>>8715811You do realize making all that noise was the point. US ground troops function was to make a lot of noise and act as bait till the VC stared to shoo at them. Then they would call in air support to shoot the VC.
Without the troops acting as human rat traps the VC would stay hidden.
Now don't get me wrong i am not saying it was a good strategy just that it was the strategy. The whole war was run by RAND and well they had this great idea that you can treat war like economics. To defeat the enemy they figured you just had to bankrupt the enemy in other words you just had to kill his units at a rate higher then replacement till he ran out of people to fight.
Each person would have a quota, like a factory, so each person had to kill x amount of people per day. Kill more and you can get promotions. Naturally this led to a body blown to four pieces counting as four kills for four different people and all types of fudging of numbers.
It is the perfect example of how modernity does not understand war. All their technique and they failed to understand man and conflict.