[In The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War, James] Wirtz argues that Tet was not an intelligence failure in the sense that “the Allies” (his term) had no idea it was coming. US analysts had lots of information indicating a pending attack — indeed, sometimes too much information. Nor was it a complete failure to analyze the available information — lots of US analysts were in the ballpark about the size, direction, and even timing of the attack, and one analyst, Joseph Hovey, produced a report that predicted the whole thing with astonishing accuracy. Rather — and this is my term, not Wirtz’s — it was a failure of narrative.
By summer 1967, MACV (for convenience) had convinced itself that the North Vietnamese no longer had the resources to win the war militarily, and they knew it. This conclusion was based in large part on metrics coming in from field commanders. Specifically, MACV argued that by mid-1967, the Communists had passed what they, MACV, termed the “inflection point” — the North Vietnamese were losing more forces than they could replace, which led to a significant decrease in NVA / VC fighting capacity, plummeting morale, etc.
At no point, it seemed, did they question this assumption, or the bases of this assumption, the key to which was: Kill ratio. We all know how that goes, no need to get into the weeds, but note that everything hinges on the North Vietnamese not only losing the war, but knowing themselves to be losing.
[…]
So, too, with ever-increasing reports that the Viet Cong were going to launch major attacks on South Vietnamese cities. Since US analysts assumed the VC didn’t have the forces for that, these reports were dismissed as propaganda.
Finally, the assumption that the NVA knew themselves to be losing was seemingly confirmed with the siege of the big US firebase at Khe Sanh. It shared a similar geography with Dien Bien Phu, and when some of the same units that had participated in the original battle showed up to take on the Marines, US analysts concluded that the Communists, desperate for a psychological victory, were trying to make another Dien Bien Phu out of Khe Sanh.
At most, US analysts reasoned, Khe Sahn was another Battle of the Bulge — a last-ditch “saving throw”-type attack by an almost-beaten enemy. Much like German forces in the Ardennes, then, the North Vietnamese would attack the Americans, because they were the strongest part of the Allies, and therefore the most immediate military threat.
In fact, almost the exact opposite was true, pretty much all the way down the line. The NVA’s plan was to attack ARVN (the South Vietnamese Army) because they were the weakest, and would be even weaker during Tet, when half of them would be on furlough. But ARVN wasn’t out on the perimeter and along the DMZ. They were in the cities. The whole point of the attack on Khe Sanh (and of a whole series of skirmishes called “the border battles”) was to keep US forces out on the perimeter and away from the cities.
It worked spectacularly, too — even as Tet was unfolding, Gen. Westmoreland assumed it was a diversion, to draw American troops away from Khe Sanh. Half the country had been overrun before Westy began to think maybe Khe Sanh wasn’t the target after all; he only really believed it when the NVA broke off the siege and withdrew.
It was Narrative uber alles.
Severian, “Book Rec: Tet, Intelligence Failure”, Founding Questions, 2022-06-30.
October 2, 2022
QotD: US intelligence failures in the Tet Offensive
Comments Off on QotD: US intelligence failures in the Tet Offensive
No Comments
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
