Vietnam Air Defence - Air Force
a military branch of Vietnam People's Army
The Vietnam Air Defence - Air Force (Vietnam ADAF or VN ADAF; Bộ đội Phòng không - Không quân Việt Nam), officially the Air Defence - Air Force Service (ADAF Service; Quân chủng Phòng không - Không quân (Quân chủng PK-KQ / QC PK-KQ / PKKQ)), also commonly known as the Vietnam People's Air Force (VPAF; Không quân nhân dân Việt Nam (KQNDVN)) or the Vietnam Air Force (Không quân Việt Nam (KQVN)), is the air, anti-air and space warfare service branch of Vietnam. It is the modern incarnation of the so-called North Vietnamese Air Force (NVAF) and absorbed the South Vietnamese Air Force (RVNAF/VNAF) following the reunification of Vietnam in 1975. It is one of three main branches of the People's Army of Vietnam, which is under the executive administration of the Ministry of National Defence. The main mission of the ADAF is the defence of Vietnamese aerospace and the provision of air and space cover for operations of the People's Army of Vietnam.
The modern ADAF consists of two principle components: the Air Defence (AD; Phòng không, mainly operating air-defence radars, anti-air artillery and missile systems) and the Air Force (AF; Không quân, mainly operating aerial vehicles and military aircraft for combat and transport) that are currently organised as separate divisions under the ADAF Headquarters. From 1977 to 1999, the components were split into two different service branches, before remerging as the existing unified ADAF Service in 1999, placing both components under a unified leadership to facilitate joint operations. The common name Vietnam People's Air Force (VPAF; Không quân nhân dân Việt Nam) was largely the name for the Air Force component only, especially during the days that the two AD and AF services were structured two separate service branches. VPAF later became a relatively-common "external" name for the unified service which implicitly includes the AD branch; however, this usage rarely appears in official context, especially when the AD component never refer itself as the "Air Force", while the VPAF designation is currently used in a limited manner among AF units. Hence, interchangeably calling the Vietnamese ADAF as "the VPAF" can be considered a misconception about the nature and formation of the service branch.
History
Early years
The first aircraft in service for the Vietnamese Armed Forces were two trainers, a de Havilland Tiger Moth and a Morane-Saulnier, which were initially the private property of the emperor Bảo Đại.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q111744194. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1975, 1977 and 1999.
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