It appears that Vietnam has unveiled another new subsonic cruise missile. This occurred during a large-scale rehearsal for a military parade scheduled for September 2 to mark the 80th anniversary of the August Revolution and National Day celebrations.
According to Defense Blog, this is a new system developed by the Viettel Aerospace Institute (VTX). The missile has different variant with a range of 80 to 100 km and is designed to hit both surface and land targets.
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According to some sources, the missile appears to be based on the russian Kh-35, which is already in service with Vietnam. The country has not commented on this information.
It should be noted that it is currently unknown whether the VCM-01, which also looked like a copy of the Kh-35 and had a range of up to 80 km, has gone into serial production. The question arises as to whether the new systems presented at the parade are only prototypes.
On the other hand, these could be the same missiles, which were simply confused by various analysts, observers, and media representatives. In the absence of detailed information, we can only offer theories and speculation.
Since Vietnam operates a variety of russian missile systems, developing its own analogues may be seen as a matter of national prestige. Given limited resources, spreading them across numerous different projects could slow down the army's modernization.
On the other hand, russia is becoming a rather unreliable partner, whose products may be difficult to obtain due to sanctions. Accordingly, Vietnam has begun developing its own new weapons.
Another argument in favor of this theory is Vietnam's decision to purchase Indian BrahMos missiles instead of the russian P-800 Oniks, which it already operates. In other words, expanding Vietnam's missile capabilities through domestic development appears to be a logical next step.
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