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Operation Igloo White
Operation Igloo White was a covert United States joint military electronic warfare operation conducted from late January 1968 until February 1973, during the Vietnam War. These missions were carried out by the 553rd Reconnaissance Wing, a U.S. Air Force unit flying modified EC-121R Warning Star aircraft, and VO-67, a specialized U.S. Navy unit flying highly modified OP-2E Neptune aircraft. This state-of-the-art operation utilized electronic sensors, computers, and communications relay aircraft in an attempt to automate intelligence collection. The system would then assist in the direction of strike aircraft to their targets. The objective of those attacks was the logistical system of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) that snaked through southeastern Laos and was known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the Truong Son Road to the North Vietnamese).
The idea of a system to interdict North Vietnamese infiltration into South Vietnam had been proposed in the years before 1965 and finally led to the construction of a defensive barrier system including electronic sensors, which is best known as the McNamara Line, on January 13, 1967, when President Johnson authorized the construction. The defensive barrier system project had many cover name changes, such as Practice Nine until 14 June 1967, Illinois City (June 1967), Dye Marker (September 1967), Muscle Shoals (September 13, 1967) and finally Igloo White (June 1968). When the air-supported subsystem in eastern and central Laos was added in 1967, the project was named Muscle Shoals. In June 1968, when the program was renamed Igloo White, it consisted of three components:
The Igloo White system was originally expected to impede enemy infiltration through the use of minefields and aid in determining when mine reseeding was necessary. Sensors were also to be used along trails and roads to provide real-time target information for 3 tactical airstrikes. By July 1968, the munitions had proved to be relatively ineffective, and the use of sensors to obtain reconnaissance information was rapidly becoming the principal objective of the Igloo White system.
Igloo White was rushed into service during the Battle of Khe Sanh and successfully passed its first operational test. Combined with Operation Commando Hunt in 1969, the system served as the keystone of the U.S. aerial interdiction effort of the Vietnam War.
In spite of costing between $1 and $1.7 billion to design and build, and an additional billion dollars per year to operate over the five-year life of the operation and, while containing some of the most sophisticated technology in the Southeast Asia theater, the effectiveness of Igloo White still remains in question.
As early as June 1961, General Maxwell D. Taylor, President John F. Kennedy's special military representative, had become interested in the prospect of erecting a physical barrier to halt the increasing infiltration of PAVN materiel (and later, manpower) through their Laotian logistical corridor and into the border regions of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). He then held talks with the deputy director of the Pentagon's Office of Special Operations, Edward G. Lansdale, who convinced him that a better solution to the infiltration dilemma would be the creation of mobile units to attack the infiltrators.
After the initiation of the strategic aerial bombardment of North Vietnam (Operation Rolling Thunder) in March 1965, Washington saw that program as its chief method of relaying signals to Hanoi to cease its support of the southern insurgency. When that failed as a strategy, the aerial effort was redirected to serve as an anti-infiltration campaign. After a million sorties were flown and more than three-quarters of a million tons of bombs were dropped, Rolling Thunder came to an end at the direction of President Lyndon B. Johnson on 11 November 1968.
As early as 1966 Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara had become disenchanted with Rolling Thunder. In January McNamara was presented with a working paper by the American academic Roger Fisher, who proposed a less costly physical and electronic barrier that would be located in South Vietnam. It was to consist of a 216-mile (348 km) long, 500-yard (460 m) wide barrier that would stretch from the South China Sea south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), across the Laotian frontier and on to the border of Thailand. The physical barrier itself would be supported by electronic sensors and extensive minefields. Fisher estimated that it would take approximately five U.S. divisions to erect and defend the system.
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Operation Igloo White
Operation Igloo White was a covert United States joint military electronic warfare operation conducted from late January 1968 until February 1973, during the Vietnam War. These missions were carried out by the 553rd Reconnaissance Wing, a U.S. Air Force unit flying modified EC-121R Warning Star aircraft, and VO-67, a specialized U.S. Navy unit flying highly modified OP-2E Neptune aircraft. This state-of-the-art operation utilized electronic sensors, computers, and communications relay aircraft in an attempt to automate intelligence collection. The system would then assist in the direction of strike aircraft to their targets. The objective of those attacks was the logistical system of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) that snaked through southeastern Laos and was known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the Truong Son Road to the North Vietnamese).
The idea of a system to interdict North Vietnamese infiltration into South Vietnam had been proposed in the years before 1965 and finally led to the construction of a defensive barrier system including electronic sensors, which is best known as the McNamara Line, on January 13, 1967, when President Johnson authorized the construction. The defensive barrier system project had many cover name changes, such as Practice Nine until 14 June 1967, Illinois City (June 1967), Dye Marker (September 1967), Muscle Shoals (September 13, 1967) and finally Igloo White (June 1968). When the air-supported subsystem in eastern and central Laos was added in 1967, the project was named Muscle Shoals. In June 1968, when the program was renamed Igloo White, it consisted of three components:
The Igloo White system was originally expected to impede enemy infiltration through the use of minefields and aid in determining when mine reseeding was necessary. Sensors were also to be used along trails and roads to provide real-time target information for 3 tactical airstrikes. By July 1968, the munitions had proved to be relatively ineffective, and the use of sensors to obtain reconnaissance information was rapidly becoming the principal objective of the Igloo White system.
Igloo White was rushed into service during the Battle of Khe Sanh and successfully passed its first operational test. Combined with Operation Commando Hunt in 1969, the system served as the keystone of the U.S. aerial interdiction effort of the Vietnam War.
In spite of costing between $1 and $1.7 billion to design and build, and an additional billion dollars per year to operate over the five-year life of the operation and, while containing some of the most sophisticated technology in the Southeast Asia theater, the effectiveness of Igloo White still remains in question.
As early as June 1961, General Maxwell D. Taylor, President John F. Kennedy's special military representative, had become interested in the prospect of erecting a physical barrier to halt the increasing infiltration of PAVN materiel (and later, manpower) through their Laotian logistical corridor and into the border regions of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). He then held talks with the deputy director of the Pentagon's Office of Special Operations, Edward G. Lansdale, who convinced him that a better solution to the infiltration dilemma would be the creation of mobile units to attack the infiltrators.
After the initiation of the strategic aerial bombardment of North Vietnam (Operation Rolling Thunder) in March 1965, Washington saw that program as its chief method of relaying signals to Hanoi to cease its support of the southern insurgency. When that failed as a strategy, the aerial effort was redirected to serve as an anti-infiltration campaign. After a million sorties were flown and more than three-quarters of a million tons of bombs were dropped, Rolling Thunder came to an end at the direction of President Lyndon B. Johnson on 11 November 1968.
As early as 1966 Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara had become disenchanted with Rolling Thunder. In January McNamara was presented with a working paper by the American academic Roger Fisher, who proposed a less costly physical and electronic barrier that would be located in South Vietnam. It was to consist of a 216-mile (348 km) long, 500-yard (460 m) wide barrier that would stretch from the South China Sea south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), across the Laotian frontier and on to the border of Thailand. The physical barrier itself would be supported by electronic sensors and extensive minefields. Fisher estimated that it would take approximately five U.S. divisions to erect and defend the system.