(Route Pack Exclusive Air Operations Routes Over North Vietnam)

Controlling the Air War was an increasing problem. Theater Commander Admiral implemented a scheme called the “Route Pack system” to de-conflict air operations over North Vietnam. The system divided responsibility within North Vietnam into seven different geographic areas, with the Air Force and the Navy each receiving responsibility for portions of the route packs, quite independent of one another. The entities involved were wildly diverse: CINCPACFLT (Carrier aviation), the Air Force’s Seventh (Vietnam) and Thirteenth (Thailand) Numbered Air Forces, and independent sub-unified Strategic Air Command.
 

(SECSTATE Dean Rusk, LBJ, and SECDEF Robert McNamara, in the Cabinet Room. January 20, 1967. Photo credit: Yoichi R. Okamoto)
 
There was not comprehensive means to conduct coordinated post-strike assessments, and the targeting process was further complicated by this patchwork of responsibility. Targets were selected in Washington by a small team on the Joint Staff and approved only at the Presidential level. The memory of LBJ on his hands and knees in the Oval Office reviewing target graphics is one that strikes fear into anyone’s military mind.
 
But in the words of a later Secretary of Defense, you fight the war with the military you have. The Navy did the best it could to answer two critical questions that remained after every airstrike and every fire mission: Did you hit anything worthwhile? Was there collateral damage to friendly or civilian targets?
 
There was no feedback from the supported units ashore. Sometimes A-1 Skyraider prop aircraft like my Dad flew would provide observer services with binoculars. They were marvelous airplanes and courageous pilots, but prone to a certain subjectivity. Like body-counts, the results were often inflated in significance. (“Great Secondaries!”)
 
Rex had been ordered back to DC as Intelligence Collection Division Chief, responsible, inter alia, for the Operations Coordination Branch. That activity, headed up by LCDR Charlie Peterson, was responsible for establishing priorities for nominations to the collection decks of the service, theater and national technical sensors.
 
On 22 August 1969, a staff study on the advisability of the establishment of a collections operations management plot (Navy lingo for watch center, or COMP) was commissioned.
Rex was the man with the most recent experience in the ground war, the sensors available, and the vision to understand what was required by the operational forces.
 
The survey worked around the clock and delivered a positive report by 05 September recommending establishment of the COMP.
 

 
(The Hoffman Center, Alexandria, Virginia)
 
Two weeks later, the COMP was established in Room 5D718 in the Pentagon, a space now demolished in the reconstruction of the grand old building. Two months later, the whole operation was relocated to the grim Hoffman Building near the approaches to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in Alexandria.
 
This whole business had the net effect of raising Rex’s eyes up from the tactical imperatives of Vietnam to the global dance with the Main Adversary whose proxies in Vietnam had caused such distraction.
 
The Defense Intelligence Agency was widely viewed as being slow on processing Navy Specific Intelligence Collection Requirements (SICRs) which resulted in critical missed opportunities to gain insight into exactly what the Soviets had been up to in the massive worldwide naval operation “OKEAN 70.” The deployment signaled the arrival of the Soviets as a global player on the blue water, and panic for the service that had just completed a transition to brown-water combat.
 
VDM Bud Zumwalt left SEALORDS behind and became Chief of Naval Operations in July of 1970, and his challenges were manifold. He confronted a service where racial tension in the Fleet resulted in near-mutiny situations. The brown-water war in Vietnam had to be stabilized and transformed into a Vietnamese effort. The Russians were afloat, and increasingly aggressive.
 
He needed help in transforming his Navy to meet the new threat. He had an idea where he could find men he could trust. His first Z-gram (properly known as a Z-NavOp #1) became effective on 14 July.
 
Based on strong sustained performance afloat and ashore, Rex was selected for flag on the one star-board in calendar 1970 for promotion in FY-91. Zumwalt was impatient to get on with the transformation. There was still a war on, after all, and maybe more than that.
 
Rex was frocked to RADM (lower half) in 1971. Admiral Zumwalt had his quirk and he was quite ruthless in getting what he wanted. One of the tactics he employed to ensure that his legacy would survive was to ensure that every flag officer with a lower lineal number (date of commissioning) than his was off active duty before he ended his tenure as CNO.
 
That was how Rex got his number, and his next major challenge, but I will have to tell you more about that tomorrow. Frankly, this is all a little overwhelming to take so new in a fresh decade. The wind outside is howling, so cold that it burns.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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