CHAPTER ONECOMMAND AND CONTROLRegardless of the direction taken in roles and missions of command and control of the ARDF function following the SEA hostilities, it was made abundantly clear from the outset that in Vietnam, and subsequently in Laos and Cambodia, ARDF was to be ground-oriented. Pertinent to the ARDF mission was an 11 September 1967 memorandum sighed by the Army and Air Force Chiefs of Staff, which stated in part:
of the war in Vietnam, we would continue to jointly support the MACV requirements, with each of us fur- nishing equipment as my be jointly agreed upon between the Chief of Staff of the Army and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force in accordance with our respective capabilities, recognizing the time frames in which the equipment is required by MACV. on 19 June 1968, left no doubt about the subject:
...airborne communications intercept and direction The memorandum left questions about the future unanswered, but for the duration of the Southeast Asia war placed the direction of the ARDF mission and its associated intelligence data-gathering functions firmly in Army-oriented hands. From the initiation of Air Force ARDF operations in SEA, COMUSMACV made it clear that all ARDF resources would be used only in response to his "approved requirements". MACV J-2 (specifically MACV J211-4) was designed as the office of primary responsibility (OPR) for all SEA ARDF matters. The office had responsibility for acting as intelligence-requirements control authority, designating consumers for ARDF results, and passing these results on to the consumer. MACV J-2, acting upon request for ARDF assistance from field commanders, the cryptologic/intelligence community, Hq 7AF and other consumers, proposed a weekly allocation of aircraft sorties to satify the necessary coverage. The weekly tasking meeting was chaired by MACV J-2 and was attended by representitives of the Army's 509th Radio Research Group (RRG), the Air Force's 6994th Security Squadron and Hq 7AF's intelligence and operations people, the National Security Agency (NSA), COMNAVFORV, and Controlled American Sourse (CAS) personnel. The group translated the general requirement levied by MACV into approved and detailed tasking for futhrer transmission to the action agencies through the ARDF Coordinating Center (ACC). The ACC provided the 509th RRG, 6994th SS, and Seventh Air Force with a weekly requirements schedule listing daily missions and sorites, desired initial target times, Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates of the various mission areas, and priorities. (See Figure 1 for communications channels of tasking and fragging.)
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