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Edited on Tue Dec-14-04 12:42 PM by TahitiNut
When Nixon won in 1968 with a promise to "bring the troops home" he found that the Pentagon couldn't provide accurate data on how many military personnel were actually serving in Vietnam. They could only cite 'final' data that was more than 6 months old -- and which was notoriously inaccurate, as shown by updates up to a year later.
That's when yours truly was given the job of designing and implementing the "USARV Strength Accountability System" ... to identify and tabulate each and every service person under USARV Command in Vietnam and their current status.
The 'trick' was to intercept the processing Morning Reports. As anyone who has served in the military should know, every military unit worldwide files a report each and every morning that indicates any change in duty status of individuals assigned to their unit. This is reported by every military unit at the company (or equivalent) level. These reports, typically completed by company clerks and signed by the C.O., were submitted and transported/transmitted to USARV HQ Command every day. At the HQ level, the reports were assembled and aggregated. Since the time it took to receive these reports varied, the "as of" date for any lowest level of reporting command (usually a company) varied widely. An infantry company, for example, might be deployed in an outlying area and at firebases, and have squads and/or platoons conducting LRPs and other 'remote' duties. Thus, the time it'd take for changes in personnel status (alive, sick, dead, etc.) could be prolonged for up to a month (and occasionally more) for some units. Tragically, however, one could project with some degree of statistical certainty the number of personnel who'd be injured or killed among such delayed reports. That was the key.
Thus, the Strength Accountability System was completed by mid-1969 ... and provided the Pentagon with data that was 99.9% accurate at the battalion (or equivalent) level within a 7-day window. (Needless to say, they were shocked when they got the real numbers.) The system accounted for personnel at the aggregate level by rank/grade, MOS, and service (RA, US, NG, AR, etc.) ... as well as geographic location within Vietnam. (Also needless to say, the system and the data were HIGHLY classified.)
It's sad to see they've succumbed to chaos yet again. The first job of any military command for the last 4,000 years is to know the current location and condition of their own forces. This is the most basic tenet of warfare, and it's unchanging. The second job is to know the same for the enemy. Everything else is subordinate to and dependant upon how well Jobs #1 and #2 are done. These are the rules of warfare. They're basic.
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