The Brigade 950 under the Military Region 9 is an infantry unit tasked with defending Phu Quoc island which holds a position of importance to national defence, security, and tourism and represents the biggest contributor to Kien Giang province’s budget. Perceiving that, the Brigade has focused all resources on building the all-people national defence and the posture of all-people national defence associated with the posture of people’s security, thereby making contributions to making the defensive posture of the province and the Military Region increasingly strong as the basis for the socio-economic development of Phu Quoc island district and the Southwestern sea. Since its inception (March 15^th 2014), the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command have directed its affiliates to promote a sense of unity, overcome all difficulties, and flexibly adopt proper measures for building a strong unit comprehensively as the basis for encouraging the synergy, successfully fulfilling all assigned tasks, and maintaining cooperation with local party committees and authorities and relevant forces to protect political security and social order and safety in the stationed area. The Brigade has drawn several lessons from the 5-year building of a comprehensively strong unit as a measure for further improving its task performance in the upcoming time.

First, building a politically strong unit. The Brigade is a newly-founded unit, most of its staff members are deployed from the mainland, and its facilities are inadequate, all of which negatively impact on the unit’s operation and its staff members’ ideology and sentiment. Against that backdrop, the Brigade has determined to stabilize its organizational structure, build up its troops’ political zeal, and make them capable of successfully fulfilling the assigned mission as a top priority. To that end, the Brigade has attached importance to the work of political education and troop ideological management. Emphasis has been placed on making its troops fully understand the Party’s military-defence guidelines, the tasks of the Military, Military Region, Brigade, and each unit, the hostile forces’ “peaceful evolution” strategy, and the defence-security situation in the area, particularly at sea in order to raise their awareness and responsibility for building their units. Yearly, the Brigade holds refresher courses aimed at enhancing the teaching capacity and method of political cadres, especially commissars and deputy commissars of battalions and companies, actively renews the training content and method, and combines political education with military education, legal education and other activities in accordance with each unit’s particularities and task. Besides, activities relating to the party and political work, such as Political and Spiritual Day at grass-roots level and “Soldiers’ Talent Contest” have been organized regularly, creatively. The exemplary role of cadres and the unity between cadres and soldiers have been promoted, thereby building up their political zeal and love for seas, islands, and units, helping units to grasp their troops’ ideology and aspirations so as to apply the training content and method properly.

Fully aware of the importance of party organizations to building a strong unit comprehensively, the Brigade has frequently consolidated party organizations, enhanced their leadership and combativeness, aligned the building of pure, strong party organizations with that of comprehensively strong units, and promoted the role of party members and cadres, particularly the key ones. It has also issued the regulations on cadres and party members’ role model-setting responsibility in line with their task performance as the basis for annual evaluation of its staff. Moreover, consideration has been given to building and educating the mass organizations, promoting democracy, directing activities of Youth Union, Women’s Union, and Soldiers’ Council towards the performance of the Brigade’s central political mission. At the same time, great value has been attached to conducting the emulation and commendation work and closely combining the Determination to Win Emulation Movement with the 12^th Politburo’s Directive 05-CT/TW and the Campaign entitled “promote tradition, devote talent, deserve to be Uncle Ho’s Soldiers.” As a result, over the years, all cadres and soldiers of the Brigade have kept their mind on their work, readily undertaken and accomplished every assigned task.

Second, attaching significance to standard order building and discipline management. To well perform this task, the Brigade has directed its affiliates to grasp the Central Military Commission’s Directive 37/CT-ĐUQSTW on standard order building, the Defence Minister’s Directive 917/1999/CT-BQP on building comprehensively strong units, and the Military Region 9 Commander’s Directive 404/CT-QK on prohibiting drunkenness and smoking in public places. At the same time, it has required offices and units to transform their task and higher echelons’ regulations into their own regulations, to stringently maintain daily, weekly regulations, and to closely manage their troops, especially in days off and rest hours. Besides, it has actively organized sports, cultural, artistic exchange programs so as to reduce troops’ stress. It has also made investments in flower and bonsai gardens, upgraded and built a new system of posters to achieve the standard order in line with the green, clean, scenic environment. Additionally, it has resolutely, strictly dealt with violations of discipline. Consequently, its units’ quality of standard order building and discipline management has been improved; there has been no serious discipline violation while the number of trivial discipline violations has been increasingly reduced.

Third, raising the quality of combat training and readiness. Grasping and executing the Central Military Commission’s Resolution 765-NQ/QUTW, dated December 20^th 2012, the Military Region 9’s Party Committee’s Resolution 533-NQ/ĐU, dated March 7^th 2013, on “raising the training quality in the period of 2013-2020 and beyond,” and the Military Region 9 Commander’s combat training order, annually, the Brigade’s Party Committee issues a special resolution on the training work. In such resolutions, the Brigade has set specific targets and assigned party committee members to each piece of work. Meanwhile, the Brigade’s Command formulates documents on the training work as the basis for units’ performance of this work. With the budget allocated by higher echelons and its internal resources, the Brigade has focused on building the system of standard shooting ranges, training grounds, and teaching aids. Being a unit with various arms, in the training process, the Brigade has adhered to the motto of “basics, practicality, and thorough grasp” and required its affiliates to train their troops to “master specialized knowledge and tactics.” Besides, the Brigade has always stayed close to the object of struggle, sea and island terrain, each arm’s particularities, directed its units to increase combat tasks-based, practical, and night-time training and closely combine tactical training with physical training. To raise the training quality of its arms, the Brigade has assigned each member of its Command to train each specialized force. Doing so has helped promote the strengths of each member and create an incentive for cadres to self-consciously improve their specialized knowledge, tactics, and skills as the basis for directing, counselling, operating, and inspecting units’ training work effectively. As a result, since 2014, all troops of the Brigade have achieved good results in the training work, over 80% of them have obtained distinction and credit.

Besides, the Brigade has concentrated on enhancing the quality of exercises, particularly the general exercises, the command-office exercises, and the live-firing exercises. It has also made those exercises relevant to its affiliates’ combat missions. The situations in the exercises have contributed to improving its cadres and soldiers’ command, management, operation, and staff capabilities and the combat coordination in both independent operation and joint operation under the condition of hi-tech warfare. Consequently, all exercises by the Brigade have gained the encouraging results with the absolute safety and provided an important foundation for it to maintain combat readiness. As the Brigade is stationed in a key area, investments have been made in building a system of basic, solid, inter-connected fortifications and acquiring sufficient, high-quality weapons and technical equipment as an important prerequisite for raising its combat strength. Grounded on each specific situation, the Brigade has frequently properly adjusted and practised combat projects, strictly maintained the order for combat readiness duty, and cooperated with other forces in the area in grasping the situation and opportunely advising the Military Region 9 to flexibly, effectively take reaction. Thus, in recent years, the posture within the defensive zone has always stayed firm, the defence and security situation has always been stable, and the socio-economic development has been fostered.

Fourth, due regard has been paid to the logistics and technical work. The Brigade has directed its offices and units to grasp and execute higher-echelons’ directives and guiding documents on the logistics work, opportunely review and sufficiently supplement the amount of reserve materials for the contingency task and combat projects under the regulations. It has well carried out the movement entitled “good catering service and firm management of military supplies,” effectively exploited local sources of food, and step up agricultural production to improve troops’ meals. Besides, due attention has been paid to taking care of and protecting troops’ health.

Regarding the technical work, the Brigade has directed its offices and units to ensure the quality and synchronicity of weapons and technical equipment. It has effectively executed the Campaign 50, stringently maintained the order for preserving, repairing, and classifying weapons and technical equipment, frequently held training courses for its technical staff, and promoted the movement of technical initiatives and innovations. Therefore, the technical work by the Brigade has always reached the targets and greatly contributed to building comprehensively strong units. Those above-mentioned outcomes have provided an important precondition for the Brigade 950 to successfully fulfil the assigned task and firmly protect the Homeland’s seas and islands in the Southwest.

Sr. Col. Vo Van Nam

Commander of the Brigade