Operation Igloo White was a covert United States Air Force electronic warfare operation conducted from late January 1968 until February 1973, during the Vietnam War. 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 Peoples 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). 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. Costing between $1 and $1.7 billion dollars to design and build (and another billion dollars per year to operate over the five-year life of the operation) and possessing and controlling some of the most sophisticated technology in the Southeast Asia theater, the effectiveness of Igloo White still remains in question... [In January] 1966 Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara... was presented with a working paper by the American academic Roger Fisher, who proposed a... physical and electronic barrier that would be located in South Vietnam. It was to consist of a 216-mile (348 km) long, 500 yard-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. On 15 September 1966, McNamara made Army General Alfred D. Starbird the head of the newly-formed Defense Communications Planning Group (DCPG)... The barrier concept was then given the designation Practice Nine. The DCPGs original mission profile, as of September 1966, was simply to implement the anti-infiltration system devised by the Jason Division... In June 1967 the barrier project, by then referred to as the Strong Point Obstacle System (or SPOS) was renamed Illinois City, which lasted for a month before the program was redesignated Dyemarker... On 8 September 1967, the electronic portion of Dyemarker was divided and the aerial, sensor-based portion was designated Muscle Shoals. On 1 June 1968, the aerial portion was redesignated Igloo White. That name became the most associated with the program though various elements received a number of separate codenames. All resources for Dyemarker - Muscle Shoals were redesignated Duck Blind in April 1968, and in June 1968 Muscle Shoals outright became Duel Blade. In October 1968 Duck Blind was changed to Duffel Bag. In mid 1968, the physical barrier concept was pushed aside after the North Vietnamese overrun of the Lang Vei special forces camp and the siege of Khe Sanh. The barrier concept was reduced to an aerial, sensor-based electronic interdiction program that was to be conducted in Laos... ...Air-Delivered Seismic Intrusion Detector (ADSID)... could sense vertical earth motion by the use of an internal geophone and could determine whether a man or a vehicle was in motion at a range of 33 yards (30 m) and 109 yards (100 m) respectively... Acoustic Seismic Intrusion Detector (ACOUSID), combined the operations of both seismic and acoustic devices, with the added ability to transmit sound from a built-in microphone... Though Igloo Whites primary focus was monitoring traffic along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the DCPGs mission had been expanded to include sensors for a wide range of tactical applications, as well as, a Ground Tactical System in 1968. The Ground Tactical System was envisioned as a tool for ground commanders in defending fire bases and other secured areas against attack, and was eventually employed around Khe Sanh...
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 19:19:16 +0000
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