#Vietnam

On the 17th of November, 2021, the Twitter account Lee Ann Quann reported that the Vietnamese Army was in the midst of testing a brand new homemade UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle). The tweet included a video of what appears to be a cobbled-together unmanned treaded miniature drive section with an AK pattern rifle mounted to the top of the vehicle via an articulating gimble. According to the tweet, the PAVN intends to use the UGV as a “sentry” that would flush infiltrators from trenches to reduce battlefield casualties.

Photo Of The Day: Above you can see the M40 Sniper Rifle with the Redfield 3-9×40 scope used by Sgt. Charles “Chuck” Mawhinney. He recorded 103 confirmed kills and 216 probable kills while serving in the Vietnam War, and the rifle can be found in the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia.

Vietnamese weapons aren’t particularly mainstream in the Western world, however, we catch a glimpse of them, from time to time. Recently Vlad showed us the latest products of the Z111 Factory, the STV-380 and SVT-215. Now, thanks to the TV channel VTVcab, and its YouTube presence, we can see a few of their details and have a brief tour of the manufacturing facility.

In the previous post, I talked about some of the new AK variants developed by the Vietnamese Z111 factory, but those prototypes seem to be a side project for the new facility. The main purpose of Z111 is the production of STV-380 and STV-215, new service rifles of the Vietnamese army.

There are very few countries in a modern world that have a respectable firearms industry and manage to keep a veil of secrecy over it. Besides North Korea, Myanmar, Iran, Sudan, and some Gulf countries, Vietnam seems to be very secretive about its new guns. Thankfully, the situation is slowly changing and now we can see Vietnamese weapons coming out of the shadows.

Evelyn Ernest Owen (15 May 1915 – 1 April 1949) designed the Owen machine carbine or Owen Gun in 1939. This is the topic of our Photo Of The Day. TFB wrote about it already in 2013, in the article: Made In Australia: The Owen Submachine Gun.

This year, Vietnam had its first large international defense exhibition, DSE Vietnam 2019. The expo was located in Hanoi downtown, next to all the museums and government buildings, just a two-minute walk Vietnam Ministry of Public Security.

Even among professionals, not much is known about modern Vietnamese small arms. You can seldom see Vietnamese manufacturers at defense exhibitions and every time they make an appearance, there is a lot to talk about.  This year, Vietnam had it’s first large international exhibition – DSE Vietnam in Hanoi. And while this particular exhibition did not showcase a lot of firearms, it is definitely a step in the right direction.

In our previous coverage of modern Vietnamese small arms development on display at Indo Defense 2018 we spent some time looking at locally produced M79’s, Lee Enfield No.4’s, a rotary grenade launcher, and even a 9x19mm Bizon! In this post we’ll be looking at some of the other developments that we weren’t able to fit in the first one.

One of the biggest buzzes during the show was the booth from Vietnamese Defence Industries (VDI). This was the first such appearance of the Vietnamese delegation to any major trade show outside of Vietnam with the amount of materiel that was being presented to the public. Vietnam has slowly been building up a small arms production capability for the past decade, taking on serious collaboration with IWI Defense from Israel in addition to what might be some defense collaboration with Russia over technical data packages. Examples of this can be seen in being licensed to produce the 7.62x39mm Galil Ace rifle domestically in 2014 and even the bolt action 12.7mm KSVK anti-materiel rifle as well. Although few of these designs are indigenous to Vietnam and are instead foreign variants being license produced by companies within state-owned VDI, the ability of the country to be outputting small arms is still very significant and should be paid attention to. One piece of the puzzle that we don’t know yet (and asked the booth reps), is how much of each weapon system was actually produced from raw materials in Vietnam and how much was brought in from the original manufacturer. In some cases with developing countries, the most difficult or costly components are imported while the rest of the firearm is actually made in the country. One example of this is the barrel, which can be extremely difficult to manufacture precisely on an industrial basis.

Although the L1A1 SLR (FN FAL) service rifle served the Australian “Digger” faithfully for an extremely long period of time, infantrymen in the Vietnam War realized that the rifle could be “tweaked” to fit the combat that the soldiers had to fight in day after day. Undergoing field modifications that would be against regulations anywhere in the world, the troops did it anyways because it fit a necessary field requirement. 

Dennis Martin, a gun lover like all of us who runs with the Instagram handle of “AK47Shooter,” provided this picture on his account recently. Postulating that…

A recent visit by the Vietnamese Vice President Ngong Thinh to the MoD’s state arsenal factory Z111 has revealed that the country is currently producing what appears to be a licensed copy of the Russian 12.7x108mm OSV-96 semi-automatic magazine fed anti-material rifle. Previous news articles from 2015 have suggested that the rifle would enter production or was at least in the prototyping stage of development during that year, but this confirms that the rifle will certainly be produced in Vietnam. Factory Z111 is the same factory in Vietnam that is also turning out 5.56x45mm Galil ACE rifles for the Vietnamese Armed Forces. This is not the first 12.7x108mm weapon system that Vietnam has produced, with the Vietnamese coming up KSVK anti-material rifle announced in August of 2017. We don’t seem to be seeing much of that particular design, being that it is a manually repeating bolt action rifle, it was probably less preferred by the high command to this semi-automatic one.

Although the Russian Kalashnikov assault rifle is the one that is most famous, it is arguably the Chinese Type 56 AK that made the bigger impression on the world in the 1960s and 70s. This rifle was initially developed with Russian technical assistance just before the Sino-Soviet split beginning in 1956, but subsequent development took place without Russian input, leading to an entire family of unique AK variants. The name “Type 56” actually refers to this entire family of Chinese AKs, which includes milled receiver variants derived from the Russian Type 2 AK, as well as stamped versions similar to (but distinct from) the AKM. These guns showed up all over the world, and for many they are THE iconic “AK-47”. They were the primary weapon of the North Vietnamese Army in the latter half of the Vietnam War, were exported by the Chinese to Africa, Asia, and South America. It was the most used AK variant by the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan War, up against Russian AK-74 rifles. Too this day remains one of the most common if not the most common AK variant, and it’s the Chinese Type 56 with its distinctive integral spike bayonet that is famously depicted as a symbol of liberation on the Flag of Mozambique.

Fortunately night vision has come a very long way in terms of thermal and Infrared optics choices that today’s grunts have. However, once upon a time, 6 pound passive starlight PVS 2s were considered state of the art when it came to the capabilities of U.S. troops fighting at night. The scope first entered service at the height of the Vietnam War and despite its cumbersome size and ridiculous weight, it did prove its use among Soldiers and Marines in their patrol bases. It was probably too heavy to carry out on many patrols, but as a rifle equipped with one on a post at night where mobility wasn’t an issue, it could be a force multiplier, especially when the Viet Cong wanted to strike or probe the lines at night.