Spycraft - Melton [171]
Despite these problems, ground navigation beacons guided pilots throughout Laos and enabled flights in most weather conditions. Agents and reconnaissance teams were equipped with hand-held receiver-transmitters for positioning, authentication, identifying resupply sites, marking targets, air strikes, and calling for extraction. The small cylindrical-shaped unit, resembling a swagger stick when extended, featured a collapsible antenna at one end and a push-to-transmit button on the other.
To support teams on extended missions in Pathlet Lao-controlled territory or North Vietnam, resupply pallets of food and equipment were air dropped, but the covert operations precluded radio communications with pilots. An alternate means of locating the pallets was required. The answer came in a new type of beacon in the form of portable commercial FM receivers and hand-held direction-finding units. The receivers would detect signals from high-frequency transmitters attached to the pallets that began signaling only after the pallet landed.
Some air strike operations involved concealing small transmitters in U.S. radios or rifle butts intentionally left at the scene of a firefight with the expectation they would be scavenged by enemy forces. When these were carried back to a base camp, signals from the bugged weapon would silently pinpoint the location for a precision air attack.
“Counting all the reconnaissance, resupply, and sabotage operations, I estimated TSD equipment was used in thirty to forty missions a day in Laos and Vietnam,” said Jameson. “[The technology we used there] wasn’t particularly advanced compared to what was available for top-of-the-line audio bugs; from our perspective, it seemed that Headquarters was more focused on building new audio devices. However, we had guys with enough technical talent that we could build our own ‘bombing beacons.’”
One of these, called the HRT-10, was about the size of a transistor radio with only enough battery life for a few hours. The unit could be concealed in items such as backpacks or PRC-25 radios and issued to agents who infiltrated the Pathlet Lao or North Vietnamese base camps. “They’d get up close to the camp and stop to take a crap and hang the antenna on a tree,” Jameson explained. “Then the agent would come back and tell us where he put it—for instance, it could be fifty yards north-northeast of a base camp in a certain area. Our aircraft could pick up the weak signal once they were in the general area and strafe or bomb the target.”
Jameson never believed TSD invested sufficient money and effort in developing and upgrading combat support receivers and transmitters. “We ended up using commercial receivers and made the modifications ourselves,” he recalled. “Eventually a receiver was modified for our aircraft and linked to direction-finding antennas on its belly.31 It helped, but it was limited to ‘left and right’ indicators and was so complicated that it required a tech to operate it. We flew in unarmed Air America aircraft to guide the pilot to the target site. The CIA pilots would then call in the Air Force for a bombing raid based on the coordinates.”
Because the planes could not fly directly over the target without alerting the enemy below, TSD developed a number of techniques for “off-set targeting.” As the spotter plane flew along the side of the target, a tech took readings from the signal, then calculated the target’s true coordinates. That information was relayed to the bombers already coming into the operational area. The spotters’ planes then released a smoke grenade to provide a visual confirmation of the target for the attack pilots. In the next evolution of the system, a smoke grenade and time-delay mechanism were incorporated into the beacon itself. Since