The K332 Depot (Unit) under the Technical Department, the Air Defence and Air Force Service, founded on March 06, 1969, and is tasked with receiving, delivering, managing, storing, and maintaining missile equipment, specialized vehicles and other military technical equipment. In the past 50 years of building, fighting and developing, generations of its officers, technicians, and soldiers have always closely attached to the real conditions of Air Defence and Air Force, upholding the spirit of self-reliance, striving to overcome difficulties, receiving, storing and delivering thousands of tons of weapons and ammunitions to units, successfully fulfilling all assigned tasks, making contribution to the glorious achievements of the Service in the struggle for national liberation, firmly defending the Homeland airspace.

Entering the period of national renewal, the Unit’s task is also heavier. It is a national arsenal for storing and maintaining a number of new and modern weapons, missiles, and airplanes’ spare parts. In the implementation of the task, besides favorable conditions, there remain difficulties and challenges due to the limited number of officers and technicians and their professional competence which has not met the task requirements yet; the system of equipment and facilities for technical maintenance has yet to be adequate ; its sub-depots are dispersed, etc. Against that backdrop, the Unit’s Party Committee and its commanding officers have implemented a number of drastic and synchronous policies and solutions, bringing into full play the spirit of self-reliance, focusing on building a "standard, modern and safe" Depot.

First, attention has been paid to strengthening the leadership and direction of the Depot’s party committees and commanders at all levels over the task of making the unit "standard, modern and safe". Grasping and implementing the Resolution No. 382/NQ-DUQSTW of the Central Military Commission on “leading technical work in the new situation”; Directive No. 917/1999/CT-QP of the Minister of National Defence on building comprehensively strong units, annually, the Depot’s Party Committee releases a specialized resolution on the task of making the Depot “standard, modern, and safe” and directs its units to issue their own leadership resolutions, developing action plans of the party committees and commanders with specific criteria, indicators, and measures. In order to achieve good results, in the process, the Party Committee has required its units and agencies to pay attention to promoting the role and responsibilities of their party committees and commanders towards leading and directing the execution, focusing on important contents and overcoming weaknesses. In addition, importance has been attached to educating officers and soldiers to be fully aware of position and role of standardization and safety assurance towards the completion of political tasks of each unit.

While giving top priority to the political quality, the Depot has paid due regard to  standardizing the management and specialized work, considering it a breakthrough step and the foundation for maintaining weapons and equipment effectively, sustainably, absolutely safely. To that end, the Unit’s Party Committee and commanding officers have thoroughly grasped and realized the senior levels’ resolutions and directives, directly the Guideline No 90/HD-TCKT, dated January 08, 2016 by the General Department of Technology on building standard depots. Emphasis has been placed on reviewing, and fulfilling the system of regulations, records, and notice tags; supplementing records of weapons and equipment, etc.; strictly maintaining the order for specialized work and particularly the regulations on the management of weapons and equipment. Importance has been attached to leading and directing agencies and units to conduct the inventory work, regularly inter-supervising and unifying the procedures for weapons and equipment registration; actively moving and arranging weapons and equipment among sub-depots in order to ensure easy delivery and supervision. In order to enhance the capacity for managing and responding to unsafety incidents, the Unit has applied information technology to the management of quantity, quality, category, technical condition of each type of weapons and equipment. Up to now, 100% of management documents has been standardized; all the weapons and equipment data has been encrypted and digitalized on the computer.

Inspecting the K332 Depot’s system of records

Furthermore, attention has been paid to the application of standardization in maintenance process. Most of the weapons and equipment stored in the Depot are modern ones, particularly the aviation equipment. Therefore, it requires a strict maintenance process. In order to meet those requirements, the Unit has effectively executed the contents of Technical Day, maintaining the periodic maintenance regulations in combination with unexpected maintenance when detecting abnormal errors in weapons and equipment. There is a plan for each specific maintenance and storage work in which the quantity and quality of human resources for each job, maintenance time, equipment and technology needed are identified. On that basis, Technical and Logistics Board has coordinated the provision of relevant resources and equipment needed. Moreover, the technical process has been strictly followed; the initiatives on technical innovation have been applied in order to gradually achieve the autonomy in maintaining and fixing weapons and equipment. Upholding the spirit of self-reliance, in the past 05 years, the Unit has successfully fulfilled all assigned tasks. In 2016, in the Army-wide Safe Depot Competition, the Unit won the first prize of the group of Services.

In order to maintain weapons and equipment, particularly the electronic devices, radio, control circuit boards that require good condition of maintenance against extreme climate, special attention has been paid to building and upgrading warehouses to meet modern standards. Due to the fact that the allotted budgets are limited, the Unit’s Party Committee and commanding officers have closely combined the allocated resources with the promotion of internal ones, successfully implementing the work of construction and storage planning, arranging the equipment for its warehouses, preventing fire and explosion, etc., thereby ensuring the effectiveness and meeting the requirements for fire and explosion prevention and combat readiness. As a result, the unit’s facilities have been constructed to store different types of weapons and equipment with a number of modern machines. The typical ones include: the missile positioning chain, the chain for vacuum storage of missile warheads, wave test machine; insulation equipment, moisture prevention for electric and electronic equipment, optical equipment and device for automatically supervising the temperature and moisture of the stores, etc. These are the foundation for enhancing the quality of maintenance and extending the lifespan of weapons and equipment.

Due to the hazardous working environment, the high risk of fire and explosion, the task of safety assurance for the facilities is always a top priority. In the process, due regard has been paid to strictly grasping and abiding by the senior levels’ directives on safety, especially the Directive 96/CT-BQP by the Minister of National Defence on "The work of ensuring safety for weapons and ammunition storage facilities”; regularly instructing agencies and units to strictly maintain the regulations on fire and explosion prevention and safety when being in direct contact with weapons and ammunition; strictly checking technical condition of weapons and equipment before use. Accordingly, all the work of receiving, delivering, technical maintaining and arranging weapons and equipment is scientifically planned; the technological procedures and regulations on labor protection, safety and hygiene, especially in direct contact with ammunition and rocket fuel are strictly followed. The Unit has invested in construction of anti-pervasive explosion and lightning protection systems, etc., ensuring enough fire engines for 3 storage areas and fire prevention and fighting equipment for 100% of its facilities. Significance has been attached to patrolling and guarding the storage areas, planning and organizing the exercises on storage protection, fire and explosion prevention; cooperating with local authorities in carrying out the work of security protection, social-economic development, military-civilian solidarity consolidation, etc.

Additionally, emphasis has been placed on the work of ensuring traffic safety, particularly in separated branches. Recently, the Unit’s Party Committee has instructed its agencies and units to form the Mechanism for vehicle and machine management and usage, requesting its staff to make commitments to observing the traffic law, regularly checking technical conditions of vehicles, focusing on thoroughly grasping traffic safety topics, raising troops’ self-consciousness within the units.

Moreover, attention has been paid to building a contingent of technicians to meet the task requirements. In the past years, the Depot’s Party Committee and commanding officers have been active in cooperating with senior agencies in synchronously implementing measures on ideology, organization and policy to consolidate the quality of human resources. Together with assisting the staff to build firm political stand, good professional ethics, regular and scientific working habit, the Depot has attached great value to reviewing and rearranging technicians in accordance with their training majors. At the same time, attention has been paid to implementing various forms of training technicians, considering on-spot training as the main method. The contents of training courses are aimed at improving troops’ knowledge and maintenance and management skills, especially their knowledge on technical maintenance for missiles, specialized equipment, aircraft and electronic devices.

Due to its disperse storage places, the Unit’s Party Committee and commanding officers have focused on upholding the regulations and disciplines in managing the staff; enhancing decentralization in association with clearly assigning the responsibilities to separated branches. In addition, the emulation movements, the development of typical individuals and groups, and the implementation of policies for employees have been fostered so as to create a good environment for officers and technicians to keep their mind on their work and units.

Unsatisfied with recorded achievements, in the coming time, the officers, technicians, and soldiers of the K332 Depot will promote the spirit of unity and creativeness, trying to overcome difficulties, making the Unit “standard, modern, and safe”, successfully fulfilling all assigned tasks, making contributions to building a “revolutionary, regular, seasoned and modern” Air Defence and Air Force, firmly defending the airspace of the nation in all situations.

Col. Nguyen Van Bo, the Depot's Junior Political Commissar