Vietnamese army still uses Browning M1919 machine guns

One of Military Region 9's soldiers taking part in live-fire exercise was spotted using a Browning M1919 .30 caliber machine gun, VietDefense reports. These were old equipment supplied from the United States to South Vietnam, captured in 1975, and have been kept in serviceable condition up to now, more than 100 years after their conception. Many of them are certainly still in service in the Vietnamese army.

One of Military Region 9's soldiers taking part in live-fire exercise was spotted using a Browning M1919 .30 caliber machine gun (Picture source: QPVN via VietDefense)

The M1919 Browning is a .30 caliber medium machine gun that was widely used during the 20th century, especially during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The M1919 saw service as a light infantry, coaxial, mounted, aircraft, and anti-aircraft machine gun by the U.S. and many other countries.

The M1919 was an air-cooled development of the standard US machine gun of World War I, the John Moses Browning-designed water-cooled M1917. The emergence of general-purpose machine guns in the 1950s pushed the M1919 into secondary roles in many cases, especially after the arrival of the M60 in US Army service. The US Navy also converted many to 7.62mm NATO, and designated them Mk.21 Mod 0; they were commonly used on river craft in the 1960s and 1970s in Vietnam. Many NATO countries also converted their examples to 7.62, and these remained in service well into the 1990s, as well as up to the present day in some countries. Notice that 7.62 NATO rounds are manufactured in Vietnam aside from traditional Russian ammunition.

These M113 APCs seen at Tân Sơn Nhất airport in 2010 are the same ones that were used by American and South Vietnamese troops in the 1960s and 1970s during the Vietnam War (Picture source: VietDefense)

Leftover spoils of war still in service after all these decades, VietDefense reports. These M113 APCs are the same ones that were used by American and South Vietnamese troops during the Vietnam War. After 1975, many of them would be pressed into service with the People's Army of Vietnam. With lack of American spare parts & ammunition for weapons, the remaining M113s used today all have been refitted with Russian machine guns, Russian transmissions, and other east-bloc components. Several variants such as mortar carriers & other platforms based on the leftover M113s have also been developed by Vietnam.