Losing Vietnam (31 page)

The joint staffs in both countries were not truly joint; they were staffed primarily by army personnel to the exclusion of the air force and the navy. Thus coordination was difficult. The military region commanders in both South Vietnam and Cambodia considered the troops under their command to be “theirs” and jealously guarded their utilization outside of the local military regions.

In both countries, the military's pay at all grade levels was insufficient
to meet basic needs, particularly for the lower ranking soldiers with families. This necessitated “moonlighting” and, notably, corruption, absences without leave, and desertions. The effect of rampant inflation brought on by the worldwide oil crisis exacerbated the situations in both countries.
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The RVNAF, comparatively speaking, was a sophisticated military organization. Nearly all of its senior officers had been trained in the United States. They had worked closely with the allied military for many years and were battle-tested. The RVNAF also had a decent training base, a mature logistics system (although it still required outside contractor support), and an effective personnel management system. Its force structure included tanks, comparatively higher performance aircraft, and a much larger blue-water navy. However, South Vietnam's long years of fighting created a war-weariness that manifested itself in desertions (this problem plagued the Cambodian armed forces as well).

The South Vietnamese Army troops were more skilled in fire support coordination and combined arms tactics than were the Cambodians, whose skills were almost nonexistent in 1973. But most important, the RVNAF took the initiative and mounted hundreds of offensive operations against the much more effective North Vietnamese force. The FANK, in contrast, after its abortive 1971 offensive to open the highway to Kompong Thom—the CHAM LA II Operation—assumed an almost totally defensive posture. There were, of course, local offensive actions that were largely frontal type assaults.

President Lon Nol was willing to cede the territory gained by the communists in their 1970–1971 assaults. President Thieu, however, was unwilling to give up any territory or population, which required the RVNAF to be spread much too thinly and allowed the enemy to pick and choose its offensive targets, always with local force superiority. Lon Nol's primary objective was to retain and solidify the territory and population centers currently under government control while building and training the armed forces. By 1973, this was a defensive effort to hold on to population enclaves while attempting to maintain key lines of communication, primarily, Routes 4 and 5 and the Mekong River. This had the salutary effect of consolidating forces, but it created a difficult logistical problem of aerial supply to isolated enclaves.

The level of U.S. personnel support differed greatly in Cambodia
and South Vietnam. A congressional mandate strictly limited the number of U.S. advisers in Cambodia to only two hundred total personnel, including military, embassy, and USAID people. Conversely, there were thousands of U.S. personnel supporting the war effort in South Vietnam, including contract technicians to maintain equipment. Additionally, U.S. MAP-CB funding procedures were extremely burdensome, whereas the Defense Assistance to Vietnam Program funding gave the South Vietnamese much more leeway in their planning and requisitioning of supplies.

The situation in Cambodia revolved around funding or the lack thereof. Almost all funding was utilized to purchase ammunition, and the Cambodians were expending ammunition at rates that far exceeded the available support. Ammunition was shipped by U.S. contractors predominantly by barges on the Mekong River, the critical main supply route. The outcome of the war greatly depended on ammunition and the Mekong.

In midsummer 1974 a matter of grave concern had surfaced: the inadequacy of MAP-CB funds, a situation exacerbated by the cumbersome rules for requisitioning supplies. The military assistance program was not designed to provide the flexibility necessary to support a war. Requirements had to be planned for and funded during prior year programming, and, to make matters worse, the funding was effected through a continuing resolution authority, which required that the allocated funds be made available in quarterly increments. Thus, at the beginning of each quarter MEDTC had to allocate funds for those items considered the most critical. This played havoc with long lead-time investment items, which were often postponed to satisfy critical requirements. Not only did ammunition requirements, which obviously were a function of combat intensity as well as force structure, have to be predicted a year in advance, but bureaucratic bullet counters in stateside depots were dramatically increasing the costs. Those responsible for maintaining and reconciling the Cambodia ammunition program were frustrated because of conflicting accounting directives.
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In April 1974, ammunition expenditures averaged $1 million a day, and the necessity to fund this critical item was driving out other potential procurements. In FY 74, 83 percent of authorized funding was spent on ammo. To make matters worse, the intensity of combat was greatly increasing. It was critical to manage ammunition. The U.S. joint staff's concern of the previous fall was valid; the problem was not only artillery expenditures, but ammunition expenditures across the board. Like South Vietnam's conflict, Cambodia's was a “war by budget.”

On 3 May 1974, recognizing the seriousness of the situation, Ambassador Dean, accompanied by Brigadier General Palmer, called on Marshal Lon Nol to focus his attention on the need for FANK to cut down ammunition consumption. Dean explained that ammo expenditures precluded spending funds on hardware items, such as armored personnel carriers and airplanes. He strongly stated it was imperative that FANK and the American military mission more effectively control the release of ammo and the FANK instill ammo discipline in field commanders. Shortly thereafter, Palmer met with Lt. Gen. Sosthene Fernandez, who subsequently put out the word to all his field commanders.
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MEDTC, with its limited staff spread thin, asked Headquarters USSAG for assistance in managing the ammo situation. We had already been assisting in the accounting, storage, and call-forward aspects and now developed a method to measure ammo expenditures as a function of several variables and to establish a conservation program. In June 1974, CINCPAC asked Headquarters USSAG to provide comments on the logistical considerations and plans for the Cambodian wet season, reflecting funding constraints and ammo conservation measures. CINCPAC also requested MEDTC comments on the need to limit the Cambodian ammo expenditures to 290 short tons per day to align consumption with fiscal realities. On 2 July 1974, I prepared a message in answer to CINCPAC's inquiries by providing an analysis of the previous year's ammo expenditures in Cambodia that forecasted ammo requirements through December 1974, the end of the wet season.
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I began the analysis with discussion of the wet season. The intensity of combat in Southeast Asia ebbed and flowed with the seasons. The southwest monsoon brought tremendous rainfall, ushering in the wet season and its miserable field conditions and decreased trafficability for the combatants. There were three indicators of the wet season in Cambodia: the southwest monsoon, reversal of the flow of the Tonle Sap River, and general flooding. Both the reversal of the Tonle Sap and the monsoons normally occurred in early May. Flooding in the vicinity of Phnom Penh occurred when the river reached the eight-meter level at its waterworks.
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Therefore, we closely monitored the Mekong River levels. A channel at Phnom Penh links the Tonle Sap Lake, a remnant of an ancient sea gulf, to the Mekong. When it reaches the eight-meter level, waters flow through the channel, flooding the lake, which then expands to an area of 770 square miles, inundating the land at its borders. During the dry season the Tonle Sap shrinks to one hundred square miles, and its depth falls from about forty-five feet to a maximum of five feet. It is no wonder military operations cease in the vicinity when the lake floods (see
map 7
). The earliest yearly flooding on record occurred in 1971, on 16 July. In 1973 the Tonle Sap flooded on 15 August, and the communists called off their attack on Phnom Penh on about that date. River stages in 1974 closely paralleled those of 1971. For our analysis we assumed general flooding would occur in central Cambodia in early August.

The wet season favors defense. Constant rain and the muck are detrimental to the morale of troops in the field. There is an upsurge of malaria. Transportation and cross-country mobility are difficult. The enemy's major weakness was its logistical support capability, which the wet season exacerbated. The enemy could attack in areas not greatly affected by flooding, such as along Highway 4, Kampot, Kompong Som, Kompong Cham, and other major population centers at the edge of the flood plain around Tonle Sap Lake. However, it would be difficult to move supplies, and I believed that the KC would have to concentrate on one or possibly two enclaves. In any case, the wet season should have seen a diminution in enemy initiatives because of their reduced capabilities and because the situation favors defense.

The combat intensity in June 1974 was the highest of the war to date. Thus, when assessing ammunition expenditures in Cambodia, it was necessary, as it was in South Vietnam, to consider not only the
authorized supply rates and the changing weapons densities that combined to make up the authorized day of supply—which in this case was a function of the limited funding situation—but also the varying intensities of combat as well as ammo conservation measures. These four variables together provided the insights essential to understanding the ammunition consumption picture.

Map 7. Mekong River Wet Season Flooding. (Source: Maj. Gen. Ira A. Hunt Collection.)

MEDTC requisitioned the Cambodian munitions through the U.S. Air Force and Army. Air force munitions made up approximately 20 percent of the total tonnage but at the time less than 10 percent of the cost, since a day's supply of air ammunition cost less than half of a day's supply of ground munitions on a per-ton basis. Naval munitions had negligible costs; they made up less than 1 percent of the total on both a cost and tonnage basis.

A review of previous ground and air munitions daily consumption rates, tallied on a weekly basis since the termination of U.S. air support on 15 August 1973, indicated that the air force's utilization had pretty much leveled off at about 65 short tons a day. The munitions requirement was primarily a function of the number of close air support sorties flown. Since there were generally more air missions requested than existing capabilities allowed, the aviation assets were used to capacity. Of course, weather always influenced the sortie rate. Nevertheless, the capacity utilization meant a more even ammo consumption rate, thereby facilitating predictions.

The consumption of ground munitions, however, was highly variable, depending on such major factors as the intensity of combat and the flooding of the area around Phnom Penh. During the 1973 wet season (15 August to 28 December), the average usage of ground munitions was 273 short tons a day. The initiation of the communist offensive against Phnom Penh saw consumption jump to over 765 short tons daily. Thereafter, during the dry season, ground ammo usage varied greatly from week to week, averaging about 430 short tons a day.

Seven line items made up about 85 percent of the tonnage of ground munitions.
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Table 18
shows the authorized supply rate for 1 November
1973 and the weapon densities for 1 November 1973 and 1 June 1974 and computes a DOS, using the 1 November ASR and the weapon densities on 1 November and 1 June. Between November 1973 and June 1974, as shown, the influx of ground weapons to build up FANK's firepower and mobility created a ninety-short-ton increase in a day of supply, a 30 percent increase in requirements. There was no attendant increase in air or naval weapons densities at that time.

Table 18.
Effect of Weapons Densities on Ground Munitions