Radio Research - And Other SIGINT in Vietnam

[KEN JENSEN]

Originally Posted by altus

Yes I would! Do you think I may apply?

hmmmm - Don't think you could pass part of the entrance questions;
"Have you ever been involved in or associated with a Communist organization?"
oooooops! NO CHANCE! Recommend applying for your Gov't SIGINT

Thank you for the information. I've not known much about cryptanalysis and its "inner workings" other than basic principles. I know that something is generally possible but do not know the how's. It's probably more healthy not to anyway.

LOL - If RR and/or I were to tell you to much, we would have to kill you! Neither one of us wants to do that!

[TRU]

Wow, I missed some good posts being off line for a week or so. I don't ever recall ever seeing true plain text unencrypted morse. The PAVN/VC were VERY tight on their COMSEC procedures.

We reviewed lots of captured radio traffic (the docs captured from senders & receivers) and interrogated a few crypto people. What we saw were page after page of four or five number groups. I forgot how many rows per page now. I spent some TDY time at Phu Bai transcribing these too from Vietnamese to English to be sent to our Cryppies.

Hopefully, but not usually, the Cryppies would have previously captured code books or traffic from the same site that would make the decrypt fairly routine. This was rare though. It was hard work and some types of encryption were not able to be dealt with in country. We were told these were almost impossible at NSA too but never had the need to know beyond what we did.
TRU

[TRU]

Altus,

My only knowledge of PAVN/SIGINT is related to Project Touchhdown (google it). We handled all the docs and interrogated all the personnel captured wrote the reports, for days and days to DIRNSA and EVERYONE all the way up to the Secretary of Defense.

I can probably relate a little more than is on the web but I'd have to see what you or others wanted to know.

TRU

[RadioResearcher]

Originally Posted by altus

Something to heat things up... At our Vietnamese board, someone had found a cryptic entry from the official chronicle of the PAVN external affairs, which read that in the 60s the Soviets proposed, within the cooperation in signal intelligence with the PAVN, to attempt to develop a jamming system that would render US aircraft in the Tonkin Gulf unable to land on carriers. Ambitious wasn't it?

Yes, quite, especially since jamming on a scale such as that can have unintended consequences, as related by a former ASA man in the following --

The fact is that the ECM portion of EW
has always, by regulation, been under the purview of the JCS and there
was always some chafing and friction between ASA EW Elements (who
answered to NSA and the service components (Army, Navy & Airforce) who
had ECM programs of their own. Marine Security Battalions, who had the
capability, were more independent (of the Navy).

A big issue was training. There was virtually nowhere in CONUS with
the exception of Forts Hood & Irwin where we could ''turn 'em on,'' as
we found out while testing a powerful new piece of equipment, a radar
jammer at Eglin AFB. JCS gave us a green light to use it in a 5th ID
FTX in the fall of 1977. We turned it on and within 15 minutes a USAF
General Officer in a helo landed at our site and ordered us to
terminate as we had shut down a large part of the civilian air traffic
control system in the southeastern United States. It was a loverly
system! The counterpoise fried birds like a bug zapper.

INSCOM wanted nothing to do with the capability nor the politics of
ECM and so shortly after the takeover in October 1976 it was on its
way out. We continued to employ the ECM capability of systems like the
Traffic Jam (TLQ-17) and Quick Fix w/ pop-up jammer and the
Trailblazer (TSQ-114) in the ASA DSCs until they were CEWI-ed circa 1981.

We had some fun with the ECM while it lasted though, and we had some
real artistes at jamming and spoofing the enemy.

Gen Westmoreland originally intended the RP-2E aircraft (see Crazy Cats posting at the beginning of this thread) for jamming missions, but got so much pushback from his commanders, concerned with the possibility of such unintended consequences, that the platform was diverted to general COMINT use.

For an interesting example of more modest jamming listen to this example of a "bubble jammer" attacking a CIA numbers station. (Miss Saigon loves this stuff! )

-- RR

[altus]

Originally Posted by TRU

I can probably relate a little more than is on the web but I'd have to see what you or others wanted to know.

Thank you for this vastly interesting lead. I've found a quite detailed article by David Fiedler. So I suppose you participated in interrogating the captured A3 personnel and translating their materials.

Do you know of any other PAVN technical reconnaissance team that were captured apart from the A3? What happened to the men later?

Please provide only such details for which I'll not be shot.

[TRU]

Yes, the article by Fiedler was where I figured you would go. It is quite detailed and accurate to the best of my first hand knowledge.

About three of us in my unit interrogated the A3 personnel though we all interrogated each of them following up on leads and things others thought we should ask after reports went up the chain of command and requests for additional information came back down.

A lot of the stuff as you see in the article by Fiedler didn't need to be translated. It was copied by hand in English by two of the A3 personnel who could read and write English. The were both former college students in Saigon who tried to evade the draft into the RVN Army. "Friends" took them to the Cu Chi area where they were supposed to be introduced to someone who would get them new ID. They met the VC recruiter and were now drafted. Their English skills were in need and eventually ended up in A3.

The training material from the 47th Technical Reconnaissance Battalion material we translated.

There were two females in the unit, one was a cook and the other I don't recall. One was pregnant when they were captured. Here baby was born while they were in captivity. The father was another unit member, the only one killed during the capture. He came out of the tunnel they were in with a grenade to find a ring of M113 APC around the opening with guns pointing in. He tried to throw the grenade. The rest of the unit surrendered.

The others were held in Saigon at the CMIC near Phu Tho race track on what we called Plantation Road, I can't recall the name off hand but is now called Âu cơ. They were there through the spring of 1970 and I guess went to Phú Quốc.

To the best of my knowledge the information about the 47th Technical Reconnaissance Bn all came from documents. If anyone from any unit of that type been captured we would have been involved in the exploitation of docs and personnel.
Bill

[RadioResearcher]

Originally Posted by TRU

My only knowledge of PAVN/SIGINT is related to Project Touchhdown.

Altus and TRU -- There is some comprehensive treatment of PAVN SIGINT found in Chapter 8 of the recently declassified Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975, by Robert J. Hanyok, beginning on page 387. This material is still being declassified in stages, the last such being in May of last year. Therefore it is still heavily redacted - for the purpose of keeping Altus alive. Mostly factually based as regards PAVN SIGINT history and structure, there is some speculation toward the end of the account with regard to overall numbers and effectiveness of the PAVN SIGINT effort. For instance, there are estimates of between 4-5,000 PAVN SIGINT troops under the control of COSVN in 1969 (four times greater than ARVN assets at the time). This contrasts with the official Peoples Army history, which accounts for 3,583 "cryptographic cadre and personnel" (presumably engaged in processing encrypted PAVN communications, not SIGINT), trained between 1965 and 1972 and supporting the effort in the south during the entire war. Would there have been more troops intercepting enemy transmissions than processing their own? Notwithstanding, Hanyok's account in other respects is revealing and yields a healthy new respect for my counterparts on the PAVN side.

-- RR

[altus]

Yes, Spartans in Darkness is a highly informative document.

Originally Posted by RadioResearcher

For instance, there are estimates of between 4-5,000 PAVN SIGINT troops under the control of COSVN in 1969 (four times greater than ARVN assets at the time). This contrasts with the official Peoples Army history, which accounts for 3,583 "cryptographic cadre and personnel" (presumably engaged in processing encrypted PAVN communications, not SIGINT), trained between 1965 and 1972 and supporting the effort in the south during the entire war. Would there have been more troops intercepting enemy transmissions than processing their own?

Taking into consideration the common vagueness of figures in PAVN books I wouldn't be surprised if that 3,538 figure turned out to have included SIGINT personnel. You also have to take into consideration those who originated in the South, who most probably did not constitute part of this number, e.g. those college students TRU was speaking about.

[altus]

Originally Posted by TRU

The others were held in Saigon at the CMIC near Phu Tho race track on what we called Plantation Road, I can't recall the name off hand but is now called Âu cơ. They were there through the spring of 1970 and I guess went to Phú Quốc.

To the best of my knowledge the information about the 47th Technical Reconnaissance Bn all came from documents. If anyone from any unit of that type been captured we would have been involved in the exploitation of docs and personnel.

Thank you very much for your unique insights.

[TRU]

I would have to guess that the number probably included Crypto and SIGINT personnel. There were so few captured that I'm sure the numbers were small or we would have seen more of both captured.

The one Crypto guy that came through our unit, the only one captured from Sep 69 -Feb 71, actually had a "bodyguard".

[Miss Saigon]

An instructor told a humorous tale of an SF team on exercise in Germany that drove the American radio intercept station crazy. The signal intercept unit pretended the Green Berets were Soviet Commandos, to be triangulated and attacked. ingeniously, the SF commo men connected their transmitter to the barbed wife fence that surrounded the interecept station. Inside the signal technicians couldn't understand what was wrong - according to their instuments, the team's transmitter was everywhere. Desperate they phone other intercept stations to help them fix the transmitter's location. All of them perfectly fixed the site right at the signal intercept station. The intercept team had to ante up cases of cold beer before the Green Beret como men would explain how they'd done it.

From Secret Commandos by John Plaster

[RadioResearcher]

Here's a nice little story from Ted Dudley of the USMC, SIGINT/EW Marines organization about the Marine DF site on the Rockpile. (I worked for the 1st Platoon, Sub Unit 1, of the Marine's First Radio Battalion when first arriving in Chu Lai.)

-- RR

Sapper Ate and Dropped - November, 1966

[NOTE: Unedited from the original text. Pejorative term used. --RR]

Life on the Rockpile could be very boring at times, but we “Had Our Moments”. Picture yourself sitting 270 feet up in the air on a pile of rocks that Mother Nature did not know what else to do with. There were just a handful of U.S Marines living (existing) on the Rockpile in October & November of 1966, mainly from Force Recon & 1st Radio BN, and we all had a job to do. An Army Green Beret unit would come through once in a while, arriving in the daylight and gone by sun up the next morning or a Forward Observer from the Artillery Plateau would spend a day or two with us, but mostly just the same two teams.

One night after everyone had gone to sleep with the exception of Winnie Boyce, who’s turn it was to be on guard duty, a lone NVA soldier made it through the maze of trip wires and release wires which were all tied into a system of flares, grenades and claymores that were place along the south side of the Rockpile to warn us of any impending danger. To this day I don’t know how he managed it, but they were crafty “little people”.

My hooch was beside the only path leading down the south side of the Rock, and I had built a “Dock” so I could stretch out when I slept instead of being all curled up under my own rock. 1st Radio C- rations were all stored right under my “Dock” and the Pig Pen, home of the Pig (PRD-1) was just a few feet from my feet. Just beyond that was a pile of neatly stacked 81mm mortar rounds.

As the NVA soldier got to my feet, Winnie took notice, took aim but did not fire. Winnie took a few things into consideration that night, and I’m glad his Marine Corps training overrode his instincts. His choice at that moment was to shoot and hit the gook or shoot and hit my feet. I think I would have found a way to get to him with or without feet so I could strangle him if he had taken the shot. That thought may have gone through Winnie’s mind as well.

The gook took a case of c-rats and then decided to inspect the Pig Pen and the Pig. Once again Winnie had to make a choice. Shoot and hit the gook or shoot and knock out our only contact with the outside world and the equipment that every other Marine on the DMZ was counting on to locate Charlie. (I guess we really didn’t need the PRD-1 since Charlie was right there beside it) As before, Winnie’s training took over and he held his fire. Next, the gook went over to inspect the neatly stacked pile of 81mm mortar rounds, and again Winnie held his fire. We still don’t know for sure what a single 7.62 M-14 round would do if it hit a stack of mortar rounds. It was, and still is, my belief that the Rockpile would have been a little shorter after that night if Winnie had fired. Charlie then used some comm wire to tie the c-rat case to a single 81 round, still in it’s casing, so he could carry it down to his buddies surely waiting patiently below.

If curiosity killed the cat, it got Charlie that night too. He decided to open the casing of the mortar to inspect his prize. What he found was the increment charges and he must have thought it was some sort of American cheese. Now I’ve never tried to eat the stuff myself, but from what Winnie told us it must not agree with the stomach of a human. After some moaning, the gook just disappeared over the side of the Rockpile. If the increment charge didn’t kill him from the inside out, the 270 foot fall to the base of the Rockpile should have done the job.

At first light I went down to the inspect the area with one other 1st Radio Marine and there we found the half eaten charge and the open mortar case. The possibility of a booby trap existed, so we tied a piece of comm wire to the round and pulled it out of it’s casing from a safe distance. No boom, no gook, no damage done.

Seth Taylor was up there just after me and e-mailed me a while back. Part of his e-mail was:

“Also, I remember that story about the gook and the increments -- had to come from Winnie”.

40+ years later we are still talking about a night that could have been a disaster, but is just another funny story to be told. I still have my feet, and I know Winnie is out there somewhere very thankful he did not “Take The Shot”.

[KEN JENSEN]

Liked this little story RR - good job!

[RadioResearcher]

ASA Southeast Asia Tactical Training Course
(Cont)

An "official" history has been published in the May 2009 edition of the US Army Intelligence and Security Command's Insight --



Training at the TTC

May 2009

BY Mike Bigelow
INSCOM History Office

In the mid-1960s, the Army Security Agency, the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command’s predecessor, began to send a steady flow of Soldiers to the Republic of Vietnam. These deploying Soldiers, like those currently deploying to Iraq, faced a “360-degree battlefield,” where the front lines were not clearly defined and support troops found themselves in combat situations. To prepare its Soldiers for this, the ASA Training Center and School at Fort Devens, Mass., established the Tactical Training Course in July 1965.

The TTC’s establishment fell to Lt. Col. Lewis L. Millett, who received the Medal of Honor for leading a bayonet charge during the Korean War. Millett wanted to produce the most realistic training experience possible. He found Vietnamese speaking Soldiers or Asian-American Soldiers to play the role of Viet Cong aggressors. Lacking funding to create what he envisioned, Millett and his training staff ingeniously used available resources, including lumber from razed barracks and wood from his own farm in Maine to build an authentic looking Vietnam village in the Fort Devens training area. Within two years, the TTC would boast two “Vietnamese” villages: one “friendly” and one “hostile.” The former had a Buddhist shrine, rice paddies and sapling fence, while the latter had a tunnel system and spider holes.

The 10-day training cycle was divided into two phases. During the first phase, Soldiers trained on the weapons and equipment of an ASA company that directly supported a combat division. During driver training, they practiced blackout driving as well as ambush drills. Weapons training on the rifle, machine gun, and grenade launcher were culminated with live-firing. More importantly, the Soldiers learned to perform patrolling, establish perimeters and other squad tactics. Throughout the phase, the TTC instructors stressed the six-paragraph code of conduct.

During the second phase of TTC the tactical scenarios became more intense for the students. They received Army-mandated training on the geography, history and politics of Vietnam, the Communist strategy and threat, and the U.S. mission there. This was done in the friendly Vietnamese village of Mot Dong. Between tactical squad exercises and rehearsals, the TTC instructors trained the Soldiers on emergency destruction of equipment and information as well as escape and evasion techniques. On the ninth day of the training, the students prepared for their final exercise.

In the scenario, Student Company was ordered to move from its defensive position to a more secure area. It began in a tactical convoy, but “Viet Cong” guerilla bands ambushed the convoy and destroyed its vehicles with land mines or grenades. Employing the newly trained ambush drills, the students repulsed the final assault, but were forced to continue on foot. Upon approaching the enemy village of Hai Dong, they received orders to sweep the village and its subterranean tunnel complex. The students fought their way into the village and then defended it against a counterattack. At this point, the TTC instructors told the students that they needed to organize into groups of two or three and exfiltrate to friendly lines. If successful, the student was debriefed by the intelligence officer and taken to the TTC administrative area.

Not all students were successful in making their way back to friendly lines, and some were captured by “Viet Cong” patrols. Those students underwent simulated, but surprisingly harsh, interrogation. The simulated capture and interrogation gave the Soldiers an opportunity to practice and apply the Code of Conduct. After 15 to 20 minutes of interrogation, the students were allowed to escape and rejoin their comrades.

The next morning, the students struck their bivouac and cleaned and turned in their weapons.

The TTC was an important addition to the training at the ASA Training Center and School. While most of an ASA Soldier’s training concentrated on the technical skills of the collection and analysis of signals intelligence, the TTC’s training gave basic Soldier skills needed to successfully perform their mission on the battlefield where the combat zone was ill-defined. As one deployed Soldier, reflecting on his TTC experience, wrote, “I really hope that I’ll never have to put such training to use. But, on the other hand, it is always reassuring that I’ve had it in the first place.”

-- RR

[lelananh]

I was registered at your forum. I have printed the test message. Do not delete, please.



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