The Central Intelligence Agency, which equipped and trained the needed troops, aimed at disruption of the North Vietnamese communist supply line, the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Although the planned objective was captured on 25 September, the offensive was plagued by desertions and combat refusals, including a battalion that ran from "ghosts".

Following the French defeat at Dien Ben Phu and the subsequent 1954 Geneva Agreements a neutral Laos gained its independence.

When France withdrew most of its military in conformity with the treaty, the United States filled the vacuum with purportedly civilian paramilitary instructors.

Invading during the opium harvest season of 1953, a North Vietnamese communist force settled in northeastern Laos adjacent to the border of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

Mobile 3 moved south from PS 22; its goal was linkage with half of MR 1's Special Guerrilla Unit (SGU).

[4] On 11 September, MACV-SOG launched its own incursion from South Vietnam into Laos, dispatching a reconnaissance company on Operation Tailwind.

[7][8] On the second day of the offensive, the southern column of Royalist attackers were hit with a combined barrage of mortar and DK-82 recoilless rifle fire.

Ignoring the goal, two companies of the MR 1 guerrillas then left the assault and climbed back onto the Bolovens Plateau to Pakse Site 38.

The American air attaché, in his end-of-tour intelligence report dated 22 September, felt that MR 4 was due for more territorial losses to PAVN.