MACV-SOG were the most badass operators ever fielded in modern warfare. While the British SAS had pioneered similar deep reconnaissance and unconventional warfare tactics during the Malayan Emergency and Borneo Confrontation, there’s a crucial difference: the Brits were largely preventive, aiming to control insurgency before it escalated. They played a long game hearts and minds, surgical ambushes, village sweeps.
MACV-SOG, on the other hand, was pre-emptive and ruthless. They went behind enemy lines not to contain, but to disrupt, destabilize, and destroy cutting the head off the snake before it bit. Their cross-border missions into Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam weren’t just about gathering intel. They were full-contact chess matches in the jungle, where six-man teams would willingly engage numerically superior forces, plant wiretaps on enemy communication lines, and call airstrikes on their own positions if overrun.
edit - Actually read this....very detailed and very well illustriated
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