Deitchman, an engineer, wanted ARPA to help the military understand the social factors feeding the rising insurgency in Vietnam, but he was appalled by much of the work being sponsored by AGILE. One of his first decisions was to cancel a contract given to Herman Kahn, the famed futurist and nuclear theorist, who proposed, among other absurdities, building a moat around Saigon. The political fallout from firing Kahn, who was close to defense secretary Robert McNamara, was depicted in a cartoon given to Deitchman as a farewell present by his colleagues in 1968. Credit 20
In the mid-1960s, the insurgency in Thailand was concentrated in the northeast, and communist insurgents frequently used the Mekong River to cross the border with Laos. The ARPA-sponsored Mekong River surveillance system, which provided boats and other gear to the Thai military, was often regarded as one of the few bright spots of ARPA’s work in Southeast Asia. The radar platform shown here, together with a few modest boats, was jokingly called “Deitchman’s Navy,” because of Seymour Deitchman’s key role in the project. Credit 21
Throughout the war, ARPA used Thailand as a laboratory for technology that could be deployed in Vietnam. The ARPA-sponsored Combat Development and Test Center in Thailand, like its counterpart in Vietnam, developed a wide range of equipment for use in counterinsurgency operations. Pictured here is an ARPA-developed “Psychological Operations in Box,” a sunlight projector that could be used to show propaganda films in villages susceptible to communist sympathies. The rugged equipment, which used sunlight rather than an electric light to project the film, was designed for austere conditions and typical of ARPA’s approach to jungle warfare. Credit 22
In 1963, Warren Star (center), a young Harvard MBA, was put to work on ARPA’s programs in Southeast Asia and eventually became a senior official in charge of a global counterinsurgency program. He is pictured here with Richard D. Holbrook (left), the director of ARPA’s research in Thailand, and James Woods (right), an anthropologist employed by the agency to conduct fieldwork in Southeast Asia. Credit 23
By the mid-1960s, Project AGILE had become a worldwide scientific program to address global counterinsurgency. Briefing slides helped describe the new, holistic ARPA approach, which looked at everything from behavioral research to assassination of “leaders in a crowd.” The slide depicts ARPA’s work in developing environmental science for warfare. Credit 24
This slide shows how various areas of research, including behavioral science and operations research, formed the scientific underpinning of village defense in Vietnam. Credit 25
The final slide describes the types of research and studies ARPA was pursuing in order to combat insurgency in urban areas, which became a major concern as the Vietnam War progressed. Credit 26
In 1967, ARPA sponsored Lockheed to develop the QT-2 aircraft, or “quiet airplane,” for use in Vietnam, based on a modified Schweizer SGS 2-32 sailplane. The aircraft—essentially a powered glider—used a muffled Volkswagen engine so that it could fly at night without being detected, to spot Vietcong laying booby traps. The modified aircraft was painted beige to mask its visibility, and in domestic testing it was given the fictitious company name San Jose Geophysical Inc. to hide its military connections. Though sometimes touted as the first example of a “stealth aircraft,” the QT-2 was not designed to evade radar. Credit 27
One of ARPA’s first experiments with radar-evading stealth involved a small drone called the Mark V. The agency contracted with McDonnell Douglas to build half a dozen of the unmanned aerial drones. The completed drone—held here by Allen Atkins, who went on to lead ARPA’s Aerospace Technology Office—demonstrated that it might be possible to build an aircraft that could evade detection by radar, and gave Pentagon officials the confidence to move forward with a prototype stealth aircraft. Credit 28
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The Imagineers of War Page 57