The enemy was a rugged, six-wheel drive open-bed truck, simple, cheap, expendable and very difficult to find at night. It was designed in Russia and built in a factory named after Lenin. The ZIL-157 could carry 2.5 to 5 tons of anything, and move it at speeds of up to 40 mph (65 km/h) over the roads of Southeast Asia.

It was a key element in the movement of war materiel from distribution points in North Vietnam to the army and to the Viet Cong irregulars in the South.

Trucks moving by day are relatively easy targets, exposed on open roads and often trailing a dust plume that can be spotted miles away. A truck moving at night along a jungle trail covered with a triple layer of foliage is another matter entirely. To try to find and then to kill that truck was a problem that occupied the best brains and the finest tacticians of the war.

The solution evolved into a complex and highly sophisticated system that combined the latest technologies in electronic warfare, aircraft development, and weapons design. It represented at least $1 billion in capital costs, plus the operational costs of the system and of the aircraft that made it effective.

The system was called Igloo White, among other names, and it was a classical example of advanced technology to solve a primordial battlefield problem.