Being a strategic reserve engineer unit (construction) of the Ministry of National Defence (MND), the 229th Engineer Brigade (aka Song Da Defence Engineer Brigade, Corps of Engineers) is tasked with combat training and readiness, settlement of construction collapse, search and rescue, bomb and mine disposal, construction of border patrol routes, development of defence projects, and other unplanned missions. During task execution, apart from advantages, the brigade faces immense difficulty, including unscheduled, scattered activities, hard work, diverse trainees, and lack of training grounds, vehicles and equipment. Additionally, there is negative influence of the society on officers and soldiers' feeling and sentiment and the brigade's combat training and readiness. In order to successfully accomplish its key political mission, the brigade has operationalized many leadership solutions, in which the strengthening of operational effectiveness of Party work and political work is the most important one to enable officers and soldiers to foster political steadfastness, well perceive their tasks, establish high responsibility and resolve, and surmount any difficulty and hardship to successfully complete all assigned tasks, contributing to improving the brigade's integrated quality and combat power.

The Brigade Party Committee meeting in early 2019

First, the brigade regularly strengthens leadership and instruction of party committees at all levels on combat training and readiness. This is a matter of principle and vital mission of Party work and political work. Thoroughly grasping its higher echelon's resolutions and directives, especially Resolution No. 765-NQ/QUTW of the Central Military Commission (CMC), Resolution No. 274-NQ/DU of the Corps of Engineers Party Committee on improving training quality for the period of 2013-2020 and beyond, and training order of the MND and Commander of the Corps of Engineers, the Brigade's Party Committee and party committees at various levels lay out leadership resolutions and conclusions focusing on training, good order and discipline annually. These documents clearly define that combat training and readiness are the key tasks, which lays the foundation for setting out policies, measures, criteria, and requirements of thought, organization, support work, and allocation of responsibility to organizations, units, officers, and party members during implementation process. At the same time, it is imperative to instruct units to strengthen innovation of execution measures and training methods, which considers training of commanding officers and organizations as the key task and the training of junior officers as the core mission. The training must be closely aligned with features of high-tech warfare and consonant with the brigade's organization, strength, and equipment, with emphasis place on enhancing mobility and successful engineer support according to functions and specialties. Commissars, commanders, and political organization at all levels regularly issue timely instruction on Party work and political work at all stages according to plans, ensuring leadership of party committees and organizations, and control of commanders at various levels over combat training and readiness.

Given the increased demands of combat training and readiness, the Brigade Party Committee and commanders have led and instructed organizations and units to concentrate on well performing ideological and political education, and establishing officers and soldiers' motive, sense of responsibility, and resolve to accomplish every mission. The party committees, party cells, commissars, and commanders of organizations and units have flexibly and creatively applied methods of political education, which are highly feasible, close to characteristics of missions and trainees, and suitable for each training content and practical situation. They have also closely combined basic education with continuous education and general education with private education. It is imperative to raise officers and soldiers' awareness of the significance of combat training and readiness; facilitate their deeper understanding of the position, guideline, principle, combination, requirement, content, and mission of combat training; help them to further perceive adversaries, partners, and schemes, tricks, and sabotage of the hostile forces; make them aware of advantages and disadvantages, which may arise during execution processes of their tasks, thereby contributing to keeping officers and soldiers' thought on an even keel and increasing their awareness, responsibility and resolve to undertake combat training and readiness, especially their vigilance and readiness during holidays, new year holidays, and major political events of the Party, State and military.

Soldiers reading books and newspapers on the training ground

In recognition of cadres' vital role in combat training and readiness, the Brigade Party Committee and commanders always lead the staffing and development of the corps of cadres, with a focus on improving their professional knowledge and ability to do Party work and political work. The Brigade Party Committee pays regular attention to strengthening the corps of cadres, particularly those directly performing combat training and readiness according to Directive No. 697-CT/QUTW, dated 13 October 2014, of the CMC’s Standing Committee. All companies, platoons, and sections are fully staffed as may be prescribed by the regulation on the strength of units directly conducting combat training and readiness. It also reviews party organizations to ensure that all party cells in companies in charge of combat training and readiness have party executive committees. In addition, the brigade seeks to promote training quality and effectiveness with a view to raising cadres' abilities to meet the requirements of missions. During execution process, the brigade attaches importance to improving the abilities to counsel and do Party work and political work of not only the corps of commissars and political assistants but also military, logistics, technical officers, especially the skills and methods to conduct training of officers at platoon and company level. As for technical training, the brigade focuses on developing officers' abilities to deliver lessons and combine the modeling of movement with the use of concrete models and advanced equipment, including projectors, movement simulators, etc., to facilitate soldiers' understanding. As far as tactical training is concerned, the brigade attaches importance to cultivating method of arranging tactical formations and aligning training with practical terrain conditions. It is imperative to concentrate on fostering abilities to command and control training and sharpen officers' steadfastness, psychology and working style to ensure that they are not only good at professional knowledge and training methods but also capable of doing Party work and political work. As for newly graduated officers, party committees and commanders at all levels regularly provide further training to improve their abilities to command, control and conduct training so as to enable them to rapidly apply their knowledge to reality, satisfying demands of assigned missions. The brigade opened 7 training courses for 514 officers at various levels in 2018. All of them were graded good and excellent. Every year, 100 per cent of officers are trained according to their positions, 75 per cent of them get good and excellent results.

The Brigade Party Committee and command request the propaganda during combat training and readiness must be aligned with the implementation of Resolution of the 4th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (12th tenure) on Party building, Directive No. 05-CT/TW of the Politburo (12th tenure), the "Determination to Win" Emulation Movement, and the campaign of "Promoting tradition, devoting talent, deserving to be Uncle Ho's soldiers." The propaganda focuses on bringing into play the exemplary role of cadres and party members and applying many best practices to promote the quality of combat training and readiness and deal with weaknesses. Additionally, the brigade steps up the quality and effectiveness of the implementation of "Three breakthroughs" according to Resolution of the 10th Military Party Congress with a focus on making breakthroughs in organization and staffing, especially those in combat training and readiness. It also effectively conduct emulation movements, including "Cadres are typical examples of fulfilling functions, missions, and working regulations, "Every military personnel is a shining example of complying with State law, military discipline, and ensuring safety." These movements seek to make party organizations pure and robust and build comprehensively strong units to successfully accomplish every assigned task. At the same time, it is imperative to strictly follow rules and regulations on safety in training; associate combat training with readiness exercises, promoting good order and discipline and complying with military regulations and State law without allowing unsafe cases to happen in training and serious violation of discipline. The brigade requests organizations and units to maintain regulations on preliminary summing-up and summarization, learn from experience, praise and reward organizations and individuals for their outstanding achievements, and strictly settle violations.

In order to bring into play the integrated strength of organizations and forces in carrying out missions, the Brigade Party Committee leads units in the staffing and exploitation of the role of mass organizations and councils of military personnel. During the execution process, the brigade focuses on perfecting content and action programs of mass organizations to ensure their alignment with missions of each organization and unit; brings into play the role and responsibility of members of the Youth Union and leading members in combat training and readiness; strictly maintains meeting regulation of organizations; and effectively realizes the regulation on grass-roots level democracy to promote military democracy and democracy in other fields. At the same time, it is imperative to mobilize resources to satisfy cultural, spiritual requirements at the highest level; comprehend and well meet officers and soldiers' legitimate aspirations, thus creating unanimous awareness, solidarity, and consensus in units.

Besides, the Brigade Party Committee leads and instructs to well carry out mass mobilization and internal political protection with the aim of proactively preventing and struggling against infiltration, collusion, and sabotage conducted by adversaries and hostile elements; manifestations of degradation in political ideology, "self-evolution," and "self-transformation" within the Party; leakage of secret, military information and loss of weapons, explosives, and so forth. It also pays regular attention to improving soldiers' material, spiritual life; and creating favourable conditions for soldiers to become optimistic and happy and have a sense of responsibility and resolve to successfully accomplish their combat training and readiness.

Through implementing the aforementioned solutions synchronously, the quality and effectiveness of combat training and readiness are promoted, which enables the brigade to successfully complete its assigned tasks. The brigade has been awarded the Flag of Good Training Unit for several consecutive years by the MND. It is both achievement and experience that the 229th Engineer Brigade can continue to bring into play in mission execution, contributing to boosting its integrated strength and combat power to satisfy mission demands in the new situation and deserve the tradition of "successful opening of trails" of the heroic Vietnamese Engineer Soldiers.

Colonel Tran Thanh Khoi, Brigade Commissar