). Montegnards are not ethnically Vietnamese, mostly came from Stone Age tribes, generally didn't get along with the ethnic Vietnamese, and were fierce guerrilla fighters. The SF also worked with Nung (ethnic Chinese tribe from North Vietnam). Delta was originally one of the SF teams.

-- LRRP. Long Range Recon Patrols were informally formed at the division level ~ 1966 and became Rangers (75th Infantry Regiment) in early 1969. LRRP was a type of training (from the Ranger School stateside and the Recondo school in Vietnam) and later a type of unit. LRRP missions were to insert in small teams (4-6 men) and do recon (spot enemy forces). PERFECT for an RPG.

Navy:
-- SEALs. Derived from the UDT (Underwater Demolition Teams) or frogmen of World War II fame, the SEAL's had two main missions in 'Nam. The first was typical special forces recon in the IV Corps region (the Delta and the Rung Sat Special Zone), specifically trying to intercept the supply lines by sea (hiding gear on fishing junks) and working with the Swift Boats and PBR's of the Brown Water Navy. The second was black ops for the CIA under Operation Phoenix, the plan to win the war by eliminating the "VCI" (Viet Cong Infrastructure) which meant assassinating VC shadow government officials (in retaliation for the VC killing Saigon government officials) and other "wet ops" (as in bloody, not seaborne!) -- very similar to current day missions against Al Qaeda.

CIA:
-- Air America. The CIA fought a proxy war in Laos, which was official neutral. The CIA supplied "Black Meo" (now called Hmong) tribes whole "Red Meo" tribes were aligned with the Pathet Lao (Laotian Communist) who in turn answered to Hanoi. The CIA front -- as was quite obvious at the time -- was a private company called Air America, which hired civilian bush pilots in the US to fly supplies to the Hmong. CIA trainers were on the ground, doing something similar to forming CIDG units, except that it officially "didn't happen".

Australia:
-- Australian SAS (Special Air Service). Very similar to and trained by the British SAS, the Australian SAS typically had recon missions to support the ANZAC forces, who had their own province as an AOR (Area of Responsiblity), in a coastal area of rubber plantations in III Corps (near Saigon), called Vung Tau if memory serves. The Aussie SAS had the highest kill ratio of any ground unit, something north of 300:1.

 

[garrowolf]

Should I list LRRP beside the Army Rangers list or as something separate?

I was thinking about adding a CIA basic training set up and working that in. Anyone have any ideas about what it should cover? Look at the military basic training archetypes I have already written up as a comparison.

 

[haakon1]

I'm not familiar with CIA training in the Vietnam era. It likely depends on the role -- analysts in Saigon, versus Air America pilots, versus province officers.

I've got two sources for you:
-- Air America (movie). The CIA officially says this movie is totally wrong and bad. Unofficially, I met a CIA veteran who told me it was very much in the spirit of what was going on in Laos.

-- Slow Burn (book). This is the memoire of CIA province chief. Really good about how to do counterinsurgency intelligence. And no, it doesn't involve water boarding.

As for the LRRP's, they became the Rangers in February 1969.

They were originally created as a provisional companies starting early in Vietnam (1965?). The LRRP doctrine was developed for Western Europe, but adopted for Vietnam. Some of the LRRP's were Ranger trained (Ranger was a certification at the Ranger School, at Fort Benning, GA if memory serves), but most couldn't get that course (which was filled with officers with pull, not grunts). MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) set up a school called MACV-Recondo in Vietnam to train LRRPs. I was led by Special Forces and it might have included British SAS trainers (or at least experience from the Malaya Emergency and Konfrontasi in Borneo with Indonesia, two examples of successful counterinsurgency campaigns in South East Asia).

IIRC, there was generally one LRRP company per division, plus for units like the 173rd Airborne Brigade (an independent brigade, like a mini-division) and sometimes for corps. (Corp I = DMZ/Marine territory like Hue and Da Nang, Corps II = highlands like Pleiku and Dak To, Corps III = Saigon + Iron Triangle, Corps IV = Mekong delta).

In February 1969, the Army formalized the LRRP program, renaming them as lettered companies of the 75th Infantry Regiment (Rangers), rather than as just provisional companies attached to division HQ's.

There's a Osprey book about the LRRP's that's quite informative, and if you buy the old RPG "RECON", it's fairly LRRP-centric in its view of Vietnam RPG.

 

[GameDaddy]

The Republic of Korea sent two Infantry Divisions that were attached to the Marines for counterinsurgency and base security operations from 1964-1970. In addition they later also sent a Regimental Combat team. My understanding was that the NVA and Viet Cong had a special dislike for the ROK troops because the ROK counter-insurgency operations went much better, than when only U.S. troops were involved. Unlike the drafted U.S. troops and National Guard units, the Koreans actually went on the offensive after their bases were attacked and ruthlessly rooted out Viet Cong sympathizers. They had some skills with this as ROK troops have developed procedures for dealing with North Korean infiltrators... They used these techniques to good effect in Vietnam.

In the summer of 1966 a Brigade sized unit composed of Aussies, Kiwi's, and Koreans (KANZUS) supporting the 1st Vietnam Army Division pushed back three NVA divisions at the same time as The 3rd Marine Division Task Force Delta conducted Operation Hastings just south of the so-called Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Vietnams. The Marine task force successfully repulsed the 324B NVA Division in its attempt to move into northern Quang Tri Province.

From the U.S. Army archives:
As September ended it was apparent that the proposed KANZUS force was insufficient to meet the enemy threat in northern I Corps, which was now on the order of three divisions. To counter this multidivisional threat, which could be supported indefinitely from adjacent enemy havens, a force of greater strength and capability than KANZUS was required.

After that, KANZUS was ordered to stand down and was relieved by other U.S. elements of I Corps. Throughout the entire event the Aussies maintained a kill ratio greater than 300-1. The Korean Officer I spoke to said that they did not always limit their counter-strikes to South Vietnamese territory...

He also stated that the Koreans took high casualties while conducting operations but also went out of their way to inflict high casualties as well.

 

[haakon1]

Unlike the drafted U.S. troops and National Guard units, the Koreans actually went on the offensive after their bases were attacked

According to the National Guard, only 8700 guardsmen served in Vietnam. That's out of a total of ~2.5 million Vietnam veterans (from all services) who served in country (going by Wikipedia for this figure). That's significantly less than the 30,000 Canadians who volunteered to serve in the US military in Vietnam. I believe only one USANG served in Vietnam -- a Kentucky artillery battalion attached to the 101st Airborne. There might be a few others, but I can't find them on the web.

My point is, dissing the National Guard about Vietnam is nonsense, since very, very few of them were there, for political reasons -- at the time, using the National Guard was seen as more controversial than using draftees (it doesn't make sense to me, but it's what happened).

As for dissing the regular US Army, they did go on the offensive regularly. In general, US forces were allocated to border/infiltration regions, and were heavily involved in combat in the jungles, highlands, and delta, while the South Vietnamese had a larger portion of urban garrison units -- for political reasons, it was better to have the ARVN be the army the average Vietnamese urban dweller saw day-to-day, while the Americans were off in the bush doing the heavy fighting.

You don't lose 58,000 dead and 150,000 wounded by not fighting.

Vietnam War casualties - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As for the idea that US Army in Vietnam were mostly draftees, I can't give you a figure on that, but it doesn't ring true -- and of the casualties, about 70% were volunteers, not draftees.

 

[GameDaddy]

No one is dissing the U.S. Army here, facts are facts though. The Guard units were deployed with regular forces during 1968 and 1969 and were then rotated out and replaced with regular Army units after Tet.

Not being in the regular chain of command, they adapted more quickly to combat conditions and took less casualties respectively, than the regular U.S. Army units.

After Tet though, the Senators opted not to renew the agreements concerning ground forces...

Fortunately, command structure changed significantly over the years. Over 50,000 guardsmen participated in Desert Storm, and their casualty rates were significantly lower than the regular Army and Marine units that participated in the attack on Iraq. With better training, tighter unit integration, and better communications and planning with the regular U.S. Army units the Guards served well, taking less casualties than regular Army units despite finding themselves on the frontline in firefights.




Draftees
Draftees vs. volunteers: 25% (648,500) of total forces in country were draftees.

Draftees accounted for 30.4% (17,725) of combat deaths in Vietnam.

Notice the disparity in casualties. Having the same training meant that the draftees should have been able to withstand attacks just as well as their volunteer counterparts. Did the VC and NVA specifically target draftees? I doubt it.

Did they shoot more at targets in their areas? Much more likely. In conclusion, units with higher ratios of draftees were rotated more often and for longer durations into hotly contested areas and zones. Resulting in proportionally higher casualties. Fifty years of history won't whitewash the facts.



Reservists...

10,500 were called up to serve in Vietnam (more than the Guard).

5,977 KIA

Even now, forty years later, these numbers don't seem right. Did the media provide more coverage of Guard and Reserve units? Or did they have extraordinarily higher casualty rates compared with regular army units?

On a tactical level, the U.S. Army never lost a sizable (one division or more committed?) battle and inflicted significantly higher casualties than they received.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I'm not familiar with CIA training in the Vietnam era. It likely depends on the role -- analysts in Saigon, versus Air America pilots, versus province officers.

I highly recommend The Ravens, which is the story of the CIA and USAF pilots who supported Vang Pao's army in Laos.