Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

by Robert Coram

The heart of Task Force Alpha was the “Infiltration Surveillance Center,” the purpose of which was to monitor acoustic sensors, seismic sensors, urine sniffers, and various other sensors planted along the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the purpose of observing the enemy. Banks of computers synthesized the sensor data and tried to form a picture of what the enemy was doing. Is that a convoy of trucks or hundreds of men marching down the trail? Where are they likely to stop for the night? Might a supply depot be there? Once the computers spit out the information, targeting experts decided what aircraft and what bombs or missiles to send against the enemy. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a network of trails and dirt roads that formed the main route by which North Vietnamese forces operating in South Vietnam were resupplied by cargo-carrying bicycles and small trucks. Seeding the trail with sensors had been the idea of Defense Secretary McNamara’s R&D technocrats, and the project became known as the “McNamara Line.” The $2.5 billion operation was a huge windfall for IBM. The technocrats convinced McNamara that if the trail were wired—as one Task Force Alpha worker said, like a “pinball machine”—the supply chain could be broken and America could win the war. This was America’s first electronic battlefield. It was one of the most highly classified operations of the Vietnam War.