HANOI - Vietnam's imports of weapons in 2023 slowed to a trickle as it worked to diversify supplies away from Russia, data released on March 11 showed, while experts warned the country could be vulnerable during a regional conflict.

Despite an estimated budget of more than US$1 billion (S$1.33 billion) annually for arms imports, in 2023 it placed no new major orders, according to data released on March 11 by defence think-tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri). 

The main delivery was a naval corvette donated by India, data showed, making arms imports in 2023 Vietnam's lowest by volume since 2007 – other than 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Amid rising tensions between China and Taiwan, and frequent skirmishes in the South China Sea between Chinese vessels and ships from other regional powers, Vietnam lacks enough modern weaponry to defend itself in a large-scale conflict, defence experts say.

“The disparity in conventional military power will increase in China's favour if Vietnam continues to mark time,” said Emeritus Professor Carl Thayer, a senior expert in Vietnam security at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra.

The Vietnamese government declined to comment on the reasons for the apparent slowdown.

A top defence official said in January that the country had reached several deals at a military fair in December 2022, but the Defence Ministry did not elaborate.

Mr Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher at Sipri, said the lack of public deals may be the result of ongoing hard negotiations, with Vietnam considering competing offers.

Prof Thayer and other experts say the South-east Asian nation mostly needs warships, fighter jets and drones.

It operates air defence systems imported from Russia and Israel, some of which were first introduced more than 30 years ago, according to a 2019 report from the Defence Ministry.

The country is trying to improve its own military industry but cannot yet produce large weapons, such as aircraft or ships.

Russia, Vietnam's top provider of weapons for decades, markedly reduced its global arms exports in 2023, Sipri data showed.

And Vietnam has struggled to pay for Russian weapons without breaching US sanctions, according to two people briefed on the discussions.

They declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Hanoi held its first international arms fair in 2022, saying publicly that it wanted to diversify its supplies from Moscow, confirming a shift that began after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, according to public data.

But talks with other potential sellers have not yet produced visible results.

Israel, Vietnam's second-largest arms supplier, has not sold Hanoi any weapons in the last two years, according to Sipri data, although Israel's global arms exports have increased in that period.

Vietnam's talks with other possible suppliers, including India, the United States, South Korea, Japan and the Czech Republic, have intensified.

But no major deals, except the corvette from India, have been reported amid issues over costs and integration with the existing arsenal, much of which has origins in the Soviet Union, experts said.

A second arms fair is planned to be held in Hanoi in December.

In the meantime, Vietnam is leaning on diplomacy to maintain good relations with the superpowers.

But without major purchases, Vietnam remains “very vulnerable”, said Mr Nguyen The Phuong, a Vietnam defence expert at the University of New South Wales in Australia. REUTERS