Vietnam is taking a technological leap forward by taking possession of two new submarines from Russia.  It’s part of a deal to deliver a total of six subs to Vietnam, and it could make China wary of pushing the territorial conflict with Vietnam over Beijing’s claim of most of the South China Sea.

Hanoi now has two of the state-of-the-art Kilo-class submarines, and they’ve already been sighted on training missions off Vietnam’s coast.  A third will be delivered in November under a $2.6 billion deal agreed with Moscow in 2009; the crew is already in Saint Petersburg, getting used to the new vessel.  And a final three are on track to be delivered within two years.

It shows that Vietnam is serious about protecting its long-established rights in the South China Sea from Beijing’s territorial grabs.  China is claiming most of the Sea as its own, even though most of it lies way beyond the internationally-agreed upon territorial limit. 

China has a much larger Navy with around 80 submarines of its own.  However, Vietnam is the master of guerilla warfare and overcoming much more powerful enemies (just ask America and France).  A smaller force of subs deployed in unpredictable ways could run effective denial operations off its coast and around the waters where China wants to drill for oil. 

“Sea denial means creating a psychological deterrent by making sure a stronger naval rival never really knows where your subs might be,” said Collin Koh of Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.  “It is classic asymmetric warfare utilized by the weak against the strong and something I think the Vietnamese understand very well.  The question is whether they can perfect it in the underwater dimension.”