Campaign Z
| Campaign Z | |||||||||
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| Part of Laotian Civil War; Vietnam War | |||||||||
 The Plain of Jars, the area in and around which Campaign Z was mainly fought, is highlighted in blue |
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
 North Vietnam
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 Laos ThailandSupported by  United States
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Vang Pao | |||||||||
| Units involved | |||||||||
| 335th Independent Regiment 174th Regiment Mechanized Infantry 27th Sapper Battalion 195th Armored Battalion 312th Division 148th Regiment 14th Antiaircraft Battalion |
Groupement Mobile 21 Groupement Mobile 23 Groupement Mobile 22 Groupement Mobile 31 Groupement Mobile 30 Royalist guerrilla battalions Thai mercenary units including BC 609 |
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Campaign Z (17 December 1971 – 30 January 1972) was a military offensive by the People's Army of Vietnam; it was a combined arms thrust designed to defeat the last Royal Lao Army troops defending the Kingdom of Laos. The Communist assault took Skyline Ridge overlooking the vital Royalist base of Long Tieng and forced restationing of Royalist aviation assets and civilian refugees. However, Communist forces eventually receded back onto their lines of communication without capturing the base.
Campaign Z was notable for escalations of the Laotian Civil War conflict. The Vietnamese Communists brought 130 mm field guns and T-34 tanks into action in Laos for the first time. The Vietnamese People's Air Force also launched MiG 21 attacks into Lao air space to challenge the Royalist side's air supremacy. On its side, the Royal Lao Government and its Central Intelligence Agency backers imported copious numbers of mercenaries from the Kingdom of Thailand as reinforcements, and depended on American air power support, including Arc Light strikes by B-52 Stratofortresses. An independent Laos would narrowly survive Campaign Z.
The Kingdom of Laos was established as a neutral independent constitutional monarchy by the 1954 Geneva Agreement. In 1962, the International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos reaffirmed the principle that no foreign military personnel could be stationed in Laos except for a French training mission. Despite that international proviso, troops of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) had occupied Houaphanh Province as early as 1953 while the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) denied their presence. In turn, as part of the American assumption of total support of the Royal Lao Government, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covertly raised a Hmong guerrilla army under General Vang Pao around the Plain of Jars in Military Region 2 (MR 2).
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