War in Ukraine (continued)
Weapon
English text of the original article in
Vietnamese: “Vũ Khí”
English Translation: Hung Nguyen
Vietnamese text: Author Jimmy Nguyen Nguyen
Since I was a kid, I used to think that in war, having
advance and modern weapons is sure to win the war. The United States dropped
two atomic bombs, and Japan immediately surrendered unconditionally. News magazines
all have a special topic discussing about new weapons, I read them voraciously.
The most interesting was American goods with all kinds of aircrafts and
warships. Now seeing the cruise missile is fired from a far distance and still get
through a window, I clicked my tongue: only
weapons will decide between the winner and loser.
But life is not that simple. "God has created Sun
Tzu why did he also created huge Liang?" So are weapons. When there was a sword, there
was a shield. If you believe in the theory of yin and yang, you will understand
this philosophy immediately. Every ailment has a cure. Understanding that, we
will calmly watch everything revolving around us.
The Vietnam War was also the place where the US and
Russia tested their weapons and also where Vietnamese people made those weapons
more diverse. I was the witness, because members of my family were soldiers on
this side and the other side. Before 1970, the ARVN army had tanks, but vietcong
didn’t have them. But they have B40 and B41 hand-held rocket launchers. Its
range was 1000 meters. This weapon caused tanks to falter in battles. At that
time, at the bases where the American troops were stationed, in addition to the
barbed wire fences, they also had a mesh fences. Noticing that as B40 touched
this barrier fence and they exploded. Learning from this result, soldiers of
armoured vehicles attached this special net at the top and sides of their tanks
to fight off the B40 rockets. Since then, the mesh fence wire had the nick name:
B40 mesh wire.
In those years, the American had tiny electronic
antennas, they were scattered over the forests along the 17th Parallel line in
Laos. These antenna devices picked up the sounds of vehicles, movements of
troops.... and relayed information back to the command posts for analysis. Then
artillery or aircrafts will drop bombs at the coordinates reported by the
antenna devices. At first, the Vietcong army suffered considerable damages.
Later on, they found out the antenna devices were the source of the problem,
and made fake noises to foul the antennas. The Americans fired artillery and
bombed to no-man land. Electronic antenna “fence” was bankrupted after that. After
1975, in the hard labour concentration prisons - the so-called re-education
camps erected by the Vietcong regime in all over Vietnam to imprison RVN
officers, the word "antenna" was referred to after-the-war Vietnamese
prisoners acted as the secret moles of the Vietcong regime in these prison
camps. They quietly collected information and activities of fellow prisoners and
reported to the authorities of the prison camps. They were the lowest traitors.
The Battle of Lower Laos (1971) was where the North
Vietnamese force used the Russian SA7 heat-seeking missile extensively. This
one was the handheld launcher. Airplanes, when bombarding, they headed downward
to drop bombs and then climbed up, leaving the hot smoke trail behind their
tails. The rocket would follow that hot exhaust stream and blew up the plane.
Helicopters were good bait for this type of missile because it flied low and
slow. In some day, more than 30 helicopters were crashed a day. Many American
pilots refused to fly to the battle. Vietnamese soldiers later learned that as
they were landing their helicopters, they threw out flares, and the missiles immediately
followed the flares and sucked into them, hence saved their helicopters from
being blown up. Learning from the experience of Vietnamese pilots, the American
made it systematically. Every time the plane swooped down to bombard and then climbed
up, it scattered flares behind its tail. Heat seeking missiles were rendered ineffective
as they were confusedly blinded by the heat of the flares.
Recently, Israel has made the iron dome system, to
counter against Palestinian’s rocket artillery. It was great. But then I
believe the Palestinians will have a different way of fighting to counter the
effect of the dome.
Humans are always making progress. You can figure this
out, people will find a better and improvising way, it’s just matter of time,
fast or slow. Therefore I believe that no weapon is absolutely superior in all
time.
If it was absolutely perfect, then mankind would have vanished.
In each war, some new weapons are introduced, they
cause surprises to many people. Talking about weapons, keep talking for the
whole year and it is still not over. This time I noticed a new Russian weapon,
the phosphorus bomb. I got to see a video showing the sky of full sparking
lights over the Azovstal steel mill complex in Mariupol. Since it was filmed by
drones, it didn’t look so terrible. However, Russia only "treaked" to
public with one episode of the bombing, and the Ukraine commanders immediately gave
the order to the defenders inside the mill to surrender. The second video was
taken by a Ukrainian soldier. It was filmed from the ground near where the bomb
exploded. It was so terrified. The bomb did not explode on the ground, but
exploded in the air, releasing phosphorus particles like fireworks. Fireworks
burnt and then fade away, but the “fireworks” released by this bomb did not quickly
burn off, it was like the lasting rain of fire from the sky that slowly fell
down. Wherever they go, the air was consumed to create a vacuum region, causing
the air elsewhere to be sucked into the void. In the case of the steel mill in
Mariupol, the air pockets from underground bunkers were sucked out. It only need
a few minutes and no living creature are able to withstand and survive. But
they drop not only one bomb, but several in a row. Even in a deep pit, a person
is suffocated to death. How will Ukraine cope? I really don't know. But
believing in my philosophy of past experience, I think they will have a way to
fight anyway.
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