The Auto Defense de Choc (Self-Defense village militia) company basic training program was a short intensive course in military tactics; it was developed at the start of the Laotian Civil War to begin a guerrilla movement in Laos. The ADC training that took place in the face of the North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao communist troops was so successful it was copied elsewhere, including Operation Pincushion in Laos, and among the Degar of South Vietnam. The ADC program consisted of prepacked military equipment suitable for training 100 recruits at a time.
As the French lost the First Indochina War, the United States edged its way into taking over support of the Kingdom of Laos. This action was complicated by the U.S. being bound by the Geneva Agreements guaranteeing Laotian neutrality. In January 1961, the Central Intelligence Agency began secret paramilitary operations within Laos. Its aim was to thwart a Vietnamese communist invasion of the kingdom. The resulting Laotian Civil War would be subsumed by the burgeoning Vietnam War.
Faced with the conundrum of founding a secret army in the face of an active enemy during wartime, CIA case officer James William Lair founded Operation Momentum. This was a three-day course in basic military training, using small arms and equipment parachuted in to the Hmong recruits and their Thai trainers. The resulting self-defense units were called Auto Defense Choc (Self Defense Shock). The results sparked copies of the program such as Operation Pincushion. The ADC companies were constituted as follows: