Nevertheless, once formally initiated, the Strategic Hamlet Program constituted the government’s first real effort to implement a concerted counterinsurgency strategy on a national scale. Regardless of its weaknesses and its somewhat abortive start, the program would serve as the context within which the Diem government would wage its battle with the Viet Cong during 1962 and most of 1963. From this military standpoint, moreover, Diem’s adoption of the Strategic Hamlet Program marked somewhat of a watershed in the evolution of ground strategy in the Vietnam war. Inherent in its selection was the decision to opt for a “clear-and-hold” as opposed to a “search-and-destroy” strategy. In accordance with the dictates of the pacification campaign, RVNAF ground forces would focus primarily during the next two years on operations to clear Communist military formations from the more densely populated rural areas. _The Creation of MACV and Marine Advisory Division_ The American military build-up called for by the Washington decisions of December 1961 was well underway as the new year opened. Several U.S. units introduced in the closing weeks of 1961 had already begun operations by January. These included two U.S. Army transport helicopter companies and a composite U.S. Air Force detachment. Designated FARM GATE and composed initially of 151 officers and men, the Air Force detachment had a dual mission of training VNAF elements and conducting attack sorties in support of President Diem’s forces. The arrival of another U.S. Air Force unit, a C-123 transport squadron, another Army helicopter company, and an Army communications organization, the 3d Radio Research Unit, just after the first of the year raised the number of American military personnel serving on permanent assignment in Vietnam to over 3,000. Assigned to the Army’s radio unit, which immediately began operations from Pleiku in II Corps Tactical Zone, were 42 Marines from the 1st Radio Company, FMF. Designated Detachment A, 1st Radio Company, these were the first U.S. Marines to participate in the ongoing build-up. Thus far, however, the U.S. troops arriving in Vietnam were for combat support rather than advisory type duty. At a meeting held in Honolulu in mid-January, Secretary of Defense McNamara ordered the ranking American military officials concerned with Vietnam to make substantial increases in the number of advisors serving with the Vietnamese armed forces.