The 250^th Missile Regiment (361^st Air Defence Division) conducts the central political task of managing and protecting the airspace as well as key political, economic and social targets in the Northwest. In recent years, implementing the policy of building a modern Air Defence – Air Force Service, the Regiment has been equipped with many new modern weapons and equipment, creating favourable conditions to gradually improve combat strength to meet mission requirements. However, besides basic advantages, the Regiment has faced many difficulties and challenges. In particular, the staff level is still limited; documents on training troops to exploit new weapons, equipment and missiles are incomplete; assurance facilities do not meet task requirements, etc. Against this backdrop, the Regiment’s Party Committee and Command have adopted numerous solutions for all aspects of work, thus constantly improving the overall quality and combat strength, meeting the requirements in all situations.

First of all, well perform the work of political education, increase troops’ revolutionary vigilance, build up cadres and soldiers’ combat morale and determination so that they will always be willing to undertake and successfully complete all assigned tasks.

This measure lays the foundation for improving the Regiment’s overall quality and combat strength. The quick developments and high timing of air-to-air warfare require the unit to be ready to fight in all situations. Meanwhile, the majority of its staff members are non-commissioned officers. Many of them have difficult family conditions, while having to conduct strict guard duty, which greatly affects their health and enthusiasm. Being highly aware of the situation, the Regiment’s Party Committee and Command relentlessly propagate soldiers on the Party’s defence and military guidelines; regimes and regulations on combat readiness, airspace management of the Service and the Division as well as the unit’s characteristics and tasks. Simultaneously, agencies and units are directed to renovate forms and methods to improve the quality of political education and ideological leadership in the unit; strengthen propaganda so as for soldiers to be highly aware of the situation, objects of struggle, plots, conspiracies, characteristics of air combat, especially when the enemy uses hi-tech weapons. Before each peak of combat duty, the Regiment often launches a pioneering emulation movement, focusing on combat readiness, management and firm protection of the assigned airspace and targets. As a result, its cadres and soldiers have developed not only strong political will, high vigilance and belief in fighting methods and weapons, technical equipment but also strong determination to be willing to accept and complete all assigned tasks. In addition, the Regiment strengthens measures to manage, grasp and solve ideological problems, especially for officers and soldiers at stations on high mountains; promptly resolves emerging issues to prevent unexpected passiveness, “self-evolution”, “self-transformation” internally as well as maintain high solidarity and unity within the unit.

Practising deploying and withdrawing a missile

Second, focus on leadership to implement breakthroughs in training quality and combat readiness. Thoroughly grasping and implementing Conclusion No. 60-KL/QUTW on continuing to implement Resolution No. 765-NQ/QUTW dated January 18^th, 2019 of the Central Military Commission on improving training quality in the 2013-2020 period and beyond; annual combat training orders of the Service Commander, the Regiment Party Committee develops a thematic resolution on leadership to improve its training quality, build regularity and enforce discipline. In particular, the focal point is to achieve breakthroughs into "basic training, mastery of weapons, technical equipment, especially new generation one; importance is attached to training based on plans, locations, objects of struggle and situations and battles; taking the management and protection of the airspace, and building a revolutionary, regular, elite and modern Service as training objectives". Implementing the breakthrough stage, the Regiment promotes the innovation of contents, programs and methods, improves the quality of training management and administration, and develops training schedules close to the tasks and plans, terrains, objects of struggle and organisation, weapons, and technical equipment. The detachments focus on training combat crews in a synchronous and intensive direction; strengthen training at night, on the field, in complex weather conditions, and in high-tech warfare. Accordingly, with the combat team of the Headquarters, the unit focuses on training officers to firmly grasp the assigned airspace, the fire zone of each detachment and the whole Regiment; method of receiving and transmitting orders from the Regiment Headquarters to units and detachments, etc. As for firing squads, the unit lays the emphasis on training them to catch extremely low-flying targets; performing voice commands, coordinated movements; destroying flying vehicles in complicated situations, such as: break-in, heavy interference, high intensity; training personal targets; coordination among combat crews from small, compact squads, to full combat crews, etc. In particular, the unit needs to respond to strong development of science and technology, especially the enemy's means and methods of air combat, strong electronic suppression tricks, low-flying and stealth infiltration, etc., which disable our radar system. Meanwhile, the Regiment’s assigned areas are mainly dense forests, affecting the observation of the guard forces. To overcome that problem, the Regiment directs the units to strengthen training to improve the ability of eye-observations and anti-aircraft observation stations to observe, detect and identify targets; focuses on training the troops to maximise the features, skills and tactics of new advanced weapons and equipment; effective use of anti-interference and television optical features; improve maneuverability, withdrawal, deployment combined with diversion, camouflage to effectively deal with the enemy’s new air combat.

In order to improve the quality of training, the Regiment directs agencies and units to be well prepared, maintain regulations and training procedures for cadres, especially for company, platoon and newly-graduated ones. Units need to actively study and build a system of exercises to train combat crews in the Headquarters, missile ammunition assembly crews, radar stations, air defence observation stations, missile battalions to ensure synchronisation at different levels. Moreover, the unit promotes renewing the work of organising army competitions and games, inspection and evaluation of training results in a practical approach, attaching responsibilities of Party committees and commanders at all levels to the training results of each unit. As a result, the regimental training quality has constantly been improved. So far, 100% of Regiment Headquarters’ and units in Crew One have achieved excellent grade, while Crew Two gets good grade. The unit also attains excellent grade in competitions at Division and Service level. In 2019, the Commander of Battalion 151 won the second prize in the Service competition; in 2020, the crew of the Regiment Headquarters in the Division Sport Games obtained an excellent grade and the regiment’s commander won the first prize.

Along with that, the Regiment has actively studied and grasped anti-defence targets, airborne situations, flight route forecasts, enemy’s operational tricks and identification of key objectives, etc., thereby promptly adjusting and perfecting combat plans synchronously to safeguard the airspace from the Regiment level to sub-unit ones. The unit strictly maintains discipline and combat readiness at all levels, ensuring accurate and sufficient number of troops, organising air and land guarding as stipulated; effectively implements "4 knows"¹ in airspace management, ensuring timely and accurate detection, identification and reporting of targets and properly handling air-defence combat situations according to Order 27/CL-BTTM dated December 3^rd, 2002 by the Chief of the General Staff. It also emphasises on increasing combat readiness alarms for squads on duty to promptly detect and rectify faults. Besides, the Regiment has made regular inspection and firmly grasped the terrain, especially on high points and paths, etc., thereby consulting on plans to arrange air defence stations and observatories, ensuring continuity, multi-layer, timely detecting the enemy from afar; organising many quick and accurate channels of information, notifications and alarms. It also closely cooperates with local party committees and authorities at stationed areas to grasp the situation in all aspects and develop plans to protect ground targets. As a result, over the years, 100% of the squads on combat readiness duty have successfully completed their tasks, ensuring absolute safety in protecting special aircrafts and serving military flight training; the quality of reception and transmission in the Regiment’s intelligence networks has all exceeded expectations, without errors, omissions, delays, and false alarms.

Thirdly, well maintain technical and logistical work with a focus on combat readiness, training, and exercises. As a technical combat unit, the Regiment’s combat power depends greatly on the quality of weapons, ammunition and equipment. Therefore, the Regimental Party Committee annually organises thematic leadership resolution on technical work; the Regimental commander directs the Technical Committee to develop and finalise plans and guide technical work in each year, each phase and deploy it synchronously and uniformly throughout the Regiment; strictly maintain technical working regulations in association with the effective implementation of the 50^th  Campaign. To this end, the Regiment has established teams to ensure synchronous techniques from the Technical Committee to the battalions to level decentralisation of technical assurance. Particularly, the Technical Committee is both capable of mobile repair and ready to support squads performing important tasks or on duty of combat readiness. At the same time, staffs are assigned to be responsible for securing equipment in each direction; in which, competent officers and technicians are in charge of the equipment with unstable technical coefficients and far-away units. Therefore, the Regiment's weapons and technical equipment are always in ready-to-fight state; technical coefficients of radar, missile control stations, rocket launchers always meet and exceed criteria; line 1 and line 2 missile bullets reach 100%; power stations reach 90%, combat vehicles reach 95%. Logistical assurance is highly valued with a lot of innovations to timely and properly supply for regular and unexpected tasks. The movement of extra production has been promoted with positive results, which has improved soldiers’ living, and practically contributed to heightening the Regiment’s combat strength.

Currently, along with the above-mentioned solutions, the Party Committee and commanders of the 250th Missile Regiment are focusing on building an “exemplarily, typically” comprehensively strong unit, improving overall quality, combat strength, and well completing the task of managing and protecting the assigned airspace.

Lieutenant Colonel TRAN NGOC CHINH, Commander of the Regiment
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1. Including: knowing the enemy’s flight plan; knowing whether the enemy’s flight has been conducted or not; knowing the enemy’s flight track; knowing the enemy’s flying activities in the air.