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Within the United States, the Vietnam War is commonly thought of as a guerrilla war. However this is a simplification of a much more complex situation which followed the pattern outlined by Maoist theory.
The National Liberation Front (NLF), drawing its ranks from the South Vietnamese peasantry and working class, used guerrilla tactics in the early phases of the war. However, by 1965 when U.S. involvement escalated, the National Liberation Front was in the process of being supplanted by regular units of the North Vietnamese Army.
The NVA regiments organized along traditional military lines, were supplied via the Ho Chi Minh trail rather than living off the land, and had access to weapons such as tanks and artillery which are not normally used by guerrilla forces.
Over time, more of the fighting was conducted by the North Vietnamese Army and the character of the war become increasingly conventional. The final offensive into South Vietnam in 1975 was a completely conventional military operation with no elements of guerrilla warfare.
By the end of the Vietnam War, U.S.-led forces had killed or incapacitated a large share of the NLF's guerrilla fighters.
Guerrilla warfare formed an integral part of the campaigns in Kosovo in the late 1990s and Afghanistan in 2001, which created a unique style of warfare which combined low technology guerrilla warfare with high technology air power. In these campaigns, guerrilla fighters with coordination from special forces would engage the enemy forcing them to move out into the open where they could be destroyed using air power supplied by the United States. In both cases, the guerrillas were able to take advantage of their local knowledge and willingness to take casualties to great effect when supplemented by outside air power. In Kosovo the Kosovo Liberation Army, a separatist paramilitary, was aided by the NATO air forces. In Afghanistan numerous anti- Taliban militias (consisting of regular soldiers and guerrillas) were aided by US air power.
This formula was used again, in the Iraq War (2003), against the Iraqi Army by Kurdish Peshmerger guerrillas with the aid of US special forces and the United States Airforce.
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