[10-C] Motivated at least partially by the requirement to provide better support for the pacification strategy, the Vietnamese government restructured its paramilitary forces in the spring of 1964. The old Self Defense Corps was expanded dramatically and renamed the Popular Force (PF). The Civil Guard was reorganized and designated the Regional Force (RF). More importantly, the RVNAF extended its control over both paramilitary organizations for the first time since their creation. Coincident with the Chien Tang campaign, a similar but locally concentrated pacification effort was instituted in the rural areas around Saigon. Designated the Hop Tac Program, this campaign was conceived in order to link the seven provinces around the capital into a zone of intensive pacification in which closely coordinated military, paramilitary, police, and civil activities would systematically reduce Viet Cong strength. Because of their proximity to the area and their availability, the Vietnamese Marine Brigade and the ARVN Airborne Brigade were assigned primary responsibility for military operations in support of the Hop Tac campaign. By midyear, the Chien Tang and Hop Tac plans emerged as the backbone of General Khanh’s strategy to stave off further Communist advances in critical areas of the country. The development of the government’s newest pacification strategy, however, was based on the assumption that the Viet Cong would pursue a campaign to strengthen their control in South Vietnam’s populated rural areas. Such was not the case. Instead, at midyear the Communists began waging a brand of warfare characterized by large-scale mobile operations against government military forces. Obviously the enemy had shifted to the “general counter-offensive”--that phase of guerrilla warfare designed to bring on the complete political and military collapse of the opposition. The new Viet Cong strategy revealed itself in two general geographic areas during the fall months. In Binh Dinh Province on the coast of northern II Corps, two Viet Cong main force regiments staged a series of particularly swift and successful attacks which virtually eliminated the government’s presence except in the province capital, Qui Nhon, and a few district towns. In a coordinated offensive the Communists increased pressure throughout that portion of the Central Highlands west of Binh Dinh Province, thereby threatening to sever South Vietnam along an axis that extended roughly between Qui Nhon on the coast and Pleiku in the highlands. Meanwhile, another phase of the new initiative unfolded in III Corps where the government’s Hop Tac campaign was just getting underway. There the Communist offensive threatened to neutralize the government’s concentrated pacification campaign.