Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
This was tried by some units in Vietnam, and it was discovered that it required a fair amount of aviation support. To the best of my knowledge only the 1st Cav was able to pull it off on a regular basis, and even then it was criticized by some company-level officers as making their units too dependent on available LZs and compromising unit location each time the log birds came in. It's also rather terrain focused. The Cav could pull it off in the III CTZ because it was reasonably flat, but units like the 101st in I CTZ had problems due to the mountains (and this was especially true for the 4th ID in II CTZ), and the Americal found it almost impossible due to an extended AO and limited aviation support. The Marines had issues similar to those experienced by the Americal, although it did ease somewhat in 1969 when some organizational changes were made.
I'm completely with you and hope I don't sound the least bit snotty when I say that I hope that our logistical/technical skills have increased sufficiently in the last four decades that we could relook this issue.

Perhaps this problem will receive more attention as we shift focus away from the vehicle centric movements in Iraq to more dismounted operations in A'Stan.