On deeply grasping military, defence guidelines of the Party and requirements of military building and protection of the Fatherland, the Commando Corps continues to carry out all of its missions by means of suitable, synchronous measures, which is aimed at building this corps in a strong, compact, and elite direction, deserving the most elite combat force in the new situation.

“The commandos are those who do special work, have special honour, must make special effort, and gain special confidence. Any tasks must be successfully completed. Any special difficulties must be successfully addressed.” This teaching of President Ho Chi Minh is both an incentive and order that instructs the Commandos through its building, combat, development process, to make endless effort, to overcome any difficulties, hardships, and sacrifice, to achieve many great feats of arms, and to establish the tradition of being “Specially elite, incredibly brave, wise and bold, good at making quick and dangerous attacks for resounding victories,” making vital contribution to the struggle for national liberation and protection of the Fatherland.

In recent years, thanks to attention from the Party and State as well as leadership and close direction from the Central Military Commission (CMC) and Ministry of National Defence (MND), the Commando has witnessed comprehensive, new developments in terms of politics, ideology, organisation, staffing, weapon, equipment, and combat quality, power, and capability. Cadres and soldiers of the Commando have kept leveraging the nature and tradition of being “especially elite” in the new era to accomplish all assigned missions, thereby being praised and appreciated by leaders of the Party, State, and MND.

President Vo Van Thuong talks and encourages comando soldiers in December 2023

In the coming time, the missions of building the military and safeguarding the Fatherland have both advantages and disadvantages, thus placing extremely high and comprehensive requirements. There are potential risks of destabilising political security, social order, and safety in some areas. Hostile forces and reactionaries are likely to carry our acts of sabotage in a fiercer, more public and direct manner.  The situation presents the corps with more complex, daunting, novel tasks, especially countersubversion, counterterrorism, operations to defend sovereignty over borders, waters, and islands, and so on. To complete its tasks successfully and deserve the special confidence of the Party, State, and people require the Commando to further build and develop itself in a “strong, compact, and elite” direction, truly being the most loyal and elite combat force in the new situation.

First, the Commando Force must be built into a force of special eliteness in political terms. The development, combat history of the Commando Soldiers has affirmed that this is the most important factor and foundation for improving comprehensive quality and combat power, enabling this force to accomplish all assigned tasks successfully. This matter is even more meaningful given rising requirements of defending the Fatherland. Accordingly, the Commando Party Committee and Command direct their departments, units, and colleges to promote ideological, political propagation, which aims to make all cadres and soldiers well aware of military, defence missions, perspective, and guidelines of the Party, especially the Resolution of the 8th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (13th tenure) on the “Strategy to Safeguard the Fatherland in the new situation”; have a good understanding of reactionaries’ and hostile forces’ plots and tricks; possess political steadfastness, high determination, and strict discipline; be absolutely faithful to the Fatherland, Party, State, and people; and be ready to surmount all challenges and sacrifice in order to complete their tasks in any situations. At the same time, the Commando Party Committee and Command instruct enhanced education about the heroic tradition of the Commando Soldiers, foster cadres’ and soldiers’ honour, confidence, pride in their weapons, equipment, and art of commando operations in the new condition. To achieve high effectiveness, the Corps emphasises cadres’ and party members’ responsibility for setting examples and training, most notably the leading cadres at all levels; sets down high requirements for all activities; and involves soldiers in dangerous, hard, difficult situations to train and test their strength and agility. Additionally, the Corps promotes party work, political work, and building of strong, pure party committees and party organisations at all echelons in terms of politics, ideology, morality, organisation, and cadre, ensuring that every combat commando team has a party committee, every section has a party squad, and every squad has a party member. It also concentrates on training and developing the corps of cadres according to the spirit of “7 dares” in mission execution.

Second, making the Commando Force “elite, compact, strong,” and capable of meeting special requirements and missions. On the basis of inheriting organisation and staffing of the Commando Force in the past wars of resistance, resolutions and directives of higher echelons as well as requirements, missions, and characteristics of the operating environment in the new condition, the Corps keeps strengthening its organisation in the “strong, compact, elite” direction, which is suitable to each major. Accordingly, the arm continues to undertake the Project on developing the Commando Force through 2030 and beyond, under the motto of “comprehensive leadership, decisive command, serious implementation.” In the short run, the Corps keeps reviewing its organisation and staffing and advising the CMC and MND to lead and direct the perfection of the Commando Force’s organisation and staffing in the entire military, ensuring proper structure and organisation, integrated quality, high combat readiness, and capability to accomplish all missions successfully. The Corps seeks to propose establishment of some advanced special forces in the Commando majors. At the same time, it continues to adjust the organisation of departments and units in the direction of reducing the intermediary force and support force while prioritising full strength for units in charge of combat readiness, especially brigades and battalions, striving for basically completing the building of a “strong, compact, elite” corps by 2025, making the Counterterrorism Commando Force modern by 2030, and building a modern corps from 2030 onwards.

Training in secret infiltration

Third, making the Commando Force especially elite in operational efficiency. This is one of the most important factors that helps to ensure that the Commando Soldier always deserves the especially elite and is able to accomplish its missions in any situations. To do so, the Corps carries out a close recruitment and training of cadres, combatants, and soldiers, especially the recruitment and training of especially elite commando teams, who play the leading role in performing special, important missions. It also enhances intensive training of forces, ensuring closeness to characteristics of adversaries, missions, and operating environments. During the training process, the Corps continues to explore training content that is novel, difficult, close to combat reality, and highly challenging. This aims to improve combat skills of cadres, combatants, and soldiers. At the same time, the Corps promotes force-on-force training and scenario-based training, thus improving forces’ professionalism. Attention is paid to training in the ability to conduct independent operations, high techniques, agility and endurance, skills in handling contingencies, and soldiers’ capability to camouflage themselves, negotiate obstacles, develop understanding of areas and targets, establish secret bases, and so forth. Moreover, special importance is attached to training aimed at improving combat techniques for special majors such as counterterrorism, parachuting, airborne operations, and survival in extreme conditions. As for shooting, apart from the basic programme, the Corps attaches importance to design shooting lessons tailored to missions and close to combat reality in the daytime and nighttime, which aims to train special skills and willpower. Consequently, soldiers can shoot fast and accurately at different targets on any terrain.

Additionally, the Corps continues to provide in-depth training in tactics such as assault, secret destruction, and ambush, ensuring that the commandos are excellent at both independent combat operations and coordination with other forces in operations at the operational- and strategic-levels of war. To achieve high results, the Corps emphasises leverage of comradeship and cadre-soldier solidarity, cares regularly about spiritual, material life, and has preferential policies. These measures are designed to motivate cadres and soldiers to train well and seriously, overcome difficulties and hardships, and complete their tasks successfully.

In addition to increased training quality, the corps proactively perceives situations and regularly review and improve operational plans, especially specific combat plans for each battle within the ambit of mission A2, counterterrorism, and protection of sovereignty over borders, waters, and islands. It also promotes training and conduct of exercises according to plans to enhance combat readiness in any situations.

Fourth, modernisation of weapons and equipment to meet requirements of modern warfare. Today, given the demand of missions, besides force development, research and development of operational art, and combat training, Commando Soldiers need to be properly resourced with modern weapons and equipment. To satisfy this demand, the Corps steps up effective exploitation and use of existing weaponry while recommending the MND to produce and buy modern weapons and equipment with superior firepower in various environments, most notably pistols, rapid-fire submachine guns, next generation sniper rifles, man-portable missile systems, reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles, loitering munitions, underwater weapons, mines, torpedoes, remote controlled weapons, vehicles, motorcycles, high-speed craft, and so forth. Moreover, the Corps speeds up the construction and upgrade to training grounds and training centres for force-on-force simulation training, swimming, diving, counterterrorism, and so on.

Taking pride in its history and tradition as well as trust, fondness, and special attention of the Party, State, people, and MND, the Commando Corps is determined to overcome all difficulties to build itself into a modern, elite, regular, revolutionary force, deserving the specially elite combat force of the military and preserving its tradition in the new condition.

Major general HOANG MINH SON, Commander of the Commando Corps