A32 Factory is a leading unit in maintaining, restoring, and extending the lifespan of jet fighters; manufacturing aviation technical spare parts and materials for the Air Defence - Air Force Service. With the spirit of making efforts to overcome difficulties, being creative, and proactively taking advantage of opportunities, the factory has always successfully fulfilled its assigned tasks; becoming a reputable and sustainably developed defence enterprise. That is the result of a combination of practical solutions, in which, the core one is to promote comprehensive innovation, improve the quality and efficiency of the “determined to win” emulation movement, creating an important motivation for factory’s leaders, party members, and military-civilian employees to do their utmost to fulfill their duties.

To do that, attention has been paid to leading, directing and implementing the emulation work, and emulation movement. The Factory’s Party Committees and commanding officers at all levels are properly aware of and interested in emulation and commendation work; attaches importance to building and step by step perfecting the Regulation on emulation and commendation work. Emphasis has been placed on regularly grasping directions and orientations of higher commands, thoroughly understanding the situation of the unit, properly determining the emulation content and targets; focusing on weak points and improper aspects; combining emulation and commendation work, and emulation movement with the political tasks of the factory. Each workshop, department, agency, centre, station, and mass organisation has concretised the contents and goals of the “Determined to win” Emulation movement into its own contents and targets which are relevant to the requirements, tasks, and characteristics of job and position of each individual. To avoid the phenomenon of "launching" without "responding", the Factory’s Party Committee and the Board of Directors have directed the political agency, the emulation and commendation council, and the emulation teams of the workshops to properly perform their roles of giving advice and guidance, conducting in-depth inspection; and implementing the “determined to win” emulation movement. At the same time, attention has been paid to effectively integrating the emulation movement of branches with the promotion of studying and following Ho Chi Minh's thought, morality and style, the Campaign of promoting the tradition, devoting talents, and deserving to be "Uncle Ho's Soldiers" in the new period, creating motivation for the unit to successfully fulfill its tasks.

The emulation movement has created motivations which can be seen first and foremost in the improvement of political and ideological quality of collectives and individuals. As a result, their political enlightenment level, fortitude, and their political attitude and responsibility in implementing tasks have been enhanced. These motivations are also manifested in the work of maintaining, fixing, calibrating, testing and conducting flight tests for aircraft, which requires officers, engineers and employees to be very careful and meticulous in each operation, strictly follow the process and technological discipline, and working discipline, with the spirit of "all for safe flights."

In the condition that there are shortages of human resources, modern machines, and materials, in order to meet the requirements, the content and objectives of the factory's emulation movement have focused on improving the aircraft maintenance capacity and manufacturing aviation spare parts, materials and equipment. From easy maintenance only, in recent years, the factory has invested in improving the capability to conduct major maintenance, including the extension of lifespan of modern aircraft, such as: Su-22, Su-27, Su-30; fixing more than 5,000 parts and equipment, including nearly 2,000 parts and equipment of Su-27 and Su-30 aircraft. Notably, since 2016, the factory has conducted major maintenance, successful expanding the lifespan of the Su-27UBK aircraft. This not only affirms the improvement in scientific and technical level of the factory’s staff, but also helps reduce costs, significantly shortens the maintenance duration time, and minimises effect on operation, training, and combat readiness of Air Force units. Up to now, the factory has basically completed phase III of the project "Investing in technology for major maintenance of Su-27 fighter, local repair of Su-30 aircraft". Its engineers and technicians have comprehensively mastered the technology line of the in-service aircraft maintenance, making contribution to reducing dependence on foreign partners. In addition, the factory has also conducted maintenance and manufacture of spare parts for some Air Defence units; maintaining missile systems and several shipboard systems for the Navy; researching and maintaining some parts of the S-300 system; maintaining the high pressure oil pump of the fuel system of the АИП on the QH36-58 launcher vehicle; and manufacturing Ka-28 aircraft holding part, etc. These successes have made contribution to raising the position of the factory to a new height. This is the foundation for the factory to expand investment in major modernising projects in the coming time.

A training course on repairing Su-30 MK2 aircraft’s electronic warfare system

Along with recruiting high-quality, well-trained human resources, importance has been attached to training, fostering and improving professional skills, qualifications and capacity for its engineers and technicians; considering it a solid foundation for the Factory to fulfil its assigned tasks. In particular, the factory has focused on training for skill improvement in accordance to the plans of the Ministry of National Defence and the Service, and the requirements and tasks of each job position, especially the training on maintenance of Su-27 aircraft and fixing microchips and Diana devices, etc.

Training courses on new technical skills for new engineers and technical staff have been conducted. And promotion exams to raise workers' qualifications, improving foreign language and IT skills have been organised. As a result, the factory has created a contingent of high-quality human resources, meeting ever higher requirements. In training, emphasis has been placed on making a balance between the theory studying and the practice on machines. Thanks to that, the technical team of the factory is constantly developing, effectively bringing into play their skills, and being proactive and creative in their work.

The emulation movement is the driving force for the factory's officers, engineers, and employees to promote their intellect, enthusiasm, and passion for their profession to solve difficulties; show initiative in technical improvement, document translation, writing document on technological process. Previously, the factory imported all spare parts, now it is able to manufacture a series of material and spare parts for maintenance. Therefore, the amount of imported products has significantly reduced. At the moment, importance is being attached to new investments, joint venture, and cooperation with domestic aviation groups and foreign partners to improve its self-manufacturing capability up to about 35% of the aircraft metal materials and 95% of their non-metallic materials.

In order to realise that goal, the factory has promoted the movement of giving initiative and suggesting technical improvement; and encouraging the role of young scientific and creative groups. Since 2012 to date, there have been hundreds of initiatives and technical improvements applied, many of which have won the Creative Youth Award at the Army and Service levels and the Creative Labour Diploma of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour; Thousands of mechanical designs have been applied, bringing high efficiency in manufacturing spare parts and maintaining aircraft, significantly reducing the import cost of aviation technological equipment and materials, saving hundreds of billions of dong for the state budget. In 2021, the factory organised the grassroots acceptance of the Ministerial Project on manufacturing technical materials for the maintenance of Su-27 aircraft. Moreover, the scientific project on  renovating the oxygen device block БКО-2M, БКО-3.B2 and the container for the rescue reserve НAЗ on the aircraft ejection seat of the Su-22 aircraft for the use on the Su-30 MK2 aircraft ejection seat has also been successfully defended at the Science and Technology Council of the Service.

Upholding the enthusiasm for research, combining working and studying, the factory has actively collected, translated, and compiled written documents, meeting the demands of the procedure and technical documents. Emphasis has been placed on the work of managing records of technology, maintenance records, and maintenance technical sheets of the aircraft; each stage in the workshops is carefully recorded in detail, ensuring strict compliance with the process. Up to now, the factory has compiled 22 sets of medium and major maintenance process, with nearly 25 thousand pages; compiled more than 130 textbooks and lesson plans for the training of changing Su-27 and Su-30 aircraft, increasing the lifespan of MiG-21, Su-22 M/UM, Su-22 M3/UM3K, Su-27 SK/UBK aircraft.

In the context of complicated developments of the COVID-19 pandemic, to ensure that production and maintenance activities are on schedule, a number of measures have been applied to realise its "dual goals": considering pandemic prevention as a central task while trying not to interrupt the production and maintenance activities; taking care of the health of its staff. In addition to purchasing medical supplies, such as: medical masks, emergency drugs, chloramine B, alcohol sanitiser. In addition to strictly complying with regulations on pandemic prevention and control, attention has been also paid to measures for reasonable employment of labour force and scientifically organising work; regularly assuring 50% of the employees at work with the application of "3 on-the-spot", ensuring the pandemic prevention. For mobile forces performing maintenance at units, importance has been attached to absolutely safe transportation options. In order to keep up with the schedule and plan, the workshops have been active in applying overtime working, launching the emulation movement to encourage their staff to try their utmost, taking on different duties to make up for the one who is off for COVID-19 prevention.

As a result, the factory has completed 100% of its plan for 2021. The highlights ones are: the inspection, control, and recognition of maintenance quality, conducting flight test and handover 03 Su-22 M4 and 01   Su-27 UBK aircraft to the units; dismantling, unpacking and repairing 01 Su-30 MK2 aircraft; extending the lifespan, repairing and improving the reliability of the aircraft and engine control systems, and taking-off and landing systems, fuel systems, fuel tanks of 04 Su-22 M4 aircraft; key inspection and elimination of structural damage for 42 Su-27 SK/UBK and Su-30 MK2 aircraft; fixing and taking over 12 special vehicles, etc.

Promoting the recorded experience and achievements, in the coming time, A32 Factory will continue to promote the “Determined to win” emulation movement with specific and practical activities; thoroughly overcoming weaknesses, creating motivation to further improve quality and efficiency, making contribution to the successful completion of all assigned tasks.

Senior Colonel PHAM NGOC BON, Political Commissar of the Factory