Ira Augustus Hunt - Losing Vietnam : how America abandoned Southeast Asia

The generic types of incidents considered are ground contacts, attacks by fire, mine and booby trap incidents, terrorism, sabotage, and political incidents. Each of these can be further decomposed into either enemy- or friendly-initiated.

The definitions used for the purpose of data processing, and interpretation of the data are given as follows:

(1) A ground contact is any troop combat engagement between friendly and enemy forces, initiated by either side. The size of forces involved may vary from platoon size to divisional size. A ground contact may result in enemy, friendly, and/or civilian casualties. Ground contacts may be decomposed into four distinct categories, defined as follows:

(a) A contact is normally any open engagement between opposing forces, initiated by either side.

(b) An ambush is an action initiated by the enemy as an element of surprise.

(c) Harassment is an action initiated by the enemy against friendly forces which may result in very few or no casualties. The purpose of harassing action is not to engage friendly forces in combat, but is more geared to a type of psychological warfare.

(d) A penetration incident is a probing action designed to test the strength of the opposing force. This type of action may be friendly or enemy initiated.

(2) An attack by fire (ABF) is an enemy or suspected enemy delivery of standoff fire from artillery, mortar, rocket, or recoilless rifles against a friendly position not accompanied or followed (within time constraints to be discussed later) by a ground attack. An ABF can result in any type of friendly (including civilian) casualties.

(3) Mine and booby trap incidents are those in which friendly military forces physically detonate an enemy placed mine, or fall prey to an enemy placed booby trap.

(4) Terrorism is any action initiated by the enemy against a civilian element. For example, enemy rockets or mortars directed against civilians will be treated as an incident of terrorism, and not an attack by fire. Kidnapping and assassinations of civilian officials are classed as incidents of terrorism.

(5) Sabotage is any action initiated by the enemy against lines of communication (LOC). Lines of communication are defined as physical structures such as bridges, dams, ammo dumps, military equipment, etc. For the purpose of definition, sabotage will never result in any casualties of any type. (Casualties associated with this type of incident will cause the incident report to be changed to that of either harassment or terrorism, depending on the target of the attack.)

(6) Political incidents are actions initiated by the enemy which may result in a show of force, but never any casualties of any type. This type of action is used to gain the attention of any person(s) to the enemys political goals and ambitions in South Vietnam.

The critical facets of the incident definitions given are the purpose of the action and who the action was directed against. There is certainly some subjective judgment involved in categorizing the data into the different types of incidents.

It must be noted at this point that only reports subsequent to 2 December 1973 identify the generic type of friendly unit involved in an action. Prior to that date, the data is aggregated, and can be treated only in reference to the total armed forces (RVNAF).

The unit definitions used in the report are given below:

(1) Main force units are those units consisting primarily of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), but also includes the Vietnamese Navy (VNN) and the Vietnamese Marine Corps (VNMC).

(2) Regional Forces (RF) consist of units assigned to protect areas falling within the Government of South Vietnam (GVN) provincial boundaries.

(3) Popular Forces (PF) consist of units assigned to protect areas falling within GVN district boundaries in any province.

(4) The Peoples Self Defense Forces (PSDF) are elements which act as a local militia to guard their hamlet of residence.

(5) The National Police Field Forces (NPFF) is an agency which acts as a civilian police force with normal responsibilities of a policeman. It is also used as a tactical force to combat against enemy activities.

(6) Civilians are personnel not paid by the GVN to bear arms.

(7) The Rural Development (RD) cadre consists of personnel paid by the GVN to assist the population in the development of farms, land areas, etc. RD cadre personnel bear arms, but only for self-protection. (RD cadre personnel are treated as civilians in incident reporting.)

(8) Territorial Forces (TF) consist of any combination of Regional Forces (RF), Popular Forces (PF), Peoples Self Defense Forces (PSDF), and/or National Police Field Forces (NPFF).

Having discussed the incident and force unit definitions used in the report compilation process, it is now necessary to discuss the various ground rules associated with incident classification.

Perhaps the most critical ground rule or assumption used is that incidents occurring within specified time and space constraints are treated as a single incident. The guidelines specified are that incidents occurring within 300 meters of one another, and within a twelve hour period, are combined and treated as a single incident. The primary rationale for doing this is to make some attempt to account for events which may be reported as separate, but are in reality part of a single encounter. A few examples may help illuminate the incident combining procedure and the rationale for doing it.

(1) Suppose the enemy rockets or mortars a friendly position with four rounds at a specified time, and sends in ten more rounds two hours later. For the purpose of this report, we would only show one ABF incident of fourteen rounds.

(2) Suppose the enemy initiates an ABF on a friendly position, and then within the twelve hour time constraint, either attacks the position, or the friendlies initiate a ground attack (within the space constraints), then one incident of an enemy-initiated contact (with rounds) would be reported. In the case of an ABF followed by an enemy attack, the rationale for combining incidents is that the initial ABF was probably designed to soften up the friendly defenses in preparation for a ground attack. The rationale for combining an initial ABF followed by a friendly-initiated attack on enemy positions (again within the temporal and spatial constraints) into one incident of an enemy-initiated contact is that the ABF was the first event (enemy-initiated) and may have a direct causal relationship to the initiation of the friendly security operation. In either case, the number of incoming enemy rounds associated with the incident is in the data file.

It must be noted that although the temporal and spatial constraints for incident combinations are somewhat arbitrary, military combat experience appears to support such incident aggregation in a vast majority of cases.

Some other general ground rules include:

(1) The time and location reported for each incident are the time and location of incident initiation. Although some contacts could last several hours, and the engagement location could move substantially, the report considers only the time and location at the beginning of the incident.

(2) In situations where incidents are combined, the time and location of the incident is taken to be that of the initiator event. For example, in the case where the enemy initiates an ABF followed by a ground attack (which when combined would report one incident of enemy-initiated contact), the time and location of the combined reported incident would be that of the initial ABF attack.