Despite the ban imposed by France’s President Emmanuel Macron on an Israel national pavilion and restricting the products that Israeli defense companies could display at the Eurosatory defense and security exhibition in Paris last month, "Intelligence Online" reports major interest in Israeli systems from Vietnam.
The senior Vietnamese officials, led by Deputy Minister Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Truong Thang, devoted a lot of time to the Israeli companies that managed to exhibit at the exhibition, as well as to those that did not.
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The strong Vietnamese interest in Israeli defense industries is not new and is part of a trend that is evident in data from the Ministry of Defense international defense cooperation division (SIBAT). In 2025, as defense exports reached a peak of $19.2 billion, the growing export destination was Asia-Pacific, which jumped from 23% of total exports to 32%.
During the recent war, cooperation with Vietnam deepened as a supplier of explosives and other industrial products for the defense industries, especially in the wake of the increasing embargo from Western countries.
As part of the process, Israeli company 4Model recently signed an exclusivity agreement with Vietnam’s Dong Nam for the purpose of providing solutions in the areas of precision chip processing, advanced castings, forging, electronic packaging and the production of complex components. Until now, companies in Israel have relied on supply chains and production in countries such as India, Bulgaria, and Czechia.
A fundamental part of the reason why the Defense Export Control Agency (DECA) does not object to contacts with Vietnam is because the US is a major customer for the US bases in the region. Large Israeli companies demand compliance with Western quality standards, while the Vietnamese are already geared to these standards from working with the Americans.
Vietnam is also a defense customer in its own right, although not on the scale of India, which is Israel’s biggest defense customer of all. Deals with Vietnam include tank upgrades carried out by Elbit and sales of Spike missiles by Rafael. In February, "Intelligence Online" reported that the Vietnamese Ministry of Defense had closed a contract with Rafael for the purchase of about $250 million of Firefly - a loitering munition that the IDF has used in the war. As part of the agreement, the parties agreed to manufacture the munitions in a Vietnamese factory.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on July 8, 2026.
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