How Good Is Saigon's Army?

For better or worse, the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN for short) holds the key to the success of President Nixon's Vietnamization policy. Expert opinions are strongly divided on whether ARVN can sustain that policy. Reflecting the cynical view of more than a few American G.I.s who have returned from combat in Southeast Asia, one U.S. military adviser last week complained: "The colors in the South Vietnamese flag are certainly appropriate--most of the people are yellow, and the rest are red."

By and large, though, American advisers believe that ARVN is a competent and rapidly improving fighting force. Since shortly after the 1968 Tet offensive the South Vietnamese armed forces have been expanded from 730,000 men to 1,100,000. ARVN has become the second-largest military machine in Asia, second in size only to China's 2,700,000-man People's Liberation Army. Counting the People's Self-Defense Force, the volunteer militia, South Viet Nam has nearly 2,000,000 men under arms. The main fighting force consists of 587,000 men, including 492,000 in ARVN (in eleven combat divisions), 13,000 marines, 40,000 sailors and 42,000 airmen. It also includes 513,000 Regional and Popular Force troops, who are assigned to guard the country's towns and villages and reinforce pacification efforts.

The South Vietnamese armed forces are among the best equipped in the world--at least for conventional warfare. The U.S. has provided ARVN with 640,000 M-16 rifles, 34,000 M-79 grenade launchers, 40,000 radios, 20,000 quarter-ton trucks and 56 M48 tanks. The air force has 200 A1, A-37 and F-5 fighters, 30 AC-47 gunships and 600 transport, training and reconnaissance aircraft. Despite such impressive figures, the Vietnamese are not as well equipped as the G.I.s they replaced. While ARVN has only 500 helicopters, for instance, the U.S. fighting force had more than 3,000 in 1969.

Three years ago, ARVN was primarily engaged in rural pacification programs, while U.S. troops handled most of the "search-and-destroy" missions. Since then a number of ARVN divisions--notably the Hue-based 1st--have acquired a good deal of combat experience and acquitted themselves with honor. Nonetheless, the army still has several large unsolved problems. The educational level of the troops is low--most ARVN privates are barely literate. Leadership, particularly at regimental and battalion levels, is erratic.

U.S. advisers make two general criticisms of ARVN: it is not flexible enough to defend the country properly, and it tends to get bogged down in bureaucracy. When ARVN took over the U.S. firebases south of the DMZ, the locations and even the names remained the same, which meant that the North Vietnamese did not even have to worry about changing their artillery coordinates.

Furthermore, a call for artillery support from a beleaguered ARVN field commander must pass through a tortuous chain of command extending from the district commander through the civilian province chief to the divisional commander and finally to the appropriate artillery battalion. Beyond this, ARVN's divisions are of sharply uneven quality, and its best units are apt to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Last week the crack 1st was resting in Hue while the bungling 3rd bore the brunt of the early fighting.

In a purely military sense, most U.S. strategists believe that Vietnamization will succeed. "It is inconceivable that the South can't hold out against the North Vietnamese," a senior Rand Corp. analyst observed last week. "They are just too good and well-equipped an army for that--unless the North Vietnamese are all Prussians and the South Vietnamese all Italians." He paused and added, "There is always that chance, of course."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.