Important enough to give her a landing pad. Likely she can also rearm and refuel a helicopter (otherwise just the pad itself would have sufficed). The extra step to include some form of (bad) weather cover is minimal imho and makes her more verstile.
Yeah, I definitely agree that a landing pad is necessary. I think the space between between 2 AK-630s will be used to further secure the helicopter in bad weather condition.
On the other hand, I do believe that Vietnam do interest in buying arm from the west but I think it would take quite a long time before any major purchases to materialize. With Vietnam it’s an equation of both cost, politics and tech transfer.
Most of the times we can see that Russian arms are cheaper than the western and Vietnam has already used a russian systems so additional training and logistics costs won’t be too high.
Another bigger reason is political reason, Vietnamese leaders want to make sure that had a conflict happen, the arm supplier for Vietnam must continue to supply arm to Vietnam regardless of international political pressure. In this case, Vietnam has a long history dealing with Russia (SU in the past) so they still want to stick with Russian arms.
Finally, Russians are willing to sell Vietnam weapons/technology that they don’t offer else where such as the recent Bastion coastal defense, licensing of RPG-29, some domestic features on the Su-27/30 (claims by army insiders).
Sign In
