Word: antiaircraft
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North of Khe Sanh, some 20,000 Communist troops were poised above the Demilitarized Zone, while inside the DMZ the Communists massed a formidable array of tanks, mortar batteries, rockets, antiaircraft guns and heavy 152-mm. howitzers with an elevenmile range. The buildup-biggest in the DMZ since the 1968 bombing halt-might have been a reaction to allied hints that an invasion of North Viet Nam might be attempted if Lam Son were to turn sour. But some U.S. officers, fearful that it foreshadowed a period of relentless Communist shelling and possibly a fullblown invasion, rushed 7,000 additional...
Iron Bombs. The Pentagon also revealed that the Soviet Union has developed highly mobile and quick-firing launchers for some of its SAM antiaircraft batteries. These launchers have been detected north of the DMZ in Viet Nam and could, said the military, be operating in Laos. U.S. experts have discounted reports by American pilots of an entirely new Soviet antiaircraft missile in Laos. It is now believed that standard Soviet ground-to-ground rockets, which cannot track aircraft, are being fired in the approach paths of U.S. planes in order to disrupt attack patterns...
...Site 22, commanded the SeKong River, a key artery in the trail complex. Near Tchepone itself, North Vietnamese troops managed to call in American artillery on South Vietnamese positions by using the same radio frequencies as the ARVN troops'. At other times they lured American helicopters into antiaircraft fire. Total helicopter losses since the Laos operation began five weeks ago: 66 destroyed and well over 160 more shot down but recovered...
...bullet holes when Lam Son finally ends (choppers that crash are disqualified). Says soft-spoken Huey Pilot John Oldham. 22, of Peculiar, Mo.: "If you think about getting killed, it will screw you up. You just do the job you are trained for." Over Laos, where the elaborate Communist antiaircraft system is especially potent, the pilots fly high-but not on grass. There may be plenty of pot smokers in Viet Nam's foxholes, but there are very few in its helicopters, where a man may have to monitor five radios at once, handle a number of lethal weapons...
...that the main purpose of both the Cambodia and Laos operations was to "cut American casualties and to ensure the success of our withdrawal program." (The number of U.S. fatalities did decline after Cambodia, although they have risen again in the Laos action mainly as the result of enemy antiaircraft fire: at the same time, Vietnamese casualties have soared.) Nixon also admitted that the operations in Laos and Cambodia were partially designed "to increase the ability of the South Vietnamese to defend themselves without our help." The two goals of protecting Americans and strengthening the Vietnamese are almost inseparable...