Fighting Guerrillas from the Lab

"What we really need, of course, is a piece of hardware that can determine a guy's politics." Neither the scientist who indulged in that whimsy last week nor any of his 450 military and civilian colleagues at the joint U.S.-Thailand Military Research and Development Center near Bangkok have any plans to work on such far-out equipment. Detecting and dealing with guerrillas is their basic task, and if they have not yet figured out how to spy on the enemy's innermost thoughts, they have at least gone a long way toward pin pointing his presence. They have built detectors that spot guerrillas by their slightest sounds or movements. They can literally sniff an enemy's presence by the very odors of his body, food or clothing. "What we are trying here," says Physicist R. D. Holbrook, who heads the U.S. contingent at MRDC, "is noth ing less than a systematic approach to the entire counterinsurgency problem. There's time to do in Thailand what we could have done elsewhere -- including Viet Nam -- if only we had started soon enough."

Infra-Red Sky Lab. One of MRDC's proudest accomplishments thus far is an aerial reconnaissance laboratory, built aboard a Royal Thai Air Force C-47 transport. Equipped with cameras and infra-red sensors, similarly equipped planes have been making thermal maps showing the heat patterns of heavily forested areas in southern Thailand, which is presently plagued by Chinese-led bands of Communist terrorists. Once the normal heat pattern of an area has been established, trained operators of the secret equipment aboard the C-47 can quickly spot any thermal changes on the map -- changes that could be caused by heat radiated from unusual concentrations of guerrillas or their vehicles.

Some of the infra-red techniques devised for the sky lab -- as well as oth er MRDC developments -- are also being used in Viet Nam, where there is no longer time or space for the methodical research going on in Bangkok.

MRDC men are also hard at work devising new techniques for transmitting radio signals in Southeast Asia, where both the dense, humid forests and the magnetic equatorial belt severely limit both range and reliability. Radio engineers have already made tests to determine the type of antenna that will operate most efficiently under these conditions and are scattering very high-frequency radio waves over the forest canopy to distant field receivers.

Boots to Last. Less esoteric but equally important problems have fallen to the center's scientific attack. When it was found that Thai soldiers were wearing through their U.S.-made boots within six months, scientists made a survey of Thai foot shapes, found them to be substantially different from the G.I. foot, then used special lasts for the production of Thai boots, which are expected to wear twice as long. For field troops plagued by the leeches in warm Thai streams, the center produced a repellent with a lanolin base that neither perspiration nor river water will wash away.

Province-by-province surveys are compiling accurate road maps--not so much for autos but to pinpoint emergency landing strips. Combat mobility studies have determined that military vehicles able to cross a 22-in.-high paddy dike are capable of crossing 95% of the dikes encountered in Thailand.

"This may not sound like high-level science," says a MRDC aide, "but it's damned essential for military planners."

River Traffic Patterns. Hoping to eliminate every gap in Thailand's defense against possible future insurgents, the center's social scientists have conducted studies on subjects ranging from the work habits and mores of northern hill tribes to the security arrangements in provincial villages. "The most important thing we're trying to do," explains Holbrook, "is to find out what motivates some people to be sympathetic to the Communists."

As might be expected, some of the center's projects have been embarrassingly over-researched. Technicians recently began checking motorbikes in rural areas to determine which could most quickly and easily carry provincial authorities to remote villages. After testing the British, French and American models that had been painstakingly selected, they discovered that local officials were already operating Japanese Honda motorcycles, which are ideally suited for the slightly built Thais. In addition, many mechanics in rural Thailand already had stocks of spare parts and service facilities for Hondas. Wryly admitting that the work was largely unnecessary, one MRDC researcher reported that at least the work led to an important observation: "We learned that the local people have a good deal of brains."

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