Vietnam Defence Forum

[Viet]

PACFLT Enhances Bilateral Cooperation with Vietnam

By MC2 Tamara Vaughn, U.S. Pacific Fleet Public Affairs
Posted April 14, 2016

Rear Adm. Patrick A. Piercey, U.S. Pacific Fleet (PACFLT) director of maritime operations, right, and Rear Adm. Do Minh Thai, deputy chief of staff of the Vietnam People's Navy, attend bilateral staff talks at PACFLT headquarters. (U.S. Navy/MC2 Tamara Vaughn)


PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii - U.S. Pacific Fleet (PACFLT) senior military leaders hosted bilateral staff talks with officials from Vietnam to exchange ideas on a variety of technical and operational topics at PACFLT headquarters, April 12-14.

The talks, the sixth between the PACFLT staff and their Vietnamese counterparts, focused on strengthening ties between the two nations by agreeing on bilateral and multilateral naval activities that deepen cooperation; exchanging knowledge and developing methodologies ranging from maritime domain awareness, maritime security, and submarine rescue; and learning lessons from past cooperative efforts.

Rear Adm. Patrick A. Piercey, PACFLT’s director of maritime operations, met with Rear Adm. Do Minh Thai, deputy chief of staff of the Vietnam People’s Navy, to discuss planning and joint training concentrated on maximizing future opportunities, including expanding on the scope and complexity of bilateral engagements, and humanitarian and disaster response efforts that will allow countries to rapidly respond in the event of a crisis.

"The bilateral naval talks provided a great opportunity to build and strengthen our existing Navy and Marine Corps relationships with our counterparts from Vietnam," said Piercey. "Our forces are better prepared and more versatile because of our ability to better communicate with our partners and learn from each other and contribute to the norms, rules, standards, and laws that maintain stability in maritime Southeast Asia."

The three-day conference included events such as a tour of the Pacific Aviation Museum and the Battleship Missouri Memorial, demonstrations at Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron 3, a tour of a P-3C Orion from Patrol Squadron 47, and a visit to the Naval Submarine Training Center Pacific.

 

[Aqsuperman]

Gepard HQ 12 on maintaince

 

[MKC]

April, 4th. Launching two new built Molynia warships, with standard armement 16 x Kh-35E anti-ship missiles. a salvo of 16 missiles will take less than 2 minutes.

M5

M6

These ships must be upgraded with stealth features, like Visby class or GRSE ASW-SWC corvettes which have similar size & armaments.

it varies between $3.4b (IHS Jane’s), $4.3b (Bloomberg) and $7.8b (IISS) for 2013, so something in between.

2.3x(IHS Jane’s)=IISS
What?
I can assume it's about 3.5B & 1-2B for procurement.

 

[Viet]

still the best because cheap and effective. a battery of Vietnam made self-propelled howitzers. a M101 105mm howitzer of the former South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) mounted on a " Ural-375D " truck chassis. maximum range of 11.5 km. maximum rate of fire is 10 rounds a minute. the mobility allows change of position immediately after firing one or more salvos before our position can be located by enemy.

 

[Aqsuperman]

I can assume it's about 3.5B & 1-2B for procurement.

Technically, its impossible to know the figures but i can say that our budget for purchasing new equipments is on the rise, with the establishment of new fighter regiments, naval squardon , submarine brigade and their support units plus the potential modernizing the Army service rifle, the number is probably already above 4.5B.....still, that is my guess anyway :v

Su-30 of the 923 Fighter Regiment.........I always wonder why the camo is kind of weird though

 

[Aqsuperman]

Antonov An-2 of VPAF........old as Mother Earth herself yet still have a fairly high safety record

 

[Viet]

a selection of Vietnam made rifles and hand guns

 

[Viet]

Kevlar helmet and Flak vest for infantryman

 

[Viet]

Artillery Corps

85mm

105mm

122mm

130mm

152mm

 

[Aqsuperman]

The repainting has began, now all warship will no longer has the "HQ" or will slowly drop it. The standard wil be number and name , the name will be in yellown if the ship has it.

 

[Viet]

yellow?
usually it is black on grey.


anyway ...continue with some recent news
--------------------------------

Sea Platforms
DSA 2016: Russia to supply two Gepard-3.9 frigates to Vietnam in late 2016
Nikolai Novichkov, Kuala Lumpur - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
21 April 2016

Russia will supply two Gepard 3.9 (Project 11661) frigates to the People's Army of Vietnam Navy (PAVN) in the third quarter of 2016, Renat Mistakhov, Director General of the Zelenodolsk Shipyard, told IHS Jane's at the Defence Services Asia (DSA) 2016 exhibition.

"Both ships, in anti-submarine warfare variants, will be launched in April and May 2016. Then we will start the basin trials," Mistakhov said, adding, "The ships will be supplied to Vietnam in the third quarter of 2016." He pointed out, that the propulsion systems of both frigates have already been mounted and related electrical work has been completed.


---------------------------------


Land Platforms
DSA 2016: Vietnam may update Soviet era ASU-85s
Richard D Fisher Jr, Kuala Lumpur - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
21 April 2016

Vietnam apparently acquired some Soviet ASU-85 airborne SPATGs after the 1979 war with China, which recently have been brought out of storage. Source: Via Bao Dat Viet


Officials from the Minotor-Service Corporation of Belarus attending the Defense Services Asia (DSA) 2016 exhibition told IHS Jane's that Vietnamese officials had expressed "strong interest" in purchasing Minotor's upgrade package for their ASU-85 airborne self-propelled anti-tank guns (SPATGs).

Minotor's upgrade package includes a new more powerful diesel engine powerpack that would increase speed from 45 to 60 km/h and range from 400 km to 450 km.

The revelation that Vietnam People's Army (VPA) had the ASU-85 in its inventory was made in the 16 March 2015 issue of the Bao Dat Viet website, showing vehicles operating in a May 2015 exercise. An informed source has told IHS Jane's that these were delivered following China's brief war with Vietnam in 1979.

The 15.5 ton ASU-85, based on the chassis of the PT-76 amphibious tank, started arming Soviet Airborne Troops in 1959. It carries 45 rounds for its fixed D-70 85 mm main gun which has a maximum range of 10 km.

The ASU-85 was transported by the large Mi-6 "Hook" helicopter that the Vietnam People's Air Force also operated until the early 1990s.

The Soviet ASU-85s were part of larger shipments of T-62/55/54 tanks, BMP-1 armored personnel carriers and artillery that allowed the VPA to convert its 304th, 308th and 320th Infantry Divisions into Mechanised Infantry Divisions, or Motorised Rifle Divisions in Soviet terminology.

It is possible that the ASU-85s were kept in storage, which would appear to be confirmed by their being in good condition. Other Vietnamese reports indicate they were brought out of storage to provide a new capability for difficult terrain.


----------------------------




How Low Oil Prices Hamstring Vietnam in the South China Sea Disputes
To maintain its position in the South China Sea, Vietnam needs a strong Russia.

By Linh Tong for The Diplomat
April 13, 2016

Falling oil prices are usually analyzed from an economic point of view; Vietnam is no exception. Myriad domestic and international articles have provided in-depth analysis of the “double-edged” effects that falling oil prices might have on Vietnam’s GDP. The Voice of Vietnam concluded that “falling oil price’s negative effects might be offset by well-planned economic strategies, which can turn adversity into opportunities for Vietnam economy.”

However, economic impacts are not the only dangers posed by rock-bottom oil prices for Vietnam. Low oil prices also have a non-negligible geopolitical implication – including on the strength of Vietnam’s position in the South China Sea.

The top geopolitical concern for the Vietnamese government is well-known to be the South China Sea dispute, and particularly China’s maneuvers in the region. As a small nation next to the great power (in terms of both population size and international influence) of China, Vietnam has little chance to balance China on its own. The ASEAN community is too fragmented and divided in its national interests to stay united against China. And neither the United States nor Russia is close or sincere enough for Vietnam to whole-heartedly rely upon. The old era of the Communist bloc has long since passed; the current Russian Federation greatly values its comprehensive strategic partnership with China. The United States, meanwhile, seems reluctant to take concrete steps to counter China’s rising influence. Given the reality of the current international and regional order, Vietnam’s only realistic choice is to be self-reliant and make use of the multi-polar balance in the international arena.

For the purposes of this balancing, Vietnam generally prefers a stronger Russia, a weaker China, and less anti-Russian America. That combination provides Vietnam a better negotiating position on the South China Sea disputes. The underlying logic is that the better the balance of power among the United States, Russia, and China, the less power China has, and consequently the relatively greater bargaining power Vietnam can get. Unfortunately, low oil prices have effectively driven the balance away from Vietnam’s interests; today we are seeing a weaker Russia, a stronger China, and a strongly anti-Russia America.

First of all, the falling oil prices have not only reduced Russia’s bargaining position in the international arena but also pushed Russia to depend more on Chinese cash. It’s possible weakening Russia through oil prices was intentional — a strategic move by the United States to render Russia helpless right after the economic sanctions from the West to punish Russian aggression in Crimea. “It’s time to drive Russia bankrupt – again,” read the headline for a 2014 Forbes piece by Louis Woodhill. “We should do to Russia what Ronald Reagan did to its predecessor, the old Soviet Union,” Woodhill argues. “We should drive them into bankruptcy by stabilizing the U.S. dollar” – and thereby driving down oil prices.

It is obviously not a coincidence that this history is repeating itself. In 1983, the notorious oil glut effectively pressed the oil price down from an annual average of $35 per barrel in 1980 to around $14 in 1986. One of the main causes was Reagan allowing oil prices in the United States to be decided by the free market and increasing American oil production. Again, in 2014, with Russia and the United States at odds over Crimea, Washington announced the possibility of increasing production.

Since then, oil prices have plummet from over $100 a barrel to around $30. The decline in oil prices drove the Russian economy into the corner. According estimates from the International Monetary Fund, Russia’s GDP shrank by 3.7 percent in 2015, and is projected to contract a further 1 percent in 2016. This constrained economic capacity has consequently harmed Moscow’s political influence.

It has also boosted China’s clout in the Sino-Russian relationship. Eager for more customers, Russia had to rush into the potentially non-profitable “Power of Siberia” pipeline with China in 2014. The gas deal with China, worth $400 billion, provides an alternative market for Russian energy exports.

Russia’s own problem with Crimea and the current economic doldrums has blocked Russia from taking any definitive stand on the South China Sea disputes. In contrast to tangible support given to China’s neighbors during the Sino-Soviet split — Soviet military advisers were stationed in Vietnam during the Sino-Vietnamese war, while Soviet troops massed at the Sino-Soviet border and Mongolian-Chinese border – Russia’s policy on the South China Sea disputes has been described as “non-existent.” A weakened and dependent Russia, the result of falling oil prices, is not encouraging for Vietnam’s status in South China Sea Dispute.

Furthermore, the drop in oil prices has strengthened China’s bargaining position as a regional price maker. China ranks third in global gas consumption and second in oil consumption. The falling oil prices lessen the burden on production costs and might help save China from its economic woes. The current oil surplus, and the resulting low prices, benefit China as a global producer and consumer. China stands to gain from the falling oil prices and this is against Vietnam’s geopolitical interests in the South China Sea dispute.

The United States, on the other hand, is busy designing her own game of power in Asia-Pacific. U.S. moves to provide financial aid for the ASEAN countries in strengthening their marine defense capacity (the Southeast Asia Maritime Security Initiative, or MSI) and have American ships guarding the Asia-Pacific are welcomed by all the nations involved, including Vietnam. However, from Vietnam’s geopolitical perspective, the U.S. position has not been as beneficial as desired.

It is important to remember that Vietnam is under the leadership of the Communist Party, which has unerasable links with the Russian Federation and remains trapped in a relationship with Communist China. For this reason, while rhetorically declaring support for Vietnam, the United States has chosen the Philippines to be its strategic partner instead. The American preference is shown in numbers, with Philippines receiving $41 million dollars while Vietnam will receive only $2 million dollars in the MSI package. Meanwhile, the absence of Russia in the South China Sea disputes, due in part to the falling oil prices, fits with the U.S. desire to exclude Russian influence, but it is contrary to Vietnam’s geopolitical interest. An anti-Russia United States is not good for Vietnam’s standing in the South China Sea disputes.

In short, the falling oil price has more than just economic implications for Vietnam. By assessing carefully the effect of the oil surplus on the balance of power among China, Russia, and the United States, the threats for Vietnam geopolitically become more visible. Of course, a strong Russia does not automatically translate to a constraint on Chinese aggression or balance against American activeness in the South China Sea dispute. Yet, a strong Russia will at least contribute to better maintaining what Henry Kissinger has called a “global equilibrium” with “a greater harmony of values” compared to the weak and dependent Russia of today. Following such logic, the falling oil prices are having a detrimental effect on Vietnam geopolitical interests in the increasingly intense South China Sea dispute.

Linh Tong is a research assistant at ADA University.

 

[Viet]

I posted the story some time ago, but it was deleted by database issue. so here again.




THE MAGAZINE: From the April 11 Issue

Vietnam's Agincourt
The fierce jungle battle that brought down an empire.
Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam


Apr 11, 2016 | By Max Boot

French soldiers after their surrender. Credit: Vietnam News Agency



Dien Bien Phu is not a battle that looms large in American consciousness. That’s hardly surprising, since almost no Americans took part. (The exception was two dozen CIA contractor pilots who delivered supplies to the doomed French garrison.) But for Vietnam, as a recent visit to that small town in the country's northwest reveals, it is the equivalent of Agincourt, Gettysburg, Stalingrad, Gallipoli—a battle that defined a nation.

For 55 days in the spring of 1954, the Vietminh, as the nationalist-Communist independence movement led by Ho Chi Minh was known, besieged the French troops who had built up a seemingly impregnable fortress near the Laotian border.

The French-Indochina War may have been primarily a guerrilla war, but the battle of Dien Bien Phu was a siege straight out of World War I. Today, you can wander around some of the remaining French fortifications—concrete bunkers linked by concrete trenches, all of them dug into the gently rolling floor of a valley 11 miles long and 3 miles wide. Here, more than 15,000 defenders—French troops all, but many of North African or Vietnamese origin—were supplied by air from Hanoi, 180 miles away across thick jungle.

the battle field: the valley of Dien Bien Phu

the French army made ready for the decisive battle


General Vo Nguyen Giap, a self-taught soldier and one of the military geniuses of the 20th century, positioned some 50,000 assault troops backed by 50,000 support personnel, on the slopes around Dien Bien Phu. The French expected Giap to rise to the bait—that mass of colonial troops sitting in the middle of nowhere, just waiting to be attacked—and they were sure that they would be able to blast the Vietminh forces, once assembled, with their superior airpower and heavy artillery. But Giap frustrated their plans with an improbable feat of logistics: He managed to move more than 200 artillery pieces supplied by China, through the jungle, using tens of thousands of men to drag them by hand up the hills around Dien Bien Phu, where they were carefully camouflaged in bunkers invisible from above.

Giap himself took up residence in those hills, with his staff and Chinese advisers. Today you can wander through his simple command post, a thatched-roof hut with only enough room for a mat to sleep on. Next door is a concrete bunker dug into the mountain, where Giap could escape if French airplanes or troops found him—which they did not. The Vietminh commander survived, like his men, on rice and a bit of fish or meat, while the French troops below enjoyed multicourse banquets washed down with wine and brandy and spent their free hours visiting mobile bordellos flown in for their pleasure.

The fun ended on March 13, 1954, almost exactly 62 years before I arrived in Dien Bien Phu, when the hidden Vietminh artillery opened up on the French garrison. "Shells rained down on us without stopping like a hailstorm on a fall evening," wrote a sergeant in the Foreign Legion. "Bunker after bunker, trench after trench, collapsed, burying under them men and weapons."

Bringing artillery through the jungle

The battle begins. Vietnamese artillery opens fire on French positions


Things only got worse. The Vietminh quickly closed the exposed French airstrip, making it impossible to evacuate the growing number of wounded who overflowed the aid stations. A French doctor likened "their slow, gentle groans" to "a song full of sadness." The defenders could only be reinforced and resupplied by parachute, and even this proved hazardous, with the Vietminh's antiaircraft guns shooting down 48 French aircraft.

Meanwhile the Vietminh infantry relentlessly pressed assault after assault on the French strongpoints, all of which carried women's names: Dominique, Eliane, Huguette, Claudine, and so forth. (Rumor had it they were named after mistresses of the French commander, Brig. Gen. Christian de Castries, a dashing cavalryman who said he wanted nothing more out of life than "a horse to ride, an enemy to kill, and a woman in bed.") The French fought valiantly, especially the elite paratroopers and legionnaires, but they were overwhelmed by the human-wave attacks. Eventually, in the words of historian Martin Windrow, "one-legged soldiers [were] manning machine guns in the blockhouses, being fed ammunition by one-armed and one-eyed comrades."


The white flag finally went up on May 7. It was the worst defeat ever suffered by a European colonial power at the hands of its subjects—a defeat that ended not only the French empire in Indochina but the entire era of Western imperialism.

Seen from the vantage point of 2016, it all seems slightly baffling. What military commander in his right mind would willingly cede the high ground to the enemy? Yet that is what General Henri-Eugène Navarre, the senior French commander in Indochina, did when he launched Operation Castor, as the occupation of Dien Bien Phu was known. The only explanation for this folly—one of the greatest mistakes in military history—is sheer hubris: Navarre had nothing but contempt for his enemies, "Asiatics" who seemed tiny and backward to the heirs of Napoleon and Louis XIV. Navarre did not count on the steely courage and determination that the Vietminh would display—or their willingness to suffer staggering casualties to drive out their colonial masters. The Vietminh lost as many as 25,000 troops in the siege of Dien Bien Phu, while the French lost more than 10,000 men.

It is little wonder, then, that this glorious victory is celebrated in so many monuments scattered around Dien Bien Phu. Everywhere one looks, one finds massive stone representations of heroic Vietnamese fighters and peasants toiling together for the independence of their nation. (What one does not find are decent hotels or restaurants—Dien Bien Phu remains an impoverished, isolated place with few foreign visitors and almost no Americans.)

The Vietnamese are right to be proud of their achievement even if this hagiography necessarily leaves out a few messy details. Like the fact that many of the French soldiers died after being captured. More than 10,000 French troops surrendered on May 7, 1954. Four months later, at the conclusion of a peace treaty in Geneva, fewer than 4,000 were still alive to be released. The rest had perished in a hellish captivity that recalled the Japanese mistreatment of Allied POWs in World War II. There is no mention of the suffering of these surrendered soldiers, just as there is no mention of the heroism many of them displayed in a losing cause.

Another fact omitted: The Vietminh were fighting not just for independence from France—a goal universally popular in Vietnam—but also to impose a Communist dictatorship—a goal considerably less popular. So unpopular, in fact, that Ho Chi Minh and his successors never dared hold a halfway honest election to legitimate their rule.

To this day, the Communist regime in Hanoi, although pursuing capitalist reforms, remains leery of democracy. Two dozen non-Communist candidates risk harassment and even arrest for having the temerity to run for seats in May's elections for the rubber-stamp National Assembly. As in Iran, so in Vietnam: The regime reserves the right to "vet" candidates for office and forbids those who openly challenge it from running.

Vietnamese soldiers launched assault after assault on French strongholds


Any way you look at it, the consequences of Dien Bien Phu were mixed: This military victory led to a divided nation and another 20 years of costly war by North Vietnam against the South Vietnamese and their American protectors. Contrary to Communist mythology, propagated at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as the Museum of American War Atrocities), it was the North that was the aggressor, not the United States. South Vietnam was an independent nation that had little desire to be conquered by Hanoi, not an American "puppet" that welcomed Communist "liberation." The final Communist victory in 1975 led hundreds of thousands of "boat people" to flee and imposed a Stalinist tyranny that only began to loosen its hold in the 1990s when Chinese-style reforms were implemented.

Today Saigon, as Ho Chi Minh City is still generally called, is a bustling mega-city overflowing with cafés and consumer goods, new office buildings and new businesses, cars and motor scooters, and Vietnam is a budding ally of the United States. (The two countries are united by mutual fear of China.) It is a tragedy that history took such a long detour to arrive at this destination, and that even today Vietnam has a long way to go before it achieves the kind of freedom and prosperity enjoyed by countries such as South Korea and Taiwan that under American protection resisted communism.

Yet none of this detracts from the superhuman self-sacrifice of the heroes of Dien Bien Phu—the men who defeated an empire. One suspects that even if non-Communists eventually take power in Hanoi and allow genuinely free elections, they will continue to revere the fighters who secured one of the most important and least likely military victories of the 20th century.

Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, and the author of Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present Day (Liveright, 2013)

 

[Viet]

US airbase. Hawaii, April 13. Like visiting a girl of desire: Orion P3-C Patrol aircraft.

 

[BoQ77]

 

[Aqsuperman]

Electrical - assisted Zu-23-2 23mm turret on CSB 8004, a new step toward enhancing the CSB fleet armanent. We may see Ak-176 and Ak-630 soon :v