Like the Battle of the Bulge, the 1972 Easter Offensive in Vietnam has often been referred to as an "intelligence failure," mainly because it caught the United States and South Vietnam completely by surprise. A look beneath the surface, however, reveals that U.S. and South Vietnamese combat commanders were aware of significant changes in the posture of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and had access to many indicators of an impending NVA offensive. Colonel Allen's assessment that commanders at The Bulge failed to embrace the intelligence available to them holds true when evaluating why American and South Vietnamese forces failed during the Easter Offensive, as well.
Several factors contributed to the success enjoyed by the NVA during the Easter Offensive. First, the U.S. and South Vietnamese commanders failed to use all of the intelligence available to them. Their overconfidence, coupled with command and control (C2), and communications problems, violated the cardinal rule of "never underestimate your enemy."
Also, Allied commanders relied on only two of the three forms of intelligence---imagery intelligence (IMINT) and signals intelligence (SIGINT). In ignoring human intelligence (HUMINT) data, they overlooked the most accurate forecast of enemy intentions leading up to the Easter Offensive.
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