No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam WarOxford University Press, 1 thg 6, 2011 - 368 trang Conventional wisdom holds that the US Army in Vietnam, thrust into an unconventional war where occupying terrain was a meaningless measure of success, depended on body counts as its sole measure of military progress. In No Sure Victory, Army officer and historian Gregory Daddis looks far deeper into the Army's techniques for measuring military success and presents a much more complicated-and disturbing-account of the American misadventure in Indochina. Daddis shows how the US Army, which confronted an unfamiliar enemy and an even more unfamiliar form of warfare, adopted a massive, and eventually unmanageable, system of measurements and formulas to track the progress of military operations that ranged from pacification efforts to search-and-destroy missions. The Army's monthly "Measurement of Progress" reports covered innumerable aspects of the fighting in Vietnam-force ratios, Vietcong/North Vietnamese Army incidents, tactical air sorties, weapons losses, security of base areas and roads, population control, area control, and hamlet defenses. Concentrating more on data collection and less on data analysis, these indiscriminate attempts to gauge success may actually have hindered the army's ability to evaluate the true outcome of the fight at hand--a roadblock that Daddis believes significantly contributed to the many failures that American forces suffered in Vietnam. Filled with incisive analysis and rich historical detail, No Sure Victory is not only a valuable case study in unconventional warfare, but a cautionary tale that offers important perspectives on how to measure performance in current and future armed conflict. Given America's ongoing counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, No Sure Victory provides valuable historical perspective on how to measure--and mismeasure--military success. |
Nội dung
3 | |
19 | |
America Goes to War in Southeast Asia | 39 |
The Problem of Defining Success | 63 |
4 Metrics in the Year of American Firepower | 87 |
5 We Are Winning Slowly but Steadily | 109 |
Victory Defeat or Stalemate? | 133 |
7 A Time for Testing | 157 |
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No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the ... Gregory A. Daddis Xem trước bị giới hạn - 2011 |
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Thuật ngữ và cụm từ thông dụng
1st Cavalry Abrams American April areas armed forces Army officers army’s ARVN assess battalion battle battlefield body counts Cambodia campaign casualties civilian combat Command History communist COMUSMACV counterinsurgency defeat Defense Division doctrine draftees early efforts enemy February Field Manual fighting firepower Folder FRUS guerrilla Guerrilla Warfare hamlets Hanoi indicators Infantry insurgency January JCS History Johnson Joint Chiefs killed Kissinger Komer MACV MACV Command MACV’s March McNamara measuring progress Melvin Zais metrics Military Review mission NARA Newsweek Nixon October offensive operations pacification political President problems progress and effectiveness quoted reporting system Revolutionary Development Robert Saigon soldiers South Vietnam Southeast Asia statistics strategy success systems analysis tactical Tet Offensive tion TTUVA U.S. Army U.S. forces U.S. Government U.S. troops unconventional units University Press USMACV victory Viet Vietcong Vietnam War Vietnamese VNIT warfare Washington WCWP Westmoreland William World Report York