NLF and PAVN Battle Tactics



"Oh great. Looks like the NFL and PAVN battle tactics are as clever as it should be when the commies did a good job on kicking American and South Vietnamese butts out of the southern parts of modern-day Vietnamese territory. That's how the Viet Cong won. Now I'm starting to like commies, because I can sense that they're the ones who are responsible for defeating fascism since the German defeat over the Soviet Union, or Russia nowadays."

--Su Ji-Hoon, Highway to Saigon

The NLF and PAVN battle tactics comprised a flexible mix of guerrilla and conventional warfare battle tactics used by the Main Force of the People's Liberation Armed Forces (known as the National Liberation Front or Viet Cong in the West) and the NVA (People's Army-Vietnam) to defeat their U.S. and South Vietnamese (GVN/ARVN) opponents during the Vietnam War.

The NLF was an umbrella of front groups to conduct the insurgency in South Vietnam. The NLF was affiliated with independent groups and sympathizers. The armed wing of the NLF was regional and local guerrillas, and the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF). The PLAF was the "Main Force" – the Chu Luc full-time soldiers of the NLF's military muscle. Many histories lump both the NLF and the armed wing under the term "Viet Cong" in common usage. Both were tightly interwoven and were in turn controlled by the North. Others consider the Viet Cong to primarily refer to the armed elements. The term PAVN (People's Army of Vietnam) identifies regular troops of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). Collectively, both forces – the southern armed wing and the regulars from the north were part of PAVN, and are treated as such in official communist histories of the war.