Vietnamese People's Navy - Bases

Cam Ranh

Cam Ranh was a main US base during the Vietnam War. In 1979 the Soviet Union leased the base for 25 years, turning it into its largest naval base abroad. Russia gave it up two years early in 2002 after Vietnam raised the rent on the base.

Vietnam will allow Russia to set up a ship maintenance base at its port of Cam Ranh, Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang said on 27 July 2012. Sang, speaking to the Voice of Russia radio station ahead of a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, stressed that the port would not be a Russian military base. But he also said that Cam Ranh would be used to help develop “military co-operation” between the two former Cold War allies. Sang also said Hanoi was planning to develop the capacity to provide maintenance services to any foreign ship docking at Cam Ranh, a former Soviet naval base.

Russia currently had only one foreign military base outside the former Soviet Union – in Tartus, Syria. But the base is little more than a re-fuelling stop for Russian warships. Russia’s naval chief, Vice Admiral Viktor Chirkov, confirmed that Russia was in talks on obtaining naval bases in Cuba, Vietnam and in the Seychelles. “We are indeed continuing work to ensure the stationing of Russian Navy forces outside the Russian Federation,” he said in an interview with RIA Novosti. “As part of this work at the international level, we are discussing issues related to the creation of [ship] maintenance stations in Cuba, in the Seychelles and in Vietnam.”

The Russian Navy saw that it badly needed foreign bases after 2008, when Russian warships joined international anti-piracy efforts in the Gulf of Aden. Russia has also discussed the possibility of using ports in Djibouti for its warships in the past.

Vietnam set a deadline of 2015 for the construction of a repair facility for Russian and Soviet ships at Cam Ranh Bay, a Russian defense industry executive said 26 September 2014. The maintenance and repair facility will service “the entire range of Soviet and Russian built surface ships and submarines that have been supplied to the country” Yevgeny Shustikov, deputy head of the Zvezdochka shipyard, said at the international naval and maritime exhibition NAMEXPO-2013 in India.

Russian specialists were in Vietnam to work on the facility’s proposed design, he said, adding that the Vietnamese side has set a deadline of 2015. In July 2012 Vietnam’s president said that Russian ships will be allowed to dock at Cam Ranh for maintenance. He explained that Vietnam wants to see the port provide foreign ships with maintenance and repair services but that foreign navies will not be allowed to use the port for military purposes.

By 2016 the Russian Defense Ministry was considering the question of renewing Russia's presence in the bases in Cuba and Vietnam, according to Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov, who alluded to the issue during his speech at the State Duma on 07 October 2016. "We are working on it. We see this problem," said Pankov, responding to a parliamentarian's question about whether or not the ministry is working in this direction. The issue of Russia's armed forces being present on a permanent basis at the radio-electronic center in Cuba’s Lourdes and Vietnam’s Cam Ranh Bay had not been decided officially. However, Russia's expert community was actively analyzing the suitability of the bases and their possible purpose.

"There was a radio-electronics intelligence center in Cuba. I think it should be reopened," said Reserve Lieutenant General Yevgeny Buzhinsky, council chairman at the PIR Center (Center for Political Research), an NGO that studies issues related to global security. In his view, it was a mistake to halt operations at the Russian radio-electronics intelligence center, which operated in Cuba from 1967 to 2002.

"There is no military-strategic sense in establishing Russian military bases in Cuba. Such discussions are aimed at stirring the interest of the U.S., at complementing NATO's growing activity in Europe," said Maxim Starchak, scientific collaborator at Queen's University's Center for International and Defense Policy (Canada). In Starchak's opinion, the Kremlin may use the talks of renewing its presence on the island as a way to show Washington "that every new countermove will only instigate a response, meaning that negotiations are necessary."

If the Defense Ministry is indeed considering the issue of returning Russian naval forces to the port of Cam Ranh in Vietnam, said Buzhinsky, most likely it concerns reviewing the current conditions in which the Russian ships are docked at the port, since today Russian vessels already refuel there. "The [new] agreement is mostly nuances: the kind of ships that can enter, their tonnage, if they can enter with armament. I think it just involves giving juridical form to the agreements already reached," he explained. In Buzhinsky's view, the point on Russian ships' material-technical maintenance in Vietnam is necessary for Russia because it wants to strengthen its naval presence in the world's oceans. The permanent stationing of Russian ships in Southern Asia, without the need to spend time and resources to travel the great distances from any Russian port to the Cam Ranh Base, will significantly strengthen the Russian navy's position in the world’s oceans, said Viktor Litovkin, a military observer at the TASS news agency.

However, many experts believe that Russia is not considering a permanent presence in Vietnam. According to Starchak, the base in Cam Ranh may serve as a temporary point for Russia's strategic aviation and submarines, which would then enter areas of possible drills in Asia, as well as for reconnaissance purposes. "Russia doesn’t have the necessary military-naval resources for a permanent presence outside its territorial waters. So the base in Cam Ranh will be used for the technical maintenance of Russia's air force and navy in the regions close to Russian borders, as well as for supporting combat preparation exercises," said Litovkin.

The possible expansion of the Russian naval presence in the Cam Ranh port in Vietnam and consequently the permanent presence of Russian military forces in this region represents a certain threat to the U.S. naval base in Guam, said Michael Kofman, a fellow at the Kennan Institute of the Wilson Center specializing in Russian military analysis. In 2015 the U.S. State Department asked the Vietnamese government to cancel Russia's right to have its strategic bombers refuel at the Cam Ranh Base because of allegedly "provocative" Russian aviation flights near the U.S. base in Guam. However, the Vietnamese government did not change its policy and the republic's ambassador to Russia said that the country was ready to continue accepting and servicing Russian ships at the Cam Ranh Base if this practice was not aimed at harming third countries.