By mid-1962 the Special Forces effort appeared on its way to success. Already Montagnard tribesmen had been organized into a number of Civilian Irregular Defense Groups (CIDGs) throughout the mountains of I and II Corps. Advised by Special Forces teams, the CIDG units were monitoring infiltration routes and harassing the Communists as they attempted to move through the mountains. By the summer of 1962 the distinctive little barbed wire enclosed camps were scattered over the length of western I Corps. Although it played an important role in the government’s strategy for controlling the insurgency in the northern provinces, the outpost system had obvious shortcomings. Roads between the distant camps and the towns along the coastal plain were almost nonexistent. Those that did exist, such as Route 9, the road which extended from Route 1 westward across Quang Tri Province and into Laos, were vulnerable to ambush or interdiction by guerrilla forces. Truck convoys, furthermore, consumed time and required protection by security forces. As a result of their relative isolation, the CIDG camps had come to depend heavily on aircraft as a means of resupply. While crude runways had been constructed at many of the outposts, they were often better suited for helicopter operations than for fixed-wing transport landings. The newly arrived Marine commanders anticipated that their squadron, like the Army helicopter company it had replaced, would be required to devote a sizable percentage of sorties to resupplying the far-flung outposts. _Initial Helicopter Operations_ The system of helicopter coordination in I Corps promised to be somewhat different from that which had governed Marine operations in the Mekong Delta. At Da Nang, an Air Support Operations Center (ASOC) was organized within the corps headquarters to process all requests for aviation support. Manned by ARVN, VNAF, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Marine officers, the ASOC processed mission requests from the various field commands, passing them on to the Joint Operations Center at JGS headquarters for final approval. Once approved, the ASOC assigned specific missions to the American and Vietnamese units which supported I CTZ. This arrangement enabled the corps headquarters to plan and coordinate all combat support missions flown within the five northern provinces. [Illustration: MAJOR OUTPOSTS I CORPS 1962 ]