Which fighter jets will Vietnam choose to buy from the West?
The Russian Center for Analysis of the World Arms Market has just released a report on Vietnam's arms procurement situation in the 2019-2020 period.
Russia's Center for Analysis of the World Arms Market (CAMTO) has just forecasted that in the period from 2017 to 2020, Vietnam will only spend about 2.33 billion USD to import Russian weapons.
Specifically, in 2017, the disbursement was 1.2 billion USD, in 2018 it was 320 million USD, in 2019: 0 million USD and in 2020 it was 800 million USD, a sharp decrease compared to the figure of 4.394 billion USD in the period 2013 - 2016.
More notably, the annual report of CHAMTÖ forecasts that in the period 2017-2020, Vietnam will spend about 1.5 billion USD to purchase multi-role fighters and disburse equally in 2019-2020, about 750 million USD each year.
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| Eurofighter Typhoon fighter of the Royal Air Force. |
In 2015, British defense magazine Jane's reported that we were in contact with them to research the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter.
Vietnam is in need of a light or medium fighter with cheaper maintenance costs than Russia's Sukhoi line. Since traditional partners no longer have similar products, it is understandable that we are looking to the West.
In addition, Jane's also said that Vietnam has had contacts with the Swedish Saab Group to evaluate the features of the JAS 39 Gripen fighter as well as the Saab 340 AWACS airborne early warning aircraft.
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| Swedish JAS 39 Gripen light fighter. |
However, based on the value that Vietnam can spend, many opinions say that we will actually ask to buy the F-16 Fighting Falcon light fighter produced by the US in the form of selling surplus defense equipment and then upgrade it to the F-16 Block 52 standard like what Indonesia did.
With a budget of 1.5 billion USD, this is the optimal solution for Vietnam, which can quickly equip 2 regiments with a total of 24 aircraft, while if it were to purchase newly produced fighters, it would only get about 10 aircraft, including the accompanying technical assurance costs.
Vietnam has recently made many moves that show its preference for purchasing F-16s, such as sending pilots to the US for training or requesting to receive F-16s back like Indonesia. This is also reasonable because the F-16 is proving to be the most suitable light fighter for us at the present stage.