Currently, Vietnam is hosting its international defense exhibition, Vietnam Defense Expo 2024, where it showcases products from its own defense industry. Such an event undoubtedly attracts attention, as it concerns a promising arms market in Asia.
One of the notable announcements from Vietnam Defense Expo 2024 is that Italy has sold Vietnam its copy of the Brazilian Tucano, designated as TP-150, and the Vietnamese are even planning to export these aircraft.
According to the Polish portal Defence24, the TP-150 aircraft is intended for basic training and conducting patrol tasks within the Vietnamese Air Force; furthermore, it can also be used for flights as part of aerobatic teams.
Currently, only some characteristics of the TP-150 have been revealed, such as a flight speed of up to 300 km/h, a patrol duration of up to 6 hours, and a power output of 150 horsepower. It is reported that this aircraft is "the first developed in Vietnam" and that it was created within the framework of "the first joint project of the state defense industry of Vietnam and one of the private companies from Western countries." Additionally, it is noted that the Italian company Flying Legend participated in the creation of the TP-150, and this detail clarifies much in this story.
The thing is, readers of Defense Express may have previously encountered the name Flying Legend in the context of a rather intriguing story about how if one really wants a Tucano but cannot buy it in Brazil, a copy is made in Italy, and we will remind you of this story once again.
In 2011, this Italian company began producing the Tucano Replica for the civilian market, which is 70% smaller in size than the original EMB312 Tucano. It was anticipated from the start that the buyer could either purchase a ready-made Tucano Replica or assemble the aircraft independently from a supplied kit.
In 2022, the management of Flying Legend realized that their aircraft could also be used for defense purposes; the militarized version of the Tucano Replica was designated TP-75, with the Dominican Republic being its first and only buyer to date.
In the case of Vietnam, the designation TP-150 may directly indicate that this aircraft could have been modified to meet specific customer requirements, one of which is even explicitly revealed – the possibility of installing an electro-optical station for reconnaissance purposes.
Moreover, as the authors of Defence24 note, the Vietnamese press describes the specifics of the TP-150 quite interestingly. On one hand, the Vietnamese are already set on exporting this aircraft to markets in Africa and Asia, while on the other hand, they lament the high level of dependency on imported components for the production of the TP-150, which is being developed at the aviation plant in Vietnam’s Vinh Phuc province.
The Vietnamese also express concerns that they currently lack qualified personnel for the independent production of the TP-150 as the first domestic aircraft.