Many Vietnamese and international sources (including SIPRI) believe that "KCT-15" was a Vietnamese project to copy or assemble the Kh-35E/UE anti-ship missile as an effort to improve self-reliance on the supply and technological mastery of armaments for the Vietnam People's Navy as well as the entire People's Army of Vietnam. Another media source believes that KCT-15 was the old designation of the VCM-01 development project before it was taken over and redesignated as VCM-01 by VTX. However, "KCT-15" was never a designation for any missile development project undertaken by Vietnam or Viettel, and in fact, the prefix "KCT" is used to designate a set of projects in a program to study and master the operation and maintenance of the Kh-35 missiles used by the Vietnam People's Navy. "KCT-15" is known as the fifteenth project in the KCT program to master the operation of the Kh-35 missile, and the confusion may have arisen when the media took a picture of a Kh-35 look-alike model with the "KCT-15" designation, leading people to mistakenly believe that it was a Vietnamese project to locally produce the Kh-35 missiles; however, that model would be only used for training and studying purposes and it has little relationship with the project carried out by Viettel.
