The Cybernetic Jungle

About

Like many controversial conflicts during the Vietnam war, "Operation Igloo White" remains somewhat obscured to popular history. Considering its great potential as another bombastic propaganda film illustrating the ingenuity of the US military and its patriotic spirit, it is perhaps surprising that it hasn't yet been given the full [Michael Bay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bay] stars 'n' stripes treatment. Then again, one probable reason why Igloo White: The Movie hasn't featured in a cineplex near you is that it is considered to be a major military controversy, and another entry on the long list of induced 'Nam amnesia.

Despite its failure, Igloo White was an important precursor to the kind of remote-controlled warfare those in Pakistan have to undergo on a weekly basis. It set the precedent of ordinary soldiers fighting on the frontline from a computer terminal in a bunker, distant from the battlefield itself. While similar endeavors were explored during World War II and the MAD, early decades of the Cold War, Igloo White could be seen as the field test for contemporary drone warfare, and in this way only could it be seen as a worthwhile campaign.

As with the majority of US military campaigns featuring experimental technologies, the raw materials for Igloo White were developed at MIT in the late 1960s with a R&D group known as JASON. The idea was to create a network of sensors along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a transport route of strategic importance that ran through the jungles of North Vietnam into the South, through Laos and Cambodia. A variety of sensors were used in the operation: vibration sensors to detect movement of truck convoys, microphones to pick up the speech of the enemy soldiers, and even sensors that could detect the scent of urine.

The network was controlled and observed from a US military command center hundreds of kilometers to the North West in Nakhom Phanom, Thailand.

Sources

Extract from Unknown Documentary (Youtube)