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February 20, 2009 Gregory Daddis (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) A Problem of Metrics: This paper analyzes how the United States Army, particularly the Military Assistance Command-Vietnam (MACV), attempted to measure its progress and effectiveness while conducting counterinsurgency operations during the Vietnam War. It investigates some of the difficulties staff officers and commanders confronted in identifying relevant metrics for gauging success in an unconventional environment. While much of the Vietnam historiography maintains that "body-counts" served as the U.S. Army's principle indicator of success in Vietnam, this argument is unsupported by the vast numbers of Department of Defense and MACV reports generated for attempting to measure effectiveness during the war. The purpose of this study is to discover how the U.S. Army, confronted by an unfamiliar enemy and form of warfare, attempted to measure its progress and thus adapt in order to succeed. Gregory A. Daddis is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and has served in a number of command and staff assignments both in the United States and overseas. He is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an Academy Professor in the Department of History, United States Military Academy, West Point, New York. He is author of Fighting in the Great Crusade, LSU Press, 2002. |