Word: interdicting
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...succeeding General William C. Westmoreland (now the Army's Chief of Staff), Abrams has presided over and shaped fundamental changes in the day-to-day tactics used to fight the Communists. Where Westmoreland was a search-and-destroy and count-the-bodies man, Abrams proved to be an interdict-andweigh-the-rice man. Where Westmoreland insisted on outnumbering the enemy three or four to one with massive, multibrigade maneuvers, Abrams matched battalion against battalion and brigade against brigade. If a unit made contact with the enemy, he hustled in reinforcements aboard helicopters?a technique that came to be known...
...This is being carried on as part of the over-all effort to interdict and stop the flow of enemy forces which would have an opportunity to attack United States personnel stationed in Vietnam," Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird said last week to justify the expanded combat role...
...accord was completely ignored. As the war in Viet Nam intensified, increasing numbers of North Vietnamese poured into Laos to defend the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Chinese road builders appeared all over the north. U.S. advisers flocked to Vientiane, and American planes filled the skies-bombers to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail and transports to ferry government troops around...
...form of many more smaller-scale actions. Abrams has found that forays by sub-battalion-size units -companies, platoons, even squads -can be mounted more quickly, more often and in more places. Such surprise sweeps also achieve better results. Thus the general's sting-ray tactics, designed to interdict the movement of North Vietnamese units and supplies, involve the same number of men but hundreds and sometimes thousands more of what Abrams prefers to call "initiatives" rather than "offensives." As Abrams explained it last week to TIME Correspondents Marsh Clark and Burton Pines in Saigon: "Since the beginning...
...planes usually attract "incoming." The Marines just sit and wait to be attacked, primarily because seeking out the enemy could cost more lives and casualty-consciousness has been drummed into every commander. The fact that they do not patrol means that Khe Sanh's original purpose-to interdict enemy infiltration-has been abandoned. As the tension builds, Marines manning the misty perimeter, their eyes wet with straining, sometimes begin to imagine phantom attackers coming through the gathering dusk...