“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 291

We’re in the middle of winter. Let’s talk about igloos.

Igloo White, to be specific.

Igloo White was one of those interesting Vietnam War operations. The idea was: we’d airdrop sensors (frequently camouflaged to look like local vegetation) along the Ho Chi Minh trail to monitor enemy movements. The sensors would relay information to aircraft flying overhead, which would in turn relay that information to an operations center. The operations center was equipped with two “supercomputers” (according to Wikipedia, IBM 360/40 and later 360/65 systems) which would analyze the collected data and try to predict where the enemy was going to be, based on where they had been.

“Operation Igloo White” from Dark Docs.

Bonus: “Electronic Surveillance and Eavesdropping in the Vietnam War”, a 1969 DOD film.

Bonus #2, also by way of Dark Docs: “Operation Popeye”, the military’s weather modification program.

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