Vietnamese People's Navy: Measurements To Improve The Operational Capability And Combat Capability Of The Current Ships

Introduction

Over the past 50 years, since its foundation, the Vietnamese People's Navy has been built and developed progressively, the organization structure gradually enriches, the weapons and technical equipment are strengthened in both quantity and quality; the fighting and combat readiness have been improved deserving to contribute the national victory in the resistance war against the United States for the national salvation in the past as well as in the epic of building and defending the Fatherland nowadays. However, the Navy's current ship strength compared to the requirements of the task is not uniform regarding type; weapons and technical equipment are limited in quantity, quality, and modernity to the navies of other countries in the region. Many types of weapons (especially specialized equipment) are out of date, degraded, and needed to be replaced or added; the force distribution is still not reasonable. This leads to the restriction of effectiveness in the performance of the task of managing and protecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the sea, islands and continental shelf of the Fatherland. The aim of this paper is to propose some measurements to improve the operational capability and combat capability of the current ships in VPN based on existing weaknesses.

Key ideas and recommendation

Renew, replace, and maintain core equipment. The majority of Vietnam's warships are the outdated Soviet-funded warships and post-war confiscated American warships. Later the VPN also bought some old ships from Russia and South Korea. Therefore, the navy is facing the risk of operating less than half of the current fleet of submarines shortly, when lots of ships and submarines may not be operational or “retired.” Moreover, the aging and degrading waterborne weapons are a big concern for the VPN. Meanwhile, there is a fact that buying new ships with extraordinary capacity, especially for countries which have a tight or not abundant defense budget, seem to unable to afford. To do so, VPN with a limited defense budget has understood the expense distribution regarding operations and maintenance, research and development is an essential activity because, through it, its navy power can be identified (according to reference C). This deep understanding of the distribution of the fund provides a maiden view for Vietnam to deal with potential threats, to improve its combat proficiency, as well as to show off the military power.

On the other hand, VPN has always tried to establish a periodically, secure and stable activity of long-term funding distribution is required to be not only but also done because it will provide a relatively accurate and reliable panorama about the ship capacity as well as leading to a deeper understanding and more precise procedures to improve its capacity.

Based on the functions and tasks, VPN is always presented in most of the sea, coastal areas and islands of the country as reliable support of units and people in exploiting marine potential. Therefore, VPN’s human resource should be prioritized to invest in the construction of a revolutionary, regular, elite, step by step modernization. In the coming time, it is necessary to focus on improving the quality and strength of the forces in the VPN, first and foremost political quality, ensuring that the Vietnam Naval is always a loyal and reliable fighting force of the Party, State, and Vietnamese people. With the spirit of "the ship, the island is the home; the sea is the homeland", officers and soldiers of VPN must always actively learn, train, improve the quality of training, and build up the routine contributing to the fighting strength of the entire army. Along with that, they must continue consolidating, perfecting the organization and building more and more synchronous forces in line with the requirements of the military branch, with characteristics of the regional sea and island. Efforts must be made to build strong naval zones, to bridge the land, sea, and islands, to perform well the management tasks in peacetime and to ensure technical and logistical support for the Navy during the war. At the same time, there is an effort to build a mobile force strong enough, capable of effectively implementing the task of protecting the island, the truss, the southern continental shelf. . . Strive in the near future, the VPN is sufficient to participate in the war effort in the context of modern warfare to use the force of 5 armies (surface ships, submarines, naval airplanes, naval navies, missiles and coastal artillery), custom high technology weapons, improve the capacity of cooperation with partners, control the enemy, firmly control the sea and sky at sea.

In the process of building and fighting, the VPN has inherited and developed the tradition of the old generation, applied the Party's tactics on the battlefields of the sea, and created many effective ways to build the basic theoretical issues of naval art. However, it has to be seen that in the future, despite the fact that the VPN has been strengthened to build and equip themselves more than they are now, in the immediate future and many years later, the capacity of weapons and modern equipment is still lower than the navies of the combatants in quantity, type, and modern level. Thus, in the upcoming period, it is necessary to continue promoting scientific research, development, and improvement of naval art in the People's Defense Force. 11. VPN Navy’s leaders should create more combat rehearsals as well as increasing amount of tactical exercise and number of ship and exercise’ time, making an opportunity for naval forces to train, react, and adapt to the fluctuating security environment. Regularly grasp the situation on the sea, not to be surprised, prepare a firm posture in each sea, especially in the direction, the key areas to be ready to fight effectively, making the victory in strength and art of the Vietnam People's Navy on the battlefield. Besides, the investments on modern capabilities will build up the naval guards’ capability in national defense and international collaboration. The dramatic revolutions in ship arts with the support of intelligent cyber technology demand a ray of specialized activities that focus on research and development in the field of combat.

Capabilities

Upgrade fleets of new modern ships suitable for combat requirements of Vietnam. By signing a contract in December 2009, Vietnam purchased six Kilo submarines from the 636 Varshavyanka Project (NATO designated it as Kilo Improvement). In addition to shipbuilding, the contract includes training Vietnamese sailors, providing equipment and techniques. The Kilo submarine group marks a milestone in the process of modernizing the military and military equipment and improving the fighting power of the Vietnamese People’s Navy. Kilo submarines together with the surface ship and guard ships are modern means of patrolling, reconnaissance and protection of naval bases, coastal areas and territorial sea of Vietnam. Together with KILO, it should also mention Molniya, the current main missile boat of the VPN (according to reference D,E). However, due to its small size, Molniya could not integrate powerful anti-aircraft defense missiles against aircraft or enemy cruise missiles. It has only limited defense capabilities including AK-630 CIWS artillery and Ilga rocket launchers for protection range of 3-5km. This is a weakness that makes the Molniya 12418 missile more difficult to fight with the strong air force, long-range missile ships. To overcome this weakness, VPNs can equip Molniya with Pantsir-ME air defense system of Russia. Pantsir-M's tactical features are thought to have optimized firing element identification algorithms to accommodate better naval installations (the launch coordinates are more variable than those on the land). Regarding weaponry, Pantsir-S1's 2A38M 30 mm guns were replaced by the same caliber AO-18KD, but their firing speed is twice as high (5,000 rpm vs. 2,500 rpm), with 57E6 reduced from 12 to 8 rockets. This system is designed to shoot down a range of flying targets at ranges of 5 m - 10 km, within 200 m - 20 km.

In the field of the submarine, Vietnam does not need to rely too much on Russia about repairing or maintenance of these submarines, because Vietnam will be able to repair its submarines and modernize its maintenance, repair, and overhaul of naval vessels, according to the UK’s Defense department Janes. For the past two years, the Ministry of Defense of Vietnam has upgraded the Factory X-52 under the Naval Technical Department at Cam Ranh port in Khanh Hoa Province to be able to repair its submarines and perform maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) vessels. The factory upgrades are made mainly to support Kilo-attacking submarines. The last two were on the Navy’s payroll in March 2017. The People’s Army of Vietnam said that after seven years of operation, the Factory X-52 has “confirmed its self-reliance in repair and maintenance of ships and boats”. Acquire new or enhance naval intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems, upgraded armament, and additional systems for current and future platforms15. Currently, under the VPN force, the only water surface combat ships, which are capable of performing anti-submarine warfare, are Petya-II/III-class frigates. This frigate was designed with a dedicated weapon system for anti-submarine warfare, which consists of a system of five 400mm-torpedo launchers for the Petya-II and three 533mm-torpedo tubes with the Petya-III. Other weapons on board include 76mm double-barreled artillery, two RBU-6000 anti-submarine rocket systems. However, the trend of developing warships in the world has shifted to the development of warships capable of multitasking rather than focusing on a specific mission as before. Moreover, the Petya-II/ III's anti-submarine capability was not appreciated.

To improve the operational capability of the Kilo submarine, the Vietnamese Navy has implemented Project 1135. 6, which emphasizes the provision of strong anti-submarine warfare equipment for small destroyers. It is designed to perform a variety of missions such as patrol, anti-ship combat, anti-submarine warfare, and support for amphibious assault missions. Project 1135. 6 is equipped with a Russian-Indian electronic system. The main sensor of the ship is the surveillance radar and targets the Fregat M2EM 3D mounted at the top of the mast. This radar has a target range of about 300 km. The mission of this radar is to detect air targets, low flying targets, targets on the water, and to determine the state of the target. A destroyer is equipped with integrated electronic warfare system TK-25-E5, PK-10 bait launcher system along with 4 KT-216 launchers. With an anti-submarine warfare mission, the vessel is equipped with an APSOH aquaristic system installed at the bottom of the ship. Also, the hunting task is also under the support of “the underwater killer” KA-28. As space matter, the ship is equipped with the space launch vehicle Shtil together with the launcher 3S-90 placed just behind the main gun. The system uses 9M317 missile, NATO designated SS-N-12, a maximum range of 50 km. 24 rounds of missile launchers are automatically loaded with one arm from a rotating missile bearing the missile at the bottom of the deck. With anti-submarine missions, the ship is equipped with two RBU-6000 anti-submarine rocket systems with a maximum range of 4,300 meters and a depth of up to 1,000 meters. Two 533mm anti-submarine launchers with two launchers or clusters using the SET-65E / 53-65KE passive tuning torpedoes with a maximum operating range of 16 km.

Conclusion

With a country with a long coastline like Vietnam, the construction of a powerful naval force is vital in protecting national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Ships are the primary and core component of the navy force, therefore, improving its quality and capacity is always an important task for VPN. To remain competitive, the Vietnam People’s Navy must start today and must improve faster in multi-dimension from proper procurement, comprehensive training plan for both manpower and ship fundamentals to enhance ships’ technical capacity. Since many warships of VPN are out-of-date, one efficient investment to directly improve its ship capacity is renewing, replacing, and maintaining core equipment. By gradually checking the quality of the ships, VPN can not only manage its tight defense budget but also continue to strengthen the national defense. Moreover, any consideration of VPN’s ship capabilities or its ship effectiveness must begin with an examination of the resources - financial, human, physical, and technological - that the national leadership makes available to its military organizations. Regarding manpower, each member of VPN should continue to promote the national heroic tradition, self-cultivation both morality and capacity. Another kind of resource affecting ship capability is the combat proficiency in both number and quality with the cooperation of many institutions.

On another hand, in the context of the world security situation is becoming more complex, to continue to protect the nation and defend the strategic interests around the world, all while continuing the counterterrorism fight, there is a demand for Vietnam People’s Navy to grow its fleet to have more ships to be able to compete with other world powers and counterterrorism. Especially, these investments should be suitable to the condition and ability of Vietnam. In conclusion, Vietnam’s military in general and the VPN in particular of the future will require a high demand on technology for better developing and implementation, as well as a diversification of equipment for the more flexible organization and national defense.