DVIDS – News – 149th MI Group helps subject operations in Vietnam

by Michael E. Bigelow, INSCOM Command Historian

On Dec. 10, 1966, Col. William O. Peak, the second commander of the 149th Army Intelligence Group, issued a weekly report of great actions. It captured the actions of the group’s three battalions, particularly their coordination with American and South Vietnamese military items.

Solely six months earlier, the Army had activated the group to offer intelligence assist to increasing American floor forces in South Vietnam. Organized as a group unit, the brand new group had a licensed energy of 55 officers, one warrant officer, and 133 enlisted Troopers. After deployment coaching, it departed for Vietnam in two increments. The primary 92 personnel left for Vietnam in August 1966, arriving on Sept. 1. The remaining adopted in November.

In 1965 and 1966, the theater-level 525th Army Intelligence Group relied closely on quite a few hooked up small groups and detachments to carry out its human intelligence (HUMINT) mission. This included bilateral operations with the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Though it was designed to be greater than merely a single-source group, as soon as in Vietnam, the 149th MI Group assumed duty for HUMINT operations. It absorbed the mission and property of the present groups and detachments. All through the rest of 1966, the 149th MI Group, below the course of the 525th MI Group, consolidated and refined theater-level HUMINT.

As one Army Help Command, Vietnam (MACV) intelligence information famous, the 149th MI Group “gives space intelligence assist to MACV and MACV subordinate instructions by the Group headquarters in Saigon and Regional, Area and Resident workplaces all through the RVN [Republic of Vietnam].” The character of this mission made it troublesome for the group commander to successfully use his numerous sub-units as initially designed. Consequently, he restructured the group alongside practical traces corresponding with operational duties.

By early October 1966, the group had organized three battalions. The primary, the Bilateral Battalion, labored intently with the South Vietnamese 924th Assist Group to make sure a mixed assortment—particularly HUMINT — effort. This battalion was organized into 5 areas after which additional divided into groups. The Unilateral Battalion was the group’s second unit, and, because the identify implies, it orchestrated intelligence to immediately meet the wants of American items. The battalion had 4 corporations, every comparable to a navy area. These corporations established liaison groups with the American divisions and separate brigades. The final battalion was the Particular Operations Battalion, which executed the group’s compartmented subject operations.

Regardless of this shake-up, Peak and his Troopers hit the bottom operating. It established an early warning community of brokers across the 1st Cavalry Division’s perimeter. By the top of October, the group had produced 2,428 data reviews. Peak measured the effectiveness of those reviews by way of whether or not they offered early warning for items or prompted a fight response. In his Dec. 10 report, he outlined how group data warned of 4 impending assaults and offered seven targets to bomb or shell. Furthermore, the group diminished the supply occasions of its data reviews to the MACV analysts from eight days to 1.

For its first yr of operation, Peak’s group was awarded a meritorious unit commendation. The quotation famous the group’s “very important data…often resulted in optimistic confirmed lack of enemy personnel, tools, materiel, and morale.” Later the group performed an vital function within the profitable Operation Cedar Falls in early 1967.

Regardless of this success, Maj. Gen. Joseph McChristian, the MACV J-2, reorganized his intelligence property right into a extra streamlined group headquarters and provisional battalions to assist every of the navy areas. With the reorganization, the 149th MI Group was inactivated in September 1969.