As you see, Vietnam confronts China without call to others for support in real clash. The essential elements:
1. Air dominance : we use Sukhoi Su30MK2 to control the airspace above Spratlys
2. Submarine : we ambush by Kilo-class Type 636 the latest version with antiship and antiground Klub-S missiles, range 300km
3. Coastal defense system : we arm with K300-P Bastion, 300 km supersonic antiship Yakhont Onyx missile and expect to buy more the same type Brahmos missiles from India.
4. Surface ships : for warships we don't adopt 1 vs 1 tactic but hit and run by dozen of 500 ton Molniya class corvettes with 16 domestic 260km range antiship missile each, means we have hundreds of antiship missiles ready to launch then run.
For frigates, we use 2,100 ton Gepard class or 2,400 ton Sigma class which is domestically produced soon.
Coastguard would use Damen 2,300 ton as above post.
Damen Sigma
Well with advance weapon systme like that I'm surprised we don't speak Vietnamese already.
But dude seriously, current warfare calls for some very advanced weapons and tactics.
1. Air dominance will stay with us definitely, We have AEW and more advance missiles to go with fighters. Our training is also better, with more funding for exercises and just flight hours in general.
Not to mention AEGIS DDGs.
2. Your submarines while good, and would pose a pretty substantial threat at this point, but we are in fact testing anti sub planes right now, though this is a severe weak point and would take about 10 years to fix, and have close to 40 advance corvettes and frigates specifically targeted at anti subware fare, not to mention the 20 something advanced subs we do have right now.
Keep in mind anti sub helicopter is also available on every ship.
However, I must say again, this is exceedingly difficult to fix and probably cannot completely fix without a decade of hard work and budget increases.
3. Coastal defense missiles are a potent weapon, but without military grade GPS, that the US wont' share with your or anybody for that matter, while we have our own Beidou system, you will have advance missiles but no target. Your radar is also lacking.
4. again, radar plays a major role, our Type 52C/D and even the 54A all have very advance radars that will detect your ships way before you detect us, with air superiority and data link, we can easily target your ships, don't forget dozens of JH-7 naval fighters are in the South fleet alone.
Your idea is good, but the thing is, right now, other than the subs, it's not really an option, and even that will change, once our jet platform is ready to be used for actual combat.
