Russian Missile Company: Vietnam owns new coastal defense missile complex

According to a source from the Tactical Missile Corporation, with the purchase of additional Bal-E missile systems, the Vietnam Navy's maritime defense network has a much stronger ability to protect the coast.

Before the Russian manufacturer's surprising announcement, Vietnam still had no information about the Bal-E system.

According to published information, the Coastal Missile Force of the Vietnam Navy is currently equipped with three core coastal defense missile systems: 4K51 Rubezh, 4K44 Redut and K-300P Bastion-P.

These coastal missile systems undertake the important task of controlling sea areas and strait areas; protecting naval bases, protecting our targets and infrastructure on shore, as well as protecting the coast in directions where the enemy can land warships.

However, in addition to the Bastion-P coastal missile system equipped with Yakhont cruise missiles that Vietnam has recently put into service, the two remaining missile systems are the 4K51 Rubezh and 4K44 Redut.

These are two coastal missile systems researched, manufactured and put into use by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, so they are old and have low combat capabilities.

To modernize its coastal missile force, in recent years, Vietnam has ordered from Russia two state-of-the-art K-300P Bastion-P coastal defense missile systems, each equipped with 36 Yakhont supersonic winged cruise missiles, with a range of 300km and super-fast flight speed, 2.5 times the speed of sound.

After being put into service, the K-300P Bastion-P has helped the Vietnam Navy become the force possessing the most powerful and modern coastal defense missile systems in the Southeast Asia region.

Although Rubezh and Redut are outdated, the combat capabilities of these two systems are still truly terrifying to any opponent. Together with Bastion-P, they have created for the Vietnamese Navy a 3-layer integrated coastal defense missile network.

Short range under 80km for Rubezh, medium/long range under 300km for Bastion-P and long range under 500km is handled by Rubezh.

Returning to the Bal-E shore missile system, using the 3M24 Uran (Kh-35 Uran-E) missile with a range of 120km, this is also the type of missile currently equipped on Vietnam's Molniya and Gepard 3.9 missile ships.

Perhaps this is the most important feature for us to choose to buy and equip these shore-based missile complexes to both enhance combat capabilities, replace and supplement close-range defense power for the old Rubezh system, as well as take advantage of the ability to self-equip missiles domestically to minimize costs and maintenance of weapons and equipment.

Thus, Rubezh, Bal-E, Bastion-P and Redut will create a new integrated coastal defense network for the Vietnam Navy, which is a dense 4-layer network, taking on different offensive and defensive roles, ready to sink any enemy warship if a conflict occurs in the East Sea.