 out of the war in Vietnam today so dramatically reviews the changes and combat techniques that have come in our time as the enlistment of army aircraft in the jungle war against the communists. These helicopters and fixed wing aircraft, some of them manned by Vietnamese aviators trained by American soldiers, some piloted by Americans themselves, helped carry the battle to the hidden enemy. Helping to turn the tide against red aggression, these machines are writing the latest chapter in the army aviation story, a constantly growing story which already has given the ground forces of the United States a bold new dimension of mobility with wings at the treetop. The team was first demonstrated in World War II when the old L4 was used as an aerial observation platform for the adjustment of artillery fire. As a result, the accuracy of that fire was steadily and substantially improved and the concept of army aviation was born. There aren't many of these babies left anymore. It's just about as rare now as the old Gatling gun. But they started something all right, a revolution in fact, at least a revolutionary idea. And the idea simply was this. In an age of bigness and speed, not everything has to be big. And if you make all the machines go as fast as technology will permit, you may be out distancing the man who still has to carry the main burden of ground combat, the guy with the rifle in his hands. This idea was the real beginning of army aviation. It became more than an idea. It became part of the military philosophy of this nation in 1947, when Congress passed the National Security Act, defining the missions of the three services. In that act, it was specified that the army would have such aviation as would be organic to the army's mission, which is defined as prompt and sustained combat, incident to operations on land. Today, the army has a wide variety of aircraft to be used in the accomplishment of its mission, rugged, durable machines, which have come a long way from the old L4. And so much a part of the army scene is aviation today, so deep is the impact it has made on the modern army. So identified is it with the army's mission that in magnitude alone, it presents an impressive glimpse of a new army look. Here are the aircraft, 103 of them, which are organic to the army division today. These aircraft belong to the division's combat units themselves, as much a part of the division as its weapons and its communications integrated throughout its units and echelons of command. All 16 of the divisions of the army have been reorganized to give them the capability provided by the army's aircraft, such as the extent of aviation in the army today. And all these machines and the personnel and support required to utilize them exist for one purpose, to help this man. Remember him? After all these years, after all the wars that have been fought, after all the new and powerful weapons that have been introduced and superseded and forgotten, he's still around. No one's ever thought of a way to eliminate him or replace him. He's still the one indispensable factor in war. Alone, single-handed, he may not be able to determine victory, but you can be sure that victory will ever be achieved unless he does his job well. This and this alone is what the aircraft in the army's possession are for, to help the fighting man do his job better. And how do they do this? They do it by giving him a dimension of tactical mobility he has never had before. Mobility, of course, has always been a highly prized and eagerly sought capability by all military forces. Today we do a lot of thinking in global terms, as well we should. For the world we live in is one in which a brush fire several thousand miles away can send flames licking at our front door by nightfall. We've got a military force that's geared to the long-distance challenges in this kind of world. The swift transport aircraft of the United States Air Force can pick up our soldiers at American bases and within a matter of hours, land them or drop them anywhere on the face of the earth. This is mobility certainly and a mobility we must have and maintain. In military terms, it's called strategic mobility. The army fighting man's job begins once he's been carried as far as the big birds of the Air Force will take him. Much can be done by air mobility after this point. Once he gets his feet on the ground and a rifle in his hands, he must be ready to go to work. And if the path he has to travel to reach the enemy is mountainous, if it's notched with barriers that slow him down, if it's frozen or mired with mud, then his job is that much harder. For exhausted, he still got a fight ahead of him. This has always been the foot soldier's enemy over which he has had no power. The tyranny that terrain can impose on the man who was always struggle against his roughest features. But he's won, hasn't he? Sure he has. He's plowed on, he's got there. And in spite of this enemy, on a thousand battlefields, he's written a record of dogginess and stoutness of heart that are part of the glory of his folklore. But no one's ever been able to tell what the cost of victory is that might not have to be paid in time and in human life. If the soldier who had to do the winning were able to free himself from the tyranny of terrain. These are the machines that finally will help liberate him from this tyranny. These machines are designed solely for his needs and are under his complete control. With them, he can leap mountains. He can cross rivers. He can defeat barricades erected by both nature and the enemy he fights. No longer need he be at the mercy of a restrictive environment than the obstacles it puts in his way or slowed down by the enemy's own effort to block his path with minefields or blown bridges or other efforts to delay him. He can seek out the enemy in inaccessible places, in jungle and wooded areas, in remote and hidden spots. This capability is of particular importance in assisting the Vietnamese soldier to counter the kind of warfare the communists have chosen to wage today in Vietnam and may attempt to wage in other areas of the world. The war of the guerrilla who strikes in stealth and then withdraws into the protective cover of the countryside to hide and wait until he can strike again. Use of aircraft gives the soldier who fights such an enemy access to what once was inaccessible, a road where no road existed before, swiftly effectively. He now can ferret the enemy out, deny him the ability to hide, which is indispensable to the successful guerrilla. In any engagement, the soldier can reach his objective fast with the use of aircraft. He can reach it fresh for the battle, his strength and his resources undepleted by a strenuous trip over rugged terrain. And because of the speed with which he can travel, he can bring to the battle an advantage which the fighting man always seeks, but until now has not always been able to achieve the most desirable advantage of surprise. The principle instrument which provides the soldier with his new dimension of mobility. This incredible machine has opened almost single-handedly possibilities for movement and maneuverability, undreamed of a generation ago. The army's helicopters today are becoming more rugged and more practical machines, so versatile they can do many different jobs in the environment of the battle area and in many different ways. Their principal advantage is their ability to travel at treetop level or below, skimming the surface of the earth. Out of the reach of radar or other detection devices, protected from both observation and enemy fire by the earth's cannonball. So maneuverable are they that they seem to have a life and a response of their own. They can hover, they can hide, they can change position to rise and hover again. They can land virtually anywhere. Some particularly useful for observation are small. Some are large enough to carry an infantry squad into the battle area and when quick movement away from the battle area is important, as with evacuation of casualties, they can accomplish this too. That service aerial ambulances carrying wounded men to the rear areas where they can be given immediate medical attention. Through aviation, lives are saved which might otherwise have been lost through delayed action. Those are big enough to transport a full combat platoon equipped and ready for action and supplies as well as troops. Copters, for instance, can each transport separate components of the Pershing missile, enabling the missile to be erected in a very short time. This use of helicopters strengthens the soldier's position by putting the army's heaviest firepower quickly into the battle area with him. If he loaded inside, they can be carried by sling attached to the machine. Virtually all helicopters, except for the very smallest, can get other weapons up to where the fighting man needs them. Copters from enemy ground fire, fixed wing aircraft are faster and can do some jobs better than helicopters. But even these machines, with their increased speed and power, are developed with the emphasis on the same qualities the helicopter must have. Rugged performance and the ability to live and operate in the combat zone where the fighting man lives at work, where only improvised aviation facilities are available, and where takeoffs and landings must be made in extremely tight areas. Connexants and surveillance are important jobs taken on by these powerful machines, improving in large measure the reconnaissance and observation activities carried out by organic army aircraft for the past 20 years. Camera in the belly of the plane is activated and a photograph is taken. All the swift work made possible by reconnaissance aircraft, what might have remained an undetected sight, is spotted. And what might once have appeared to be an empty and abandoned village, devoid of life, is identified as an enemy stronghold. reconnaissance, surveillance, transport. These are the missions of army aviation. Map of the earth flying is the technique with which these missions are accomplished. Trains to develop and perfect the technique, knows his mission as well as he knows the capabilities of his aircraft, and this he comes to know very well indeed. Because his training is thorough, it is demanded. It draws upon his skill, his patience, and his determination. But it pays him back in other corner, confidence, and the sense of accomplishment that results from the discipline of a simple and rugged machine. In the field where he lives most of the time, or in a training installation such as this one, the aviator is a member of a special breed, responsive to the particular challenges that aviation offers. But he is first of all a soldier with the soldier's interests and outlook. Aviation belongs to the entire army. There is no special branch. It's men come from all arms and all services of the active army, the reserve forces, and the National Guard. But for the men and the women in army aviation, it has the special excitement of a program growing and broadening as the army itself moves to meet the future. Soldiers of all ranks serve in the aviation program. Enlisted men are aviation specialists, technicians, crew members, mechanics, men with skills and vision, working with the officer and warrant officer aviators to keep the aircraft flying. All of these together are the men, the soldiers, who are quietly but courageously helping to write new chapters in the techniques of waging and winning wars. In the remote, scarred mountains and deltas of Vietnam, these men bring their skills in this new technique to assist in the training of a hard-pressed ally who has been fighting a difficult war against the communists for many long and lonely years. As advisors to the military forces of South Vietnam, the United States Army aviators are introducing those forces to a new concept and a new dimension of mobility. And the South Vietnamese in turn use the increased power which this mobility gives them to seek out the hidden enemy who strikes from the jungle and returns to its protection. If the war can be carried to the enemy so that he has no place to hide, the war can be won. And it will be these men who will have shown the way. This then is army aviation as it is today. Young but already indispensable, giving the American soldier a new dimension of power. Single-handedly, it has transformed the concept of mobility in battle within a single generation. And for the soldier who still as always must translate concept into action, it has increased by many fold his power to take the land and hold it, his classic job in battle.