was rushed into service during the Battle of Khe Sanh and successfully passed its first operational test. Combined with Operation Commando Hunt in 1969, the system served as the keystone of the U.S. aerial interdiction effort of the Vietnam War. Costing between $1 and $1.7 billion to design and build (and another billion dollars per year to operate over the five-year life of the operation) and possessing and controlling some of the most sophisticated technology in the Southeast Asia theater, the effectiveness of Igloo White remains in question. Development As early as June 1961, General Maxwell D. Taylor, President John F. Kennedy's special military representative, had become interested in the prospect of erecting a physical barrier to halt the increasing infiltration of PAVN materiel (and later, manpower) through their Laotian logistical corridor and into the border regions of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). He then held talks with the deputy director of the Pentagon's Office of Special Operations, Edward G. Lansdale, who convinced him that a better solution to the infiltration dilemma would be the creation of mobile units to attack the infiltrators. After the initiation of the strategic aerial bombardment of North Vietnam (Operation Rolling Thunder) in March 1965, Washington saw that program as its chief method of relaying signals to Hanoi to cease its support of the southern insurgency. When that failed as a strategy, the aerial effort was redirected to serve as an anti-infiltration campaign. After a million sorties were flown and more than three-quarters of a million tons of bombs were dropped, Rolling Thunder came to an end at the direction of President Lyndon B. Johnson on 11 November 1968. As early as 1966 Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara had become disenchanted with Rolling Thunder. In January McNamara was presented with a working paper by the American academic Roger Fisher, who proposed a less costly physical and electronic barrier that would be located in South Vietnam. It was to consist of a long, wide barrier that would stretch from the South China Sea south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), across the Laotian frontier and on to the border of Thailand. The physical barrier itself would be supported by electronic sensors and extensive minefields. Fisher estimated that it would take approximately five U.S. divisions to erect and defend the system. The Joint Chiefs and CINCPAC turned down the concept, believing that it would consume the