search and destroy

Search and destroy, seek and destroy, or simply S&D is a military strategy best known for its employment in the Malayan Emergency and the Vietnam War. The strategy consists of inserting ground forces into hostile territory, searching out the enemy, destroying them, and withdrawing immediately afterward. The strategy was developed to take advantage of the capabilities offered by a new technology, the helicopter, which resulted in a new form of warfare, the fielding of air cavalry, and was thought to be ideally suited to counter-guerrilla jungle warfare. The complementary conventional strategy, which entailed attacking and conquering an enemy position, then fortifying and holding it indefinitely, was known as "clear and hold" or "clear and secure". In theory, since the traditional methods of "taking ground" could not be used in this war (as all disputed territory was technically already under the control of allied forces), a war of attrition would be used, with the aim of systematically and relentlessly finding and killing enemy combatants; the "body count" would be the measuring tool to determine the success of the strategy of search and destroy. Malayan Emergency The British conducted search and destroy operations in effort to flush out communist insurgents in the jungles during the early years of the Malayan Emergency. The Ferret Force, which was formed in 1948, became an important intelligence provider to the British military. The objective was to contact with native locals and intelligence as to the whereabouts of communist insurgents. With the information the captured persons provided, British troops would use search and destroy as a tactic in effort to flush out the insurgents. Once the communist guerrillas had been flushed out by search and destroy missions, they would be harried by denial of food and medical supplies, perhaps by surrendered enemy personnel willing to cooperate with the British, and eventually induced to surrender, tempted into betrayal, or killed off by a precise military strike, usually an ambush. In the end, many British officials suspected that the search and destroy worked poorly because of the manner in which it was conducted. British troops often set fire to villages accused of supporting the insurgents and detained suspected collaborators. British units that discovered civilians providing assistance to insurgents were to detain and interrogate them to discover the location of insurgent camps.