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Operation Momentum was a guerrilla training program during the Laotian Civil War. This Central Intelligence Agency operation raising a guerrilla force of Hmong hill-tribesmen in northeastern Laos was planned by James William Lair and carried out by the Thai Police Aerial Reinforcement Unit. Begun on 17 January 1961, the three day ''Auto Defense Choc'' (Self Defense Shock) course graduated a clandestine guerrilla army of 5,000 warriors by 1 May, and of 9,000 by August. It scored its first success the day after the first ADC company graduated, on 21 January 1961, when 20 ADC troopers ambushed and killed 15 Pathet Lao. The Momentum technique of parachuting in equipment to train guerrillas was so successful it would be copied widely by the Americans during the Vietnam War. The United States Special Forces used the Momentum pre-palleted equipment and their own cadre of instructors for such copycat programs as Operation Pincushion, and for organizing the Degars of South Vietnam. The success of Operation Momentum brought about more extensive training for the Hmong and other hill tribes recruits such as the Lao Theung. Further training of Special Operating Teams of ADC graduates was begun in August 1961, with the aim of gradually replacing foreign trainers with Lao instructors. In July 1962, the International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos put a damper on Momentum operations until the following April. During this lull, Colonel (later Major General) Vang Pao gathered five ADC companies into a battalion-sized Special Guerrilla Unit. In later years, he would take the next step of organizing makeshift regiments of SGUs. Even as Operation Momentum expanded and spread throughout Laos, the burgeoning war in Vietnam became the focus of the American effort; the Laotian Civil War was subordinated to it. The change in emphasis can be judged by the fact that in 1967, the U.S. sank 431,000 troops into the Vietnam theater, at a fiscal cost about 700 times as great as the budget for the Lao war. As the Hmong irregulars joined the Royal Lao Army regulars in joint operations, the role of the hill tribes guerrillas began to mutate into that of light infantry defending fixed positions. The Momentum Hmong guerrillas suffered irreplaceable casualties as a result. By 1973, the Hmong had suffered 18,000 to 20,000 soldiers killed in action, with an additional civilian Hmong death toll nearing 50,000. On 14 and 15 May 1975, a belated U. S. aerial evacuation removed 2,500 Hmong to Thailand; however, the majority of the surviving pro-American Hmong were abandoned by the Americans. == Background == As the First Indochina War ended, and the Kingdom of Laos moved towards independence, the departing French bureaucrats and soldiers were gradually replaced by Americans. Captain Kong Le was opposed to foreign involvement in his nation's affairs, so he staged a coup d'etat on 9 August 1960. A counter-coup by General Phoumi Nosavan would eclipse him on 14 December 1960. In the wake of his ascension, James William Lair of the Central Intelligence Agency secretly entered Laos. On 9 January 1961, Lair helicoptered out to Ta Vieng on the Plain of Jars to meet a young Hmong lieutenant colonel of the Royal Lao Army named Vang Pao. A Thai officer with Lair arranged a later meeting. On 11 January, Vang Pao told Lair, "Either we fight or we leave. If you give me weapons, we fight," When asked how many troops he could raise, he asked for equipment to begin training 10,000 recruits.〔Warner, pp. 26–29, 33–34, 45.〕〔Conboy, Morrison, pp. 61–66.〕 Lair knew that his superiors felt that the hostilities in Laos could be settled only one of two ways: either direct military intervention with American troops, or a surrender of Laos to communism.〔Warner, p. 46.〕 With this in mind, Lair took the offer back to his superior, Desmond Fitzgerald, with the observation that Vang Pao already had gathered 4,300 potential Hmong recruits.〔 Lair's expressed opinion was that the Hmong were the only potential fighting force between the North Vietnamese invasion and Vientiane. He believed the Hmong would defend their way of life with ongoing guerrilla raids that would tie the Vietnamese down. Moreover, a functional guerrilla force would be best instructed by PARU because they shared a common language. The absence of Caucasian faces in the operation would guarantee plausible deniability for the covert operation. The only caveat in Lair's expertise was that the Hmong could never fight for fixed positions as infantry would; they would always need a line of retreat.〔Warner, pp. 45–47.〕 As the program developed, other problems would become apparent, caused by inherent contradictions in the situation. One was the Hmong necessity to defend their families. The other was that the Hmong militia would be tasked with offensive operations in enemy territory, to expand Royalist holdings.〔Ahern, p. 83.〕 The proposition was approved; Lair was placed in charge, with funding coming direct from the office of the Director of Central Intelligence.〔Warner, p. 48.〕 Fitzgerald arranged for the first class of Hmong basic training. Dubbed Project Momentum, it supplied the military gear necessary for equipping 2,000 soldiers as an experiment. As the Programs Evaluation Office was already in place in the U.S. Embassy, it was tasked with furnishing the needed equipment from Department of Defense stores. Trainers would come from Lair's Thai Border Patrol Police, in the form of the Police Aerial Reinforcement Unit cadre. The new troops would become members of 100 man irregular military units called ''Auto Defense Choc'' (roughly, Self Defense Shock (troops)).〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Operation Momentum」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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