Crosswinds: The Air Force's Setup in Vietnam by Earl H. Tilford Jr

Author:Earl H. Tilford Jr. [Earl H. Tilford Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-12-22T22:46:00+00:00

Productivity as Strategy

Figures were the name of the game during Commando Hunt. The compilation of statistics as indicators of progress became an end unto itself, supplanting the development of an appropriately devised strategy. And that became the crux of a larger problem for the Air Force and its prosecution of the war.

From the beginning, American objectives in Southeast Asia had been limited. Now that the withdrawal was under way, the United States had no easily definable criteria by which to assess success or failure. Still, Americans expected progress or at least quantifiable measures of success. Commando Hunt provided the figures that sated that appetite.

By the end of the 1960s the compilation of statistical measures of success was institutionalized. The body count had earned a certain notoriety by then. Rolling Thunder piled up volumes of numbers. Every week the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force produced a report detailing the number of sorties flown by aircraft, the number of bombs dropped by types, and even how many antiaircraft reactions were encountered and the kind of hits that occurred on each aircraft. Measures of success-failure was not addressed-were gleaned from these statistical summaries. In 1968, one Air Force document, entitled "Impact of In-Country/Out-Country Force Allocations on Interdiction Effectiveness," stated,

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