But the reality is just the opposite. In 79, Vietnam was cleaned up by us. Decades later, it was unstable again. So why did Viet Nam dare to challenge China many times? What is Vietnam's current military strength?
1. General situation of the quality and quantity of equipment in active service of Vietnamese army.
The equipment of the Vietnamese army is quite old, generally staying at the level of the third Indo-China War or even the Vietnam War, without much progress. On this basis, some killer advanced equipment has been added as tools for asymmetric operations (mainly imported from Russia).
Take the air force as an example. In 20 15, MIG2 1 was finally eliminated, but its scale was also reduced to eight fixed-wing tactical aviation regiments (each regiment had only 12 fighters), equipped with 36 SU22,1/SU27 and 35 SU30MK2.
The equipment quality of the air force is the average level of the Vietnamese army. In contrast, the army is worse and the navy is better.
The Vietnamese army was 410.2 million. It is divided into 8 military regions and 2 special zones, with more than 2,000 active tanks and 1 5,000 active armored vehicles. It looks scary, almost catching up with one third of China and surpassing the two military regions. But this is not the case in quality: more than 2,000 tanks have 1, 200 T54/55/59/59,400 amphibious tanks, more than 200 62 light tanks, and only 220 T62 tanks exceed the first generation level after the war; In addition, the Vietnamese army has a large number of older tanks such as T34 and M48, which have been abandoned.
The Vietnamese navy has 42,000 people (including 27,000 marines) and is divided into four coastal areas. There are 4 Type 636 submarines (the other two are under construction), 5 frigates, 1 1 light frigates/large missile boats, and 2 and 6 relatively modern Russian goods respectively.
2, the ability of military independent production and maintenance of equipment.
Although the above-mentioned equipment situation is highly similar to that of China's army around 2000, there are obvious differences between Vietnam and China at that time, that is, it does not have a complete defense industry. Although the Vietnamese army has more than 100 ordnance factories, it is still unable to independently produce a large number of old heavy weapons, and of course it is impossible to copy or learn from the new equipment bought at a high price.
Take army equipment as an example. The so-called postwar third-generation main battle tank launched by Vietnamese military industry is actually a temporary patchwork of a ready-made main gun 125mm on the T55 chassis. Of course, this kind of thing can't satisfy the Vietnamese authorities, and in fact it can't be mass-produced, so it soon disappeared.
From T62 to SU30MK2 to 636 submarine, no matter whether it is backward or advanced, Vietnam has no self-production ability for these heavy weapons, only maintenance support ability. However, the Vietnamese army's ability is not sufficient, but it is still passable. At least it didn't repair a few planes and drop a few like Hal did, did it? A large number of old equipment can still barely operate in the main force of the Vietnamese army, which illustrates this point.
For its standard light weapons, such as AKM assault rifles and SVD sniper rifles, the Vietnamese army has the ability to produce them by itself, which is better than many countries in the world. In recent years, Vietnam's military industry has also developed some new light weapons, even high-tech asymmetric combat weapons (such as 20 13, which produced five UAVs with different ranges and uses at one go), but none of them have been adopted as standards.
3. War potential, including the mobilization ability of the government, the quantity and quality of potential soldiers, and national financial resources.
; ; Vietnam has hundreds of millions of people, including tens of millions of young men and women who can be recruited. Like China, Viet Nam has militia, but its militia system has been abandoned with the surge of population movement after the reform and opening up. However, Vietnam claims that there are still 3-4 million backbone militia who have received amateur military training.
The education level in Vietnam is worrying. At present, compulsory education in Vietnam is only five years (primary school). By 2006, Vietnam had not abolished the junior high school entrance examination, which shows that a considerable number of Vietnamese young people have not received secondary education or above. This level is only equivalent to that of the Soviet Union during World War II, China in the 1970s and 1980s, and even worse than that of Japan in the latter part of World War II. In this way, the scale of technical arms of the Vietnamese army in wartime will be greatly limited.
In 20 13, Vietnam's defense budget was 7.8 billion US dollars, accounting for 5% of GDP. It can be said that Vietnam has done its best. However, because neighboring countries are underdeveloped, and both high-end weapons and low-end weapons are bought, it can be said that the country's financial resources are still stretched.
4. The quality of soldiers and training, and the versatility of weapons.
The Vietnamese army is doing business. Most troops are busy making money, while soldiers are busy being businessmen. What about the quality and training of soldiers? There are not a few high-end financial and low-end factories and mines run by various ministries of the Vietnamese army, and they are also involved in smuggling and smuggling. Only those elite force can train normally. As far as the army is concerned, several field armies are still capable of fighting.
There is no problem with the equipment of the Vietnamese army, which is basically a Soviet-Russian standard with good versatility.
5. Relations with the United States.
In recent years, Vietnam has been banned from importing American weapons and can import deadly weapons from the United States and its allies.
So generally speaking, at the present level of Vietnam, if we fight China, we will definitely fight 1979, because Vietnam is still Vietnam, and China is not China.