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The Mashan loudspeakers are powerful enough to be heard 20,000 meters away, and they shout their message 18 hours a day.

Chinese Communist loudspeakers across the channel shout their message back, but the Nationalist officers say that the Communist speakers are much weaker. They are primarily designed not to reach Quemoy listeners, but to make enough noise on the Communist side to drown out Taiwan's message, officers explain.

A loudspeaker victory was scored during the last Mid-Autumn Festival, one officer says. The festival was a holiday for everyone in Taiwan and the loudspeaker operators made much of this, knowing that MidAutumn Festival was not being observed across the water.

"The Communists had to rush out and buy some noon-cakes (the festival's traditional treat) for the people within our range," a loudspeaker officer says happily.

Defectors and fishermen from China provide Taiwan with the best gauge of its psychological warfare program's efficiency. Briefing officers report that these people say they listen to Quemoy's loudspeakers and its radio and are “encouraged to choose freedom."

The last defector to Quemoy was a Chinese Communist soldier who swam to the island last September, officers say. A group of 30 fishermen got caught by bad weather and came ashore last December. They were the most recent visitors from China, and they chose to return after the Nationalists fed them and gave them small presents, in keeping with the government's policy.

[blocks in formation]

Although the Air Force has achieved significant PSYOP successes, the challenge remains to seek out more fully the PSYOP potential of aircraft as a medium of communication.

[VIETNAM]

*

In reviewing United States military experience in Vietnam, one is impressed with the vastly increased importance that must be attached to the psychological aspects of that conflict. These aspects emerge as both challenges and opportunities. In many cases the challenge has not been fully met, nor have the opportunities been fully exploited.

*

*This article was adapted from an address given to the graduation classes of the U.S. Army Psychological Operations Unit Officer Course and the Political Warfare Advisor Course, U.S. Army Institute for Military Assistance, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, 25 June 1970. The author wishes to express his appreciation to Dr. Robert F. Futrell for his assistance in obtaining source material and for his critical review. The article was reprinted in Air University Review, XXII, No. 3 (March-April 1971), pp. 34-46. Reprinted with the permission of Air University Review, March-April 1971, Vol. XXII No. 3.

In 1961, in response to President Kennedy's order to all services to bolster their counterinsurgency capability, the USAF established the 4400th Combat Crew Training Squadron. Known as Jungle Jim, it later became the 1st Air Commando Squadron and finally evolved into the present Special Operations Air Force. Its original mission gave high priority to the conduct of psychological operations. Because of scarcity of experience in psyops, the Jungle Jim personnel turned to the [then] U.S. Army Special Warfare Center for some accelerated instruction in the subject. On 15 November 1961 they deployed to South Vietnam. On 4 December they flew our first psyops mission in C-47s equipped with belly-mounted loudspeakers, following the idea conceived during the Korean War. This mistake cost us about two years in redesign time. The systems proved to be totally unfeasible because of the Doppler effect. Like the train blowing its whistle as it comes down the track, the voice from the air kept changing pitch as the aircraft approached and departed, leaving no more than two or three intelligible words out of a complete sentence. Of course with the speakers protruding down and directly to the rear of the aircraft, circling techniques were out of the question. So back to the drawing board.

In 1964 the Air Force, still searching for its legitimate and complete requirement in the psyops area, contracted with . . . [a private firm] to survey just what was needed. Although the report identified many areas for USAF concentration and application, implementation of these recommendations has been slow and hesitant. For example, establishment of a USAF psyops school was recommended, but only one or possibly two classes were conducted. One reason might be the belief of some in the Air Force that we should merely be concerned with flying aircraft and that someone else will assure that the total psychological impact inherent in the tactical employment of aircraft will be properly calculated. Therefore, if the psychological aspects of air power or air operations are to be maximized, most of the impetus, at least at present, must come from graduates of non-USAF psyops schools. Many of these officers (members of all services) will find themselves on joint staffs where they will have an opportunity to parlay their special talents by applying them to the extensive potential of air power. There is room for questioning whether this has always been adequatley done in South Vietnam (SVN).

Besides the early SVN problems already mentioned, many people more recently have expressed disappointment at the failure of the limited bombing of North Vietnam (NVN) to completely disintegrate the morale of the North Vietnamese. Perhaps an indication of what we should have expected can be found by again reviewing the findings of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey [USSBS]. In brief, it found that although the demoralizing effect of the bombing of Germany was almost complete, there were certain categories of people who retained an exceptionally high degree of resistance to morale erosion. They can be categorized in three groups: (1) highly disciplined Nazi party members, (2) firm converts

to the philosophy of Nazism whether or not a party member, and (3) those who were convinced in their own minds that their government was doing everything possible to protect them from the bombing raids. Another point made by the Survey was that the psywarfare effect (not necessarily the total military effect) can reach a saturation point under prolonged and incessant bombing. This is brought about by the fact that after a period of time most of the vulnerable and weaker elements of a society flee from the cities and only the strong-willed and dedicated elements remain. This, of course, makes the psywar warrior's job much more difficult, for among other things it reduces the contagious effect of demoralization. A third significant finding of the USSBS was that a government can do much to prepare its citizens psychologically for nonatomic air attacks.2

Applying these lessons to the North Vietnamese campaign is rather provocative. We know, for example, that the North Vietnamese government was given ample time and warning by the slowly escalating nature of the U.S. air attacks, and did, in fact, move great numbers of people into the countryside before intense raids commenced. They also had ample time to prepare those remaining psychologically. Additionally, we expended a considerable amount of rhetoric describing the intense aircraft defense system employed in NVN. Was this not in effect telling the people of North Vietnam just how well their government was trying to protect them? Perhaps instead we should have launched a psychological campaign emphasizing that their defense was unable to halt our penetrations, that no single authorized target was spared, and that their government was not doing all it could to defend its people, for example, "Where was North Vietnam's air force?"

Many other parallels or reciprocals can be drawn between psyops past and present. The purpose of this article is to direct attention to the facts that in new and changing situations military planners must constantly re-evaluate their techniques and that in so doing they should not ignore the lessons of history. If they apply, we should use them. If they do not. we should disregard them. But in either event, we should consciously examine them.

[THE NEW CHALLENGE]

A new challenge facing psychological operations officers concerns the nature of today's conflicts. Before the advent of nuclear weapons, most wars involving major powers were fought to a conclusion: victory for one side, defeat for the other. Deficiencies and omissions that may have occurred in conducting the psychological aspects of those wars were to a great extent obscured by the euphoria surrounding the final and total surrender of the enemy. Today's conflicts are not fought to such blackand-white resolutions. Indeed, in today's wars a military operation may be judged a success or failure not by its tactical accomplishments but by the effectiveness of the psywarfare and military/political actions that

accompany it. Put more bluntly, many victories are victories because one side convinces the other, or neutrals, that this is so.

This situation places psywar in an entirely new context and demands a greater awareness of both the favorable and unfavorable psychological impact of every military action, even, for example, the selection of operational nicknames. Richard H. S. Crossman, the British authority, points out, "The central substance of effective propaganda is hard, correct information... and it is necessary to make truth sound believable to the enemy." Therefore, while such a name as "Operation Total Victory" (for the U.S. sweep into Cambodia [in 1970]) may have a euphemistic sound when used by friendly troops, it may provide grist for the enemy propaganda mill if the operation does not achieve the goal the nickname portends. This is not the first occasion when the choice of a nickname has been questioned from a psychological warfare viewpoint. In February 1951 the Eighth Army in Korea launched "Operation Killer," a nickname obviously in conflict with the accompanying psywar effort to persuade the Chinese troops to surrender. Similarly, the Fifth Air Force in Korea launched a railroad interdiction campaign as "Operation Strangle," a name that was counterproductive in that those who did not understand the real objective of interdiction were given a vehicle for proclaiming its failure."

Finally, the psyops officer is challenged to conduct his programs and develop his themes in a manner to avoid their neutralization by information emanating from other sources. According to Sir Stewart Campbell, a British psywar expert, "There must be no conflicting arguments not only between outputs from the same sources but also those of different sources." Every conflict fought since the Crimean War (when the invention of the telegraph first allowed war correspondents to communicate on a daily basis with their home editors) has been subject to criticism from the press as well as the loyal opposition within the government. In wars where the vital interest of the United States is obvious, such as World Wars I and II, criticism from these sources has been minimal. In conflicts where our vital interest has been more obscured (albeit just as legitimate), the criticism can be expected to be more vocal and persistent. The psyops officer's challenge is to avoid the vitiating effects of this criticism to the extent possible and, above all, to resist the temptation to use the psyops arena to engage the press in any semblance of a military/political psyops argument. Steps in this direction would include limiting psyops actions as much as possible to military objectives and continually soliciting the cooperation of the press in the conduct of these efforts. This latter suggestion lends itself more to psyops activities than to conventional military actions, for the essence of psychological warfare is subtlety and truth, not secrecy or deception.

[CONCLUSION]

If this discourse appears somewhat critical of . . . Air Force participation in psywar operations, it is not intended to detract from the dedication.

of aircrews performing these missions. In fact the first USAF crew lost to presumed enemy ground fire in South Vietnam during the early phases of the current conflict was on a psyops mission. This occurred on 11 February 1962.

8

Despite its initial shortcomings, the air psyops campaign has proved productive. For example, over ninety percent of the Chieu Hoi defectors first learned of that program from air-dispersed leaflets. More revealing are the reactions of the Communist world to our psyops efforts. One can easily detect a "whistling in the dark" attitude in an article contained in the World Marxist Review in which the author says,". . . moreover [s] cattering leaflets urging the population to turn against their government in areas that were the cradle of the Vietnamese revolution is one of the stupidest blunders the 'psychological war' experts ever made." One wonders just what part this "blunder" played in causing North Vietnam to issue its infamous decrees "on the punishment of Counterrevolutionary Crimes" a few years later. These decrees list fifteen specific crimes that needed special attention and punishment, including treason, plotting to overthrow the people's democratic power, espionage, defecting to the enemy, undermining the people's solidarity, disseminating counterrevolutionary propaganda, and others. The necessity of issuing these strongly antipsywar decrees in the "cradle of the Vietnamese revolution" is perhaps our best evidence that our air war and psywar campaigns were having a telling effect against North Vietnam. The vastly increased importance of psychological warfare, especially in a restricted Vietnamtype war environment, is illuminated in the remarks of General Van Tien Dung, chief of staff of the North Vietnamese army, when he repeated an often emphasized theme that it is "the people, not the weapons, who form the backbone of [North Vietnam's] air defense."10 We should also remember that it is the people, not the weapons, who are targeted through psychological warfare.

NOTES

1. Bernard Peters, Major, USAF, "The USAF and Psychological Warfare," Air University Quarterly Review, II, 4 (Spring 1949), p. 5.

2 Peters, p. 15.

3 From an address by Richard H. S. Crossman to the British Royal United Services Institute, quoted by William E. Daugherty, "The Creed of a Modern Propagandist," in William E. Daugherty and Morris Janowitz, A Psychological Warfare Casebook (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1958), pp. 38 and 41.

Dr. Robert F. Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea, 1950-1953 (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1961), p. 436.

John C. W. Field, Aerial Propaganda Leaflets (Francis J. Field, Ltd., Kent, England, n.d.), p. 10.

6. Timothy Gowing, Sergeant Major, Voice from the Ranks (London: The Folio Society, 1954), p. xii.

1. Press Release, Director of Information, Hq Seventh Air Force, 2 January 1967.

8. Michel Vincent, "Vietnam Fights Back," World Marxist Review, VIII, 8 (August 1965).

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