Irregular Warfare During WWII And The Vietnam War

Irregular warfare is broken down to five activities; counterinsurgency, foreign internal defense, stability operations, unconventional warfare, and counterterrorism. History traces U.S. involvement with irregular warfare activities in seemingly every conflict it has been involved with. Regardless to the use of irregular warfare, most consider these conflicts conventional wars. Since WWII and the Korean War, conventional wars have no longer remained the norm for conflicts which the U.S. gets involved. It can be widely considered the Vietnam War is the first time U.S. forces engaged in full scale irregular warfare due to the tactics used by both sides.

Background- The U.S. involvement with Vietnam came much earlier than the Vietnam War. According

devised other ways to combat the threat. The Vietcong had already found a set of tactics that worked against the conventional threat of the U.S. military. They would fight in small groups, conducting ambushes and disappearing into the surrounding environment. The Vietcong did not fight wearing a standard uniform; this made it difficult to identify friend from foe. “The Vietcong utilized landmines, booby-traps, and would attempt to stay close to U.S. forces to minimize the use of the American airpower or artillery”, (Clark, 2010). The Vietcong were supplied via the Ho Chi Minh trail by the North Vietnamese and Chinese, this flow of support made it easy for the Vietcong to replace any supplies lost in U.S. search and destroy raids. The U.S. attempted to counteract these actions by conducting search and destroy missions, utilizing Special Forces, and covert

began the use of Special Forces like Green Berets to train local villagers. According to Frankum & Maxner (2003), “the Green Berets would train villagers in remote areas to defend against the Vietcong and North Vietnamese attacks,” (p. 245). The Green Berets and other Special Forces also conducted covert actions across the border in Laos and Cambodia in disrupt the flow of supplies on the Ho Chi Minh trail. In many cases the Special Forces would carry out intelligence and reconnaissance missions against the Vietcong and North Vietnamese that was otherwise unavailable. U.S. Special forces proved to be the best equipped and most versatile force in Vietnam (Frankum & Maxner 2003). Overall tactics by the U.S. changed as the war progress. The U.S. knew they needed to effect the storage of supplies throughout local villages. In order to target these caches, the U.S. began conducting search and destroy missions. These missions would take intelligence gains through villagers and other means to target locations where enemy forces had supply caches. Unfortunately these missions became rife with destruction of property and meaningless killing of villagers. While the search and destroy missions did occasionally work the Vietcong simply adapted their tactics (Frankum & Maxner