<text id=00he2003><title>Veterans Hit the Trail</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>Veterans Hit the Trail</hdr><body>
<p>For its solution, the USAF reached back two wars and came up with the Douglas A-26 Invader, brought up-to-date in a modification program. In June 1966, just after the start of the monsoon season, the 'new' weapon arrived to arm the 609th Air Commando Squadron at 'Naked Fanny', the popular name for the Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base. Eight A-26Ks had been resurrected to go to war once again. In Korea, they had performed admirably as night interdictors; in Vietnam they were to fly the same mission, striking at targets on the trail during the dark hours. Using the radio callsign 'Nimrod'—-the " ... mighty hunter before the Lord"—the A-26Ks combined the capabilities of hunter and killer in a single effective package. They replaced the AC-47 gunships in that phase of the Tiger Hound campaign, but structural problems soon grounded the fleet and ended their usefulness on the trail at night.
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<p>Taking stock at the end of 1967, the USAF counted 1,718 B-52 sorties in the Steel Tiger and Tiger Hound campaigns. Against trucks, the most effective killers had been the gunships. The B-57s did somewhat less well. By night, two NC-130Ks with special sensors and a freight hold loaded with bomblet canisters did surprisingly well on their own, and they also worked with the A-26s, serving as nighttime FACs. Some strike aircraft pilots even tried using the Army's 'Starlight Scope', a night vision-enhancer that had been developed for the M16 rifle.
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<p>All of this effort was stopping the infiltration and, back in the Pentagon, the cost-conscious McNamara was taking another analytical look at the problem.
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<p>The Jason Division of the Institute of Defense Analysis, having damned the interdiction effort in a report they issued in mid-1966, suggested as an alternative an electronic anti-infiltration system. It would use electronic sensors to detect the presence and movements of troops and trucks that were crossing the DMZ and the Laotian border. Then, tactical air strikes could be called in to hit specific targets.
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<p>The responsibility to develop the system was given to the Defense Communications Planning Group (DCPG) in September 1966, along with the highest authority to get things done. DCPG had top industrial priority and unusual freedom to cut red tape or circumvent routine channels. The USAF named its part of that system Igloo White.
