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Once again, I am talking about the 300,000 ethnic Chinese civilian who lived in Northern Vietnam that were force to leave in 1978.
That is fine, no worries.
I didn't call them spies so please don't bend my words. When I put unloyal into double quote, I mean when they were offered a better life, they ran directly to the other side despite tension between two countries. As I said, there were still many Chinese who chose to stay and they are still living well until today.
OK.. I am not a military expert. From soldiers point of view, there were many complaints from both soldiers who fought and who didn't have to chance to fight about poor intelligence before the war.
There was a maximum of 120 days of prep work, more like 90 when the Chinese attacked. In that time, the Chinese came up with an overly ambitious and ultimately an idiotic attack plan (26 points of axis?). It was not that there was poor intel, it was that the intel didn't make sense, especially to a veteran staff who had experience planning and excuting such an large scale action, both offensive and defensive.
From government point of view, if they did know about Chinese attack, they reacted very strangely.
There has to be judgement on what the Chinese wanted. I'm sure that the Hanoi scenario was considered and then discarded, mainly because it was not politically realistic. So, what are the realistic evals? If I was in Hanoi, I would have judged the battle to be over some hills than any real attempt to take any Vietnamese cities. I would have been wrong but that would have been my judgement.
Later after Hanoi knew China would not hesitate to use excessive force to solve their problem, they maintained 600,000 troops on the border, not only few divisions.
And the Chinese got smarter. The 1984 2nd Sino-VN War was much smaller and easily controlled.
Original version was Hwasong-5 with the range of 300km. Later it is unclear whether they were upgraded or bought new (Hwasong-6??) but the current stock has a longer range from 500-900km. Is there an international law to limit the range of exported missile to 300km, I don't know?
Thanks for the Hwasong pictures. What was the rationale for buying said missiles, though?
Because a country threatened to shower Vietnam with ballistic and cruise missiles in the first phase of an imaginary invasion. If it really happens, Vietnam needs something to p!ss back. Until that country has a missile defence system with better performance than US Patriot system in Gulf War, those Hwasongs are still a little bit scary because they bring the taste of war to that country's homes. Just to make them think a little bit before doing anything.
About another post, I am so dissapointed that nobody says anything about AR-15s in factory. :(
Because a country threatened to shower Vietnam with ballistic and cruise missiles in the first phase of an imaginary invasion. If it really happens, Vietnam needs something to p!ss back. Until that country has a missile defence system with better performance than US Patriot system in Gulf War, those Hwasongs are still a little bit scary because they bring the taste of war to that country's homes. Just to make them think a little bit before doing anything.
About another post, I am so dissapointed that nobody says anything about AR-15s in factory. :(
Oh my bad, I thought they were AK derivatives (I wasn't looking to closely).
As for shooting ballistic missiles at China, wouldn't it be a better choice to build cruise missiles? China already has S-300PMU2s, HQ-9s and in the future, S-400s.
As for shooting ballistic missiles at China, wouldn't it be a better choice to build cruise missiles? China already has S-300PMU2s, HQ-9s and in the future, S-400s.
Unlike Patriot, S-300 has no combat history so it is very hard to say.
There are some negotiations for cruise missile between Vietnam and partners but there are also major limitations:
- limit range of 300km: again, I am not sure about international law,
- guidance system: Vietnam satellite technology now is only at the level of picosatellites and they are still in the lab. With a primitive guidance system, I don't think they can be more effective than ballistic missile. Or somebody correct me if I am wrong?
You don't necessarily need satellites to guide cruise missiles. A radar can do the same job or if you're really desperate, try gyroscopes.
As for the S-300s combat record, you don't need to put a system into combat in order to consider it capable, otherwise no one would have ever bought any other modern, long range. SAM system besides the Patriot.
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