Vietnam Defence Forum

[Carlosa]

Lt. Gen. Hal Moore dies; depicted in Vietnam War film ‘We Were Soldiers’

SATURDAY, FEB. 11, 2017, 4:09 P.M.

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/feb/11/lt-gen-hal-moore-dies-depicted-in-vietnam-war-film/

In this Thursday, Jan. 29, 2004, file photo, retired Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, of Auburn, Ala., salutes the crowd during a standing ovation at the state Capitol during the Spirit of Alabama Awards in Montgomery, Ala. Moore, co-author of “We Were Soldiers,” was one of several recipients of the award. Moore died on Friday, Feb. 10, 2016. He was 94. (Jamie Martin / Associated Press)
By Chevel JohnsonAssociated Press

Retired Lt. Gen. Harold G. “Hal” Moore, the American hero known for saving most of his men in the first major battle between the U.S. and North Vietnamese armies, has died. He was 94.

Joseph Galloway, who with Moore co-authored the book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young,” confirmed Saturday to the Associated Press that Moore died late Friday in his sleep at his home in Auburn, Alabama.

Galloway said Moore, his friend of 51 years, died two days shy of his 95th birthday.

“There’s something missing on this earth now. We’ve lost a great warrior, a great soldier, a great human being and my best friend. They don’t make them like him anymore,” Galloway said.

Moore was best known for his actions at the 1965 Battle of Ia Drang, where he was a lieutenant colonel in command of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment. His actions were later reflected in the movie “We Were Soldiers” in which actor Mel Gibson portrayed Moore. The book tells what happened to virtually every trooper involved in the 34-day campaign and the climactic four-day battle in which 234 Americans died at landing zones X-Ray and Albany in November 1965.

Galloway, a former war correspondent for United Press International, said Moore was “without question, one of the finest commanders I ever saw in action.”

“Those of us who survived Landing Zone X-Ray survived because of his brilliance of command. I think every one of us thought we were going to die at that place except Hal Moore. He was certain we were going to win that fight and he was right,” Galloway recalled.

Galloway and Moore wrote a second book, “We Are Soldiers Still,” which he said grew out of a journey back to the battlefields of Vietnam 25 years later. “We went back and walked those old battlefields. At the end of the day, Hal Moore and Col. Nguyen Huu An, the North Vietnamese commander, stood in a circle in the clearing and prayed for the souls of every man who died on both sides.”

He said the two shared an “instant brotherhood that grew out of combat.”

“When we were discussing the book contract with a lawyer/agent, he asked to see the contract between me and Hal Moore, and Hal Moore said `I don’t think you understand. This isn’t just a matter of money. We have trusted each other with our lives in battle and we have no contract before that.’ I absolutely agreed.”

On a Facebook page managed by Moore’s family, relatives said he died on the birthday of his wife, Julia, who died in 2004 after 55 years of marriage.

“Mom called Dad home on her day,” the statement said. “After having a stroke last week, Dad was more lethargic and had difficulty speaking, but he had always fought his way back.”

Before serving in Vietnam, Moore graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and then commanded a battalion in the newly formed air mobile 11th Air Assault Division at Fort Benning.

Born in Bardstown, Kentucky, he served in the U.S. military for 32 years.

Galloway said the family has tentatively scheduled a religious service Friday in Auburn and a memorial service at the National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning Army Base in Columbus, Georgia.

 

[Carlosa]

Laos: A lesser-known disaster in the Vietnam era
http://pilotonline.com/news/military/laos-a-lesser-known-disaster-in-the-vietnam-era/article_3891f29c-970d-539d-b3b3-e7657d7ebfd4.html

The struggle for Indochina lasted three decades and caused massive bloodshed and physical destruction in three countries: Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Vietnam was always the heart of the conflict, the site of the heaviest fighting and dying, the place where first French and then American planners invested the bulk of their resources. So the literature on Vietnam is enormous and growing. Still, the disparity is jarring: Next to that mountain of books, there’s barely a molehill on the war as waged in Laos and Cambodia.

All the more welcome, then, to see Joshua Kurlantzick’s “A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA.” Here we get an informative and well-researched overview of the covert war the United States waged in Laos between 1960 and 1975, one that involved both the recruitment and training of a local anti-communist fighting force led by Hmong tribesmen and the launching of a bombing campaign of awesome size. The U.S. purpose: to tie down the forces of North Vietnam and their Laotian allies the Pathet Lao, and to destroy communist supply lines that moved men and materiel along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in eastern Laos en route to South Vietnam.

The numbers give a sense of the scope. From 1964 to 1973, the United States dropped some 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos, the equivalent of one planeload every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. It made Laos, per capita, the most bombed country in human history. In 1969 alone, the United States dropped more bombs on Laos than it did on Japan during all of World War II. All told, some 200,000 Laotians were killed in the war – about a tenth of the country’s population. Most were civilians. Nor did the end of the fighting in 1975 stop the killing; over the next four decades, unexploded cluster bombs would kill 20,000 Laotians and maim thousands more.

It was a secret war, run substantially by the CIA, under the code name Operation Momentum. A principal early player was Bill Lair, a clandestine operative who drew up a plan to train and arm the Hmong to fight the Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese. Kurlantzick gives us a compelling portrait of this soft-spoken man “with the bristly buzz cut and the thick Clark Kent glasses who spoke fluent Lao with a Texas accent” – the quintessential quiet American.

Lair believed fervently that anti-communist Laotians could win the struggle for their country as long as they and not Americans led the fighting, and that the United States could avoid the colonialism tag as long as it did not attempt to take over the territory. He pinned his hopes on Vang Pao, an ambitious and ruthless Hmong officer and another central figure in the book. Over time, as senior leaders – including William Sullivan, the U.S. ambassador in Vientiane, and Ted Shackley, the CIA station chief – relied more and more on massive use of American airpower, in particular to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Lair grew disillusioned, certain that the bombing was killing civilians and that the Hmong could never achieve lasting military success against the superior training, arms and motivation of the North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao.

According to Kurlantzick, Lair’s misgivings fell on deaf ears among his superiors. The aerial bombardment continued to intensify, and Hmong fighters under Vang Pao were sent into increasingly ferocious battles. Upon entering office, President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, while caring little about Laos and its people, believed that stepped-up bombing would be “an effective way to bludgeon North Vietnam and its allies in Laos into agreeing to a peace deal for all of Indochina.” By the end of 1969, American aircraft were conducting about 300 sorties per day over Laos. Never mind that there were now fewer targets to hit, a great many having been obliterated. Most of the time, leaders in the Royal Lao government were not consulted before the attacks.

The bombing was on occasion willfully random. In early 1970, the book tells us, American pilots routinely released bombs over Laos without locating a particular target, simply because they could not find a suitable target in North Vietnam and did not want to return to their base in Thailand with bombs still on board.

In the end, the shadow war in Laos ended in defeat. The United States ceased the bombing and ultimately cut off financial assistance to its Hmong allies. In 1975, South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos fell to communist forces.

It’s a harrowing story, and Kurlantzick tells it well, even if he’s occasionally shaky on the details. He errs in saying the Viet Minh did not sign the 1954 Geneva Agreements and misstates the number of U.S. military advisers in South Vietnam at the time of John F. Kennedy’s death, and he offers no evidence for his dubious claim that Kennedy “repeatedly” told aides he would not tolerate the loss of South Vietnam on his watch.

The author’s loose approach to chronology leads on occasion to confusion and repetition. In the main, however, his choices about what to cover are sensible, his assessments persuasive. One puts the book down with a deeper, richer understanding of this sordid chapter in the history of American interventionism.

The title of the book, “A Great Place to Have a War,” turns out to be wholly apt (and grotesque). For in the minds of many within the CIA, the war in Laos was a rousing success, a low-cost way of putting intense pressure on the North Vietnamese. In this way, Kurlantzick argues, Operation Momentum was an archetype for the CIA paramilitary operations of more recent times – “and a new way for the president to unilaterally declare war and then secretly order massive attacks.”

Richard Helms, CIA director during the height of the operation, later lauded the agency’s “superb job” in Laos, a sentiment echoed in a classified CIA retrospective. The analysis paid scant attention, Kurlantzick acidly notes, to the war’s effects on Laotians. He quotes William Sullivan, who told an interviewer many years later that the air war over Laos caused him “no personal anguish.”

Contrast this assessment with that by Barack Obama, who in September 2016 became the first sitting president to visit Laos. “Villages and entire valleys were obliterated,” Obama remarked in Vientiane, after announcing a major increase in American funds to clean up unexploded ordnance left behind from the war. “Countless civilians were killed. And that conflict was another reminder that, whatever the cause, whatever our intentions, war inflicts a terrible toll, especially on innocent men, women and children.” The time had come, Obama said, to pull the secret war out of the shadows. Indeed, and Kurlantzick’s book represents an important step in that direction.

Logevall is a professor of international affairs and history at Harvard University. His book “Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam” won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for history.

 

[Viet]

a reposting but still worth to repeat. Vietnam submarine attack squadron is complete. In addition to torpedos, anti aircraft missiles and sea mines, Vietnam attack submarines can fire 4 different types of Kalibr cruise missiles thru 533mm torpedo tubes:

- 3M-54E: antiship missile, range 300km, speed Mach 2,9 during final approaching to target, 200kg armor piercing warhead

- 3M-14E: land attack missile, range 275km, 400kg warhead

- 91RE1: anti submarine missile, range 50km

- 91RE2: anti submarine missile, range 40km

 

[Viet]

the upcoming state visit of Japan Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko will be the greatest political event of the year. oh more, of the century. as far as the memory works, never before has a Japan Emperor visited Vietnam. Empress Michiko looks beautiful when she was young, and she remains very asian.

comparing to Vietnam´s empress nam phuong

 

[sairagon]

 

[Carlosa]

India says in talks with Vietnam for first missile sale

REUTERS/TUOI TRE NEWS

UPDATED : 02/16/2017 09:32 GMT + 7

BENGALURU, India -- India is in talks to sell short range surface-to-air missiles to Vietnam, the head of India's defence research agency said on Wednesday, in what would be its first transfer of such weapons to the Southeast Asian country.

India has been helping the Vietnamese military with training and patrol vessels, but a further deepening of ties with missile sales could draw criticism from China that has been locked in a territorial dispute with Hanoi in the East Vietnam Sea.

New Delhi is currently talking to a number of countries for sales of its surface-to-air Akash missiles, said S. Christopher, chairman of state-run Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

The move is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's push to establish India as an arms exporter.

"We are talking to countries, one of them is none other than Vietnam," he told a news conference on the sidelines of an air show where the DRDO is showcasing its missile programmes and other key projects, including a home-grown light combat fighter.

Christopher did not provide any details of how many Akash missile batteries the government planned to supply Vietnam.

Vietnam is in the midst of a quiet military buildup that analysts say is designed as a deterrent, to secure its 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone as China grows more assertive in staking its claims in the East Vietnam Sea.

Experts say Vietnam is in the market for fighter jets and more advanced missile systems, in addition to the kilo-class submarines it has bought from Russia.

India, which is also sparring with China over a border dispute, has in the past considered the sale of its Brahmos supersonic missile with a range of 290 kms to Vietnam and has been steadily helping Hanoi beef up its defences.

Last year, Modi announced a $500 million credit line to Vietnam to buy defence equipment, on top of a $100 million given previously to help it buy patrol boats. The two sides have also agreed for training of Vietnamese air force pilots to operate Su-30 Russian fighter planes.

 

[fadine]

Today is February 17

 

[Viet]

one of VN´s most important defence partners has one of the most powerful women of the diplomatic corps: Israeli Ambassador to Vietnam Meirav Eilon Shahar. will we see the first step of a comprehensive missile defence system. Israli State President Rivlin is scheduled to visit Việt Nam in March.

 

[Aqsuperman]

So........we have them already ? :v https://sputniknews.com/asia/201702171050789254-vietnam-israel-missiles/

"The author writes, citing information provided by the Stockholm-based International Peace Research Institute, that an unspecified number of Python-5 missiles have been supplied to Vietnam"

 

[Nike]

So........we have them already ? :v https://sputniknews.com/asia/201702171050789254-vietnam-israel-missiles/

"The author writes, citing information provided by the Stockholm-based International Peace Research Institute, that an unspecified number of Python-5 missiles have been supplied to Vietnam"

Part of Spider SAM i suppose

 

[Viet]

Part of Spider SAM i suppose

Yes some people talk of possibilities of installing python missile on Su fighter jets. But I think the russian expert is right: it makes little sense to install israeli missile on a russian jet. Two different systems. Vietnam jet is well armed by r73 missile.

 

[Viet]

Since decades in service, still no sign for retirement: Tuyria class torpedo boat

Also, on paper Vietnam possesses a respectable number of tanks: 2,500 medium and light tanks. However, they have seen their peak some time ago. It is not saying they can't inflict any serious damage to an enemy ground army.

 

[Star Expedition]

Vietnam worries too much about the outside.

 

[Carlosa]

Vietnam's Got a New South China Sea Strategy

The Vietnam People’s Navy is shifting from sea denial to counter-intervention.

Koh Swee Lean Collin
February 16, 2017

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/vietnams-got-new-south-china-sea-strategy-19470?page=show

In 1287, Gen. Omar Khan of the Yuan Dynasty led a sizeable invasion force, including numerous war junks, against Dai Viet (present day Vietnam). With battle-hardened Mongols forming the vanguard, it seemed as if the campaign would be a walkover for China. But a naval battle the following year proved otherwise. In the estuary of the Bach Dang River near Ha Long Bay, Dai Viet general Tran Hung Dao repeated the feat accomplished by the earlier, celebrated general Ngo Quyen against the Southern Han Chinese invaders, back in the year 938.

Following Ngo’s approach, Tran planted iron-tipped stakes in the river’s northern distributaries—Chanh, Kenh and Rut—and waited until high tide to lure the Mongol fleet into the shallow waters. When the tide turned, those Mongol war junks were impaled upon those stakes. The much smaller Dai Viet war canoes then swarmed around the trapped Mongol fleet and their crews hurled “mud oil” grenades—little ceramic bottles filled with naphtha and sealed with betel-nut husk, which also acted as a fuse when lit—at the immobile war junks, setting them and their hapless crews ablaze. The Battle of Bach Dang saw grievous losses to the Yuan invasion fleet.

But unlike the battle in 938, which contributed to the end of the first Chinese domination over Dai Viet, the naval victory in 1288 did not alter the bilateral relationship—the Tran Dynasty accepted Yuan suzerainty until the latter’s demise.

The two naval battles at Bach Dang, and contemporary examples in the French Indochina Wars and the Vietnam War, as well as the brief but bloody Sino-Vietnamese border war in the late 1970s, highlighted Vietnamese ingenuity in conducting asymmetric warfare against a stronger foe. Yet the Battle of Bach Dang constituted a rare example of how the Vietnamese could pull off what were essentially land-based tactics in the maritime realm. Also of note is the fact that the naval battles at Bach Dang were fought in shallow waters close to the Vietnamese shores, instead of the open waters of the South China Sea, where Mongol war junks could optimize their combat performance.

No wonder, then, that in March 1988 the Vietnamese suffered a defeat at Chinese hands during a clash in the open waters of the disputed Spratly Islands. The Chinese navy proved more than a match for the Vietnamese, unaccustomed to fighting naval battles in the open waters, who found themselves outnumbered and outgunned. That battle was an attempt to stop the Chinese from encroaching upon what Hanoi claimed as sovereign territory in the Spratlys, and with the Vietnamese forces extended so far from the Vietnamese coast and shorn of quick and substantial reinforcements, the outcome of that battle was quick and decisive. Retaking those features, forcibly snatched from Vietnamese hands following the naval skirmish, was out of the question for Hanoi’s political and military leaders.


The Vietnamese were cognizant of their naval limitations. There was no way they could repeat their ancestors’ feat at Bach Dang against the Chinese. Hence, it has been taken for granted—almost by conventional wisdom—that in view of the gaping and still growing naval asymmetry between the Chinese and Vietnamese, Hanoi must adhere to a sea-denial strategy. Essentially, sea denial envisages denying or disrupting the adversary’s access to maritime areas of interest, while denying the one practicing this strategy free use of the same space. Wu Shang-su, for instance, has argued that Vietnam, standing little chance against Chinese military aggression, has no choice but to adopt a sea denial strategy. Furthermore, he added, a sea-denial strategy fits well within the broader ambit of Hanoi’s post–Cold War policy, emphasizing such principles as independence, non-alliance and defensive defense.

There is also a fiscal imperative, given that Vietnam continues to prioritize its socioeconomic development set in motion under the “Doi Moi” (Renovation) reforms, under way since the early 1990s (also a time that saw a downsizing in the manpower of the People’s Army of Vietnam). “The state budget is still limited while we have to invest in many significant areas such as transport infrastructure, resources for socio-economic development, welfare for the people who served the country well, healthcare and education,” said then defense minister Gen. Phung Quang Thanh in December 2014, who added, “so investment in defense should be taken gradually and be suited to our capabilities. We have two parallel tasks: protecting and building the country. We do not underestimate any of them but if we focus too many resources on defense, we will lack investment in development. Because of a lack of investment in development, we will lack future resources for investment in defense.”

Yet it would be misleading to view the Vietnamese as fatalistic. They have long recognized the limits of a traditional sea-denial approach, and thus have sought to enhance their strategy to forestall Chinese military aggression in the South China Sea.

As Hanoi’s navy has just received its final Russian-built Kilo-class diesel-electric submarine, and is on the cusp of operationalizing a complete submarine squadron within 2017, the image of a sea-denial-centered Vietnamese naval strategy is still in place. While it is true that a submarine, especially a conventionally powered one, is commonly associated with sea denial, it is necessary to look beyond this attribute in the Vietnamese case. All six boats are not only equipped for sea denial in the traditional sense—torpedoes and mines, for example—but they also possess Russian-made Klub-S sea-launched land-attack cruise missiles (SLCM) that can hit targets as far away as three hundred kilometers—well within the Missile Technology Control Regime, which places restrictions on exports of certain offensive missile systems to non-signatory states.

Long-time Vietnam military watcher Carlyle Thayer has opinedthat Vietnam’s SLCMs would be employed against Chinese ports and airfields, such as the Sanya naval base on Hainan Island, rather than cities arrayed along the southern Chinese mainland coast. This counterforce role would still fit well within Hanoi’s strategically defensive deterrent strategy, but acquiring such an offensive capability would certainly depart from a sea-denial approach. There is no way the Vietnamese can hope to forestall Chinese aggression without the means to raise the costs for Beijing—the potential destruction wreaked upon its forward-deployed naval forces in Sanya being one such instance.

If anything, Russia’s feat during its campaign in Syria in late 2015 demonstrated that it is feasible for small naval forces to conduct limited, expeditionary force projection. The Kilo boat Rostov-on-Don became the first conventionally powered submarine to launch SLCMs in deep, inland penetration strikes. However, the Russians could manage this by leveraging on their extensive command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) capabilities, such as GLONASS satellite navigation, to allow the missiles to fly smoothly over wide swathes of the Middle Eastern land mass. The Vietnamese has a fledgling C4ISR program, focusing on unmanned aerial vehicles and remote-sensing microsatellites. Its current satellite-based targeting capability relies on commercially obtained satellite imagery—far from useful to carry out inland strikes.

Nonetheless, this shortfall would not hamper Vietnam’s counterforce ability against coastal targets. Without the strategic depth and naturally formed terrestrial features to shield it, China’s Sanya naval base is exposed to overwater missile strikes, which do not require C4ISR targeting capabilities like those for deep penetration attacks. And Hanoi is only keen to enhance the ability to punish Beijing and raise the costs of its aggression, beyond those submarines it has acquired. Referring to the Kilos, back in September 2014 a military official in Hanoi remarked that “they are not our sole weapon, but part of a number of weapons we are developing to better protect our sovereignty.”

So, to that end, Vietnam has made further moves to put into effect a more robust counter-intervention strategy that signals a departure from a traditional sea-denial approach. For example, its marines have trained for “island recapture” in the Spratlys—unthinkable back in 1988. In May 2016, Vietnam was reportedly negotiating with Russia the purchase of a third pair of Gepard 3.9–class light guided-missile frigates. What is so special about this purchase is that Hanoi wants these new ships to be armed with the Klub SLCMs. One recalls that the Russian Navy’s Caspian Flotilla corvettes—in the same size category as the Gepard 3.9s—along with the submarine Rostov-on-Don had proven that small surface warships are capable of launching SLCM attacks. Hanoi apparently caught on, and became inspired by Moscow’s feat.

The Vietnamese may not be oblivious to the fact that, like the battle of Bach Dang in 1288, any foreseeable war in the South China Sea with Beijing would result in a preordained strategic victory for the latter. But Hanoi has gradually shifted away from a traditional sea-denial strategy to one that would raise the cost of Chinese aggression. The completion of its submarine squadron in 2017 is just the first major step towards this direction. Vietnam’s modern-day versions of war canoes and “mud oil” incendiary antiship weapons now carries a wholly new significance.

Koh Swee Lean Collin is research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, based in Singapore. He specializes in research on Southeast Asian naval affairs. He would like to thank Robert Haddick, Visiting Research Fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, for his comments and suggestions.

 

[Viet]

Rep. Stephanie Murphy Introduces a Bill to Keep Stephen Bannon Out of the National Security Council

Aimée Lutkin
2/02/17 1:05pm

On Wednesday, Rep. Murphy from Florida introduced legislation to depoliticize the National Security Council, which has become an apex of many anxiety attacks since white nationalist Stephen Bannon was appointed to a “Strategic Initiatives Group” inside of it.

Orlando Weekly reports that, if passed, the bill would mean the removal of Bannon from this position. The bill’s two provisions require that “no individual whose ‘primary responsibility is political in nature’ is assigned to the council or authorized to attend NSC meetings,” and that either the Director of National Intelligence or the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff have a standing invitation to attend Principal Committee meetings. Both those roles were hobbled alongside Bannon’s appointment. In a statement, Rep. Murphy said:

“As a former national security specialist at the Department of Defense and a current member of the House Armed Services Committee, I can tell you the last place partisan politics belongs is in national security. It is reasonable and commonplace for presidents to decide who attends security meetings, but I strongly believe the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should have a standing invitation to attend all Principals Committee meetings given their importance to national security and expertise. My bill will help depoliticize national security so that we never jeopardize the safety and security of the American people.”

During her speech, she also referenced Bannon directly, saying, “Mr. Bannon’s role in the administration has a strong political component. Indeed, it appears unprecedented for a political counselor so deeply enmeshed in domestic politics to serve as a permanent member of the NSC.”