Quang Ninh is a border, coastal province located in the Northeastern extremity of Vietnam, sharing land and maritime borders with China, acting as a an important pole in the development triangle of the Northern key economic region, thus holding a strategic position in terms of economy, defence, security, and diplomacy. Being rich in tradition, history, culture, mineral resources, owning a lot of popular beauty spots, such as Ha Long Bay (which has been twice recognised as a world natural heritage site by UNESCO), Quang Ninh has great potential for development in various fields.

Leaders of Military Region 3 and Quang Ninh province inspect training preparation work

Bringing into play those advantages, in recent years, Quang Ninh has achieved rapid, sustainable development with many new, creative, breakthrough models and approaches; it has become an international tourism hub, developed modern industry, obtained comprehensive economic growth, and maintained defence and security. Being not only an area of “Safety – Stability – Development” with its double-digit growth rate recorded in 9 consecutive years (2015 – 2023), Quang Ninh is also a role model in building the armed forces and people’s army, enhancing national defence, and protecting the Fatherland under the Party’s resolutions and directives; more specifically, the provincial armed forces have always maintained unity, proactively overcome difficulties, and successfully fulfilled their assigned tasks. In this regard, the task of training and combat readiness as a breakthrough has been carried out with significant achievements and various synchronous measures by all-level party committees and commands, thereby making contributions to improving the provincial armed forces’ synergy and combat power and building “exemplarily, typically” comprehensively strong units. In 2023, the Provincial Military Command (PMC) of Quang Ninh continued to be the leading unit in the Determination to Win Emulation Movement launched by Military Region 3 (including 8 provinces and 1 municipality); the Government’s emulation flag was suggested to the PMC by the Military Region’s Party Committee and Command; the PMC received the excellent emulation flag from the Provincial People’s Committee. From the performance of military-defence tasks, the provincial armed forces have drawn some lessons which are also considered to be measures for the upcoming time.

First, enhancing all-level party committees and commands’ leadership and direction over the task of training and combat readiness. The Provincial Military Party Committee has focused on directing offices and units to grasp and effectively implement higher echelons’ resolutions, directives, and plans on training and combat readiness, particularly Resolution 1659-NQ/QUTW, dated 20^th December 2022, by the Central Military Commission on “raising the quality of training in the period of 2023 – 2030 and beyond”, Military-Defence Work Command by Commander of the Military Region, and yearly local military-defence work directives by the Provincial People’s Committee. Grounded on those documents, offices, units, and localities have developed and implemented their own resolutions and plans in a uniform, synchronous, effective manner. All-level party committees have issued specialised resolutions on combat training, with comprehensive but focalised content, specific, proper objectives, targets, and tasks as well as drastic, synchronous measures. Due attention has been paid to seriously, closely organising training preparation-related contests from grass-roots to PMC levels with hundreds of highly feasible training initiatives and solutions, opportunely directing district-level military commands to construct training grounds, thereby contributing to raising the provincial armed forces’ training quality to a new height. At the same time, great value has been attached to directing the building of role models of training and combat readiness as the basis for drawing and spreading lessons across the province.

Terrorism and riot combat training

Renewing the armed forces’ training and combat readiness and raising the quality of this work have been seen as a breakthrough to well implement the Central Military Commission’s guidelines on building an “elite, compact, strong” Army by the Provincial Military Party Committee and PMC. To that end, the PMC has directed its offices and units to improve the quality of the contingent of cadres in charge of training; offices and units have been asked to renew the content and methods of training cadres, with a focus on weaknesses and new knowledge and seriously, effectively maintain regulations on approving lesson plans and training cadres at all levels simultaneously. Besides, consideration has been given to comprehensively renewing training content, programs, forms, and methods under the motto of “basics, practicality, thorough grasp” for the regular force and the motto of “basics, practicality, quality” for the militia and self-defence force in accordance with the particularities of areas and units, especially sea, island areas and units tasked with combat readiness. Importance has been attached to directing, managing, and operating training work closely, comprehensively in a “focalised, uniform, synchronous, effective, non-overlapping” fashion, stepping up the organisation of contests, examinations, and re-examinations, and opportunely drawing lessons on weak points as the basis for improving the quality and evenness of offices and units. Hence, the quality of training and combat readiness has been increasingly raised as a contribution to enhancing the provincial armed forces’ synergy and combat power. Yearly exercises at all levels have been well organised across the province, thus making contributions to raising the entire political system and people’s awareness and responsibility for the building of defensive zones. In addition to the raised quality of training and exercises, the PMC has directed its offices and units to strictly maintain regulations on combat readiness. Offices and units have sufficiently, synchronously organised office duty and combat duty teams under relevant regulations. Due attention has been paid to regularly supplementing and completing combat documents and organising combat projects-based rehearsals  to defend offices and key targets and avoid falling into passivity. Units have closely controlled unmanned aerial vehicles’ activities, proactively grasped and correctly assessed the situation along the border, opportunely, effectively settled military-defence situations in their areas.

Quang Ninh has quite sufficient elements, such as border, sea, island, mountain, and plain; it is a national and international tourism hub; it has a large area with military units being scattered; its political security and social order and safety situation is rather complicated. Therefore, the PMC has directed its offices and units to closely associate the raised quality of training with regularity building and discipline management. The province has frequently inspected and assessed the work of regularity building and observance of discipline and law performed by offices, units, and localities according to Directive 79/CT-BQP, dated 22^nd July 2022, by Minister of National Defence; this work has been stipulated in yearly, quarterly, monthly resolutions, commanders’ work plans, and plans for building “exemplarily, typically” comprehensively strong units. Emphasis has been placed on training troops to grasp and effectively apply regulations, directives, and new guiding documents on regularity building and observance of discipline to the performance of their tasks, especially in the training process. Military training has been closely combined with political education and dissemination of knowledge of law and discipline among troops. Therefore, all offices and units have always ensured safety, with a very low rate of violations of discipline on a yearly basis (below 0.2%); they have witnessed no serious violation of discipline or incident in the training process. Offices and units have promoted all-level cadres’ exemplary role in performing their assigned tasks, particularly in managing troops’ ideological developments and social relationships, while severely handling violations of discipline and law as well as traffic violations.

To lay a solid foundation for training and combat readiness, the PMC has always concentrated on well performing logistics and technical work. The province has reserved sufficient ammunition and logistics materials for combat readiness under Directive 15/CT-TM, dated 3^rd December 2018 by Chief of the General Staff and Decision 1117/QĐ-BTL, dated 8^th March 2020 by Military Region 3’s Commander on reserving logistics materials for training and combat readiness. At the same time, the province has directed the use of its training budget in a close, open, transparent, democratic, standardised manner for each group of troops to prevent wastefulness. The province has proactively exploited on-the-spot logistics resources and well performed the work of disease prevention and control with the rate of healthy troops standing at 98.8% and above. Besides, the province has focused on sufficiently, opportunely providing weapons, equipment, and means for training, combat readiness, and contingency tasks, while well implementing the Campaign entitled “Managing and exploiting weapons and technical equipment effectively, sustainably, safely, economically and ensuring traffic safety”.

Bringing into play the tradition of “unity, creativity, dauntlessness, loyalty, victory” of a unit which has been twice given the title of Hero of the People’s Armed Forces, with great political determination and effective breakthrough measures, the provincial armed forces of Quang Ninh have made huge, solid changes in training and combat readiness. This is an important foundation for cadres and soldiers of the provincial armed forces to keep successfully fulfilling all assigned tasks.

Sr. Col. KHUC THANH DU

Member of the Provincial Party Committee Standing Board

Commander of the PMC