<P> The aircraft ordnance used during the war included precision - guided munition, cluster bombs, and napalm, a thickening / gelling agent generally mixed with petroleum or a similar fuel for use in an incendiary device, initially against buildings and later primarily as an anti-personnel weapon that sticks to skin and can burn down to the bone . </P> <P> The Vietnam War was the first conflict where U.S. forces had secure voice communication equipment available at the tactical level . The National Security Agency ran a crash program to provide U.S. forces with a family of security equipment code named NESTOR, fielding 17,000 units initially . Eventually 30,000 units were produced . However limitations of the units, including poor voice quality, reduced range, annoying time delays and logistical support issues led to only one unit in ten being used . While many in the U.S. military believed that the Viet Cong and NVA would not be able to exploit insecure communications, interrogation of captured communication intelligence units showed they were able to understand the jargon and codes used in realtime and were often able to warn their side of impending U.S. actions . </P> <P> The U.S. dropped over 7 million tons of bombs on Indochina during the war--more than triple the 2.1 million tons of bombs the U.S. dropped on Europe and Asia during all of World War II, and more than ten times the amount dropped by the U.S. during the Korean War . 500 thousand tons were dropped on Cambodia, 1 million tons were dropped on North Vietnam, and 4 million tons were dropped on South Vietnam . On a per capita basis, the 2 million tons dropped on Laos make it the most heavily bombed country in history; The New York Times noted this was "nearly a ton for every person in Laos ." Former U.S. Air Force official Earl Tilford has recounted "repeated bombing runs of a lake in central Cambodia . The B - 52s literally dropped their payloads in the lake": The Air Force ran many missions of this kind for the purpose of securing additional funding during budget negotiations, so the amount of tonnage expended does not directly correlate with the resulting damage . </P> <P> On 2 July 1976, North and South Vietnam were merged to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam . Despite speculation that the victorious North Vietnamese would, in President Nixon's words, "massacre the civilians there (South Vietnam) by the millions," there is a widespread consensus that no mass executions in fact took place . However, in the years following the end of the war, up to 300,000 South Vietnamese were sent to reeducation camps (not including "dissidents detained in the many prisons of Vietnam"), where many endured torture, starvation, and disease while being forced to perform hard labor . </P>

How did the vietnam war start and end