Sharp Israeli technology in the Vietnamese army

Currently, Israel is one of the few partners other than Russia that is providing weapons and equipment to Vietnam.

Besides Russia - the country that holds a dominant position in the structure of weapons and main combat equipment in the branches of the Vietnam People's Army, Israel is one of the very few Western countries that provide modern weapons to Vietnam.

Sharp Israeli weapons in the army

The first type of weapon that can be mentioned is the personal weapons in the Vietnamese Army. Among them, Israeli guns are having a significant presence, aiming to gradually replace the Soviet AK gun line.

The AK-47, which was introduced into service in the Vietnamese army in the 1960s and 1970s, no longer meets the requirements of modern warfare. Over the past two decades, Russia has hardly supplied Vietnam with new infantry weapons and ammunition, so the need for a replacement infantry weapon is becoming increasingly urgent.

Since 2011, some Vietnamese military units have been provided with and tested Israeli infantry weapons such as the ТАR-21 Tavor assault rifle, Uzi submachine gun, Negev light machine gun, Matador grenade launcher or CornerShot angle gun...

Israeli guns were highly appreciated, so later, a cooperation project between Israel and Vietnam in the field of weapons and equipment production and modernization was piloted at the Z111 factory, under a contract worth about 170 million USD.

Z111 has been licensed by Israel to produce two types of weapons, the Galil ACE 32 assault rifle and the Galil ACE 31 carbine, by the Israeli arms company IWI Ltd.

ACCULAR and EXTRA multiple launch rocket systems of the Vietnam Navy during a parade.

Vietnam’s first products were launched in early 2014 and successfully test-fired in October of the same year. Currently, Israeli personal weapons have been equipped for the army, special reconnaissance, commando, and naval infantry of the Vietnam Army…

The Vietnamese Army has also purchased EXTRA and ACCULAR high-precision rocket artillery shells from IMI - Israel, used for the LAR-160 mobile multiple launch rocket launchers, assigned to the 685th Coastal Artillery-Missile Battalion of Naval Region 4.

The EXTRA rocket, manufactured by the Israeli IMI Group, is a guided rocket artillery shell (usually GPS), with a range of 150 km, a 300 mm warhead, and a weight of 120 kg. The ACCULAR shell is 160 mm in size, with a range of 40 km and a combat weight of 35 kg.

Israeli weapons experts say that these rocket artillery shells are highly accurate (only missing the target by about 10m). The launchers of these rocket artillery shells are mounted on truck beds with a quantity of 2-16 rockets. These rockets have a long storage time without affecting reliability.

This is an extremely effective weapon when destroying scouted and prepared firing points. The entire enemy force, even the landing craft carrying out the landing, will certainly have no chance of survival when caught in the fire range of EXTRA and ACCULAR.

Vietnam is also purchasing from Israel SPYDER short/medium range air defense missile systems, each consisting of a control vehicle and six mobile launchers, equipped with Python 5 and Derby missiles, to equip air defense units.

Vietnam has purchased the SPYDER air defense missile system from Israel.

The missiles, manufactured by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems with support from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), have an operational altitude of 20-9,000 m and a range of 1-20 km. If an auxiliary booster is installed, the target shooting range can be increased to 35 km and the interception altitude to 16 km.

These missiles allow the destruction of various types of aerodynamic targets, including helicopters and drones at low and medium altitudes, so they have a strong reinforcement effect on the anti-aircraft artillery (23 mm and 37 mm) of the Vietnamese air defense force.

Vietnam has also begun building its own missile defense system with contracts with Israeli companies Rafael and Elta to purchase a number of EL/M 2106 ATAR 3D airborne radar stations and EL/M-2084 MMR radar stations - which are used for the famous Iron Dome missile defense system.

These radars can guide missiles to intercept ballistic targets at a distance of 35 km and at an altitude of 16 km. Israeli radars have excellent anti-jamming capabilities, as well as the ability to build an integrated information processing network when connected to friend-or-foe identification radars and communication stations.

Recently, international media reported that, after successful cooperation projects in recent times, Vietnam is planning to purchase some other types of weapons from Israel such as anti-tank missiles, maritime patrol drones, etc.

In addition, Vietnam can also join hands with Israel to carry out projects to upgrade T-54/55 main battle tanks or cooperate with Israel in the field of connecting, integrating, and sharing combat information for different types of weapons in a unified combat system platform.

As early as five years ago, the media reported that Vietnam had been closely monitoring and evaluating the combat effectiveness and combat-technical features of the Israeli Heron and Searche Mk.2 unmanned aerial vehicles, which are part of a squadron of the Indian Navy (deployed at the Tamil Nadu naval base).

Since 2014, the Vietnamese army has purchased an Israeli drone, the Orbiter 2, manufactured by ADS (Israel), and put it into service.

Israeli Galil ACE gun in the parade of the Vietnam People's Army.

However, Orbiter 2 is a very small UAV with a short range (80km), low staying time (4 hours), and a maximum flight ceiling of 3km, so it is only suitable for reconnaissance missions of near-shore targets and fire guidance, and cannot undertake long-range patrol missions.

With a ceiling of 10km, an operating range of 320km and an operating time of 54 hours, Israel's Heron unmanned reconnaissance aircraft will successfully complete long-range patrol missions over the East Sea.

Another weapon is the Spike NLOS anti-tank guided missile. Due to the missile's weight of up to 70kg, the Spike is mounted on mobile vehicles such as cars, helicopters or armored vehicle chassis.

This type of missile is capable of destroying enemy tanks and armored vehicles at a distance of 25 km, which is 5 times more powerful than anti-tank guided missiles produced by the US, Europe, Russia and China. At the same time, it is also capable of attacking low-flying helicopters or enemy warships.

In case of having Spike NLOS, we can choose the platform to carry this type of missile as 4x4 military vehicles, M113 armored infantry vehicles, especially converted M48 tanks.

Spike NLOS anti-tank missile is the perfect choice

In addition, Vietnam can cooperate with Israel in the field of connection, integration, and sharing of combat information between combat vehicles of different standards, for example, connecting Russian and Western weapons in a unified command and control system or integrating different types of equipment on a certain weapon system.

In fact, this is of utmost importance if Vietnam wants to purchase more Western weapons, while currently using mostly Russian weapons, for example, connecting Airbus's C-295 AEW&C early warning and control aircraft with the Gepard warships, Russian Su-30MK2 fighters and Dutch Sigma warships...

According to Baodatviet