Rolling Thunder was simply put a microcosm of all the problems the US faced in Vietnam. There are SO many factors at work that it is difficult to cover all of them. IMHO -
1. In the simplest terms I can think of the dichotomy of Vietnam was that the US was attempting to wage a conventional war against an unconventional enemy and trying to wage a limited war against an enemy waging an essentially unlimited war.
2. The specter of another Korea haunted both political and military leaders. The possibility of the military going too far and a million Chinese boiling over the border in support of Hanoi haunted every decision that was made. Westmoreland himself referred to an "almost paranoid fear of a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union"
3. American Air power doctrine was based on a WWII concept of strategic bombardment - Destroy the enemies ability to wage MODERN warfare and that the enemy bombed would be an industrialized one. Vietnam was none of these and the US goal became one of trying to persuade the North to stop supporting the war in the south.
4. Rolling Thunder was a very small part of a war that had an almost unimaginable scope. The Air war ranged over S Vietnam, N Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The political part of the war involved Hanoi, Saigon, Washington, Peking, and Moscow. The political wrangling literally defies description. Then there was the war in the field which ranged from large unit conventional mechanized actions to small unit guerrilla battles all over which were overlaid by efforts to pacify and control a suspicious and reluctant peasantry who had little in common with US troops or the Saigon elites.
5. Washington considered Vietnam to be a Communist plot to alter the balance of power in the world. Vietnam was a Communist plot to seize the South rather than a North Vietnamese one. So in short Vietnam was not a civil war fueled by nationalism for control of a country that the major powers had summarily divided into two parts but just a part of a battle for world power.
6. Politically we were pretty clear. LBJ stated in 1965 "Our objective is the independence of South Viet-Nam and its freedom from attack" On the other hand the militarizes role in in obtaining that goal was very unclear. Existing document state clearly that the military goal was NOT to win (in the WWII sense) the war but to convince the enemy that he could not win.
9. By 1964 the war and deteriorated drastically. There was no effective government in Saigon as various generals struggled to seize power and coup followed coup. Intelligence estimated that 40% of the South was under the control of the North. ARVN forces were failing in the field and desertions topped 5,000 a month. The North was equipping the VC with standard infantry weapons and artillery and the first regular NVA troops were appearing in the South
10. The American response to the crisis was 1965s Rolling Thunder air campaign. Commanders on the scene in Vietnam submitted their targeting recommendations to Admiral Grant Sharp, the commander in chief, Pacific, at Honolulu. Admiral Sharp's staff evaluated the recommendations and assembled them into a coordinated program, and then forwarded the program to the Pentagon. In the Pentagon, the strategic significance of each target was evaluated by military experts, and the State Department was asked to assess the international political implications of striking each target. After this process was completed, what remained of the target recommendations were forwarded to the White House where LBJ and his staff made the final decisions. The White House dictated the size of the striking force, its weapons, and the precise time of the attack.
11. North Vietnam had almost nothing in the way of industry. What few strategic targets that did exist were usually "off-limits" to bombing. American bombing missions were not allowed within a 30-nautical mile radius of Hanoi, within a 10-nautical mile radius of Haiphong, or within a wide buffer zone along the Chinese border.
12. American flight crew training had focused on the delivery of nuclear weapons not of precision bombing of small targets. Flaming Dart I and II were directed against 491 structures. BDA showed 47 destroyed and 22 damaged. The average circular error probable was 750 feet. Such a large error made hitting small buildings and bridges with conventional explosives almost impossible