Army corps’ weapons and technical equipment have been in use for ages and deteriorated, while their spare parts have been scarce. Therefore, repairing and synchronising weapons and technical equipment represent an important task that will directly contribute to raising army corps’ manoeuvrability and enabling them to successfully fulfil all assigned missions. Besides, it is extremely necessary to enhance army corps’ capability in repairing their weapons and technical equipment.

Under the guidelines on building a “revolutionary, regular, elite, gradually modern Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) with several services, corps, and forces moving straight to modernity,” in recent years, due regard has been paid to upgrading and consolidating facilities in charge of repairing and synchronising weapons and technical equipment at corps level by the Ministry of National Defence. As a result, they have basically satisfied the requirements of repairing the existing weapons and equipment, while making contributions to their army corps’ fulfilment of training and combat readiness task. Although the military technical branch has successfully fulfilled its task, it has been confronted with a lot of difficulties as most of army corps’ weapons and technical equipment have been in use for a long time and the demand for repair and maintenance has been great. Meanwhile, the technical force and the capacity of equipment for repair and maintenance have yet to keep pace with the development of tasks. In addition, budgets, materials, and spare parts have been limited. Thus, in order that army corps’ capability in repairing weapons and technical equipment will be raised to meet the requirements of their manoeuvre, training, combat readiness, and combat missions, it is necessary to resolutely, synchronously implement several measures as follows.

First of all, focus on consolidating and building a contingent of technical cadres and employees at repair facilities both qualitatively and quantitatively. This measure plays a decisive role in the effectiveness and quality of repairing weapons and technical equipment within units and their task performance. The good implementation of this measure will provide sufficient technical human resources for army corps towards 2025 and beyond as the basis for them to effectively exploit modern weapons and technical equipment under the roadmap for building a modern VPA from 2030. To that end, party committees and commands of units should cooperate with higher echelons’ competent offices in reviewing and correctly assessing technical cadres and employees as well as the criteria for their job titles. Due attention should be paid to developing plans for training, retraining, and using technical cadres and employees in accordance with their educational background. In the process, units’ party committees and commands should place emphasis on practically evaluating each staff member’s qualities, abilities, and work experience, using both experienced and young cadres for technical commanding and managerial positions, particularly company and platoon-level cadres, staff and planning assistants, and heads of repair teams. The technical branch and units should formulate plans for deploying young, new graduates to units tasked with combat, while proactively asking higher echelons to recruit more technical cadres in order to consolidate their organisational structure in accordance with the particularities of new-generation weapons and technical equipment.

In addition to the planning and use of human resources, repair units should strictly maintain and improve the work of technical training. In the process, it is necessary to adhere to the motto of “basics, practicality, and thorough grasp.” Significance should be attached to renewing the contents, forms and methods of training, harmoniously combining comprehensive training with intensive training, and actively updating new knowledge of repairing, maintaining, and synchronising new-generation weapons and technical equipment. Due regard should be paid to improving company and platoon-level cadres’ capabilities in commanding their units’ repair operations under the technical procedures. Meanwhile, it is important to better technical assistants’ professional competence and advisory method. Due attention should be paid to training technical employees in repairing new-generation weapons and equipment and manoeuvring for repair in the harsh conditions. At the same time, great value should be attached to organising exercises to enhance technical cadres and employees’ comprehensive knowledge, particularly their capabilities in commanding the repair of weapons and technical equipment during combat.

Second, step up military standard order building and raise the quality and effectiveness of managing the repair work. To ensure the technical and combat readiness coefficients of army corps’ weapons and technical equipment, every repair phase and procedure must be closely managed under the regulations for each type of weapons and technical equipment. In this regard, offices and units, especially repair facilities must enhance the building of a regular, uniformed, scientific order for the work of management, direction and operation. In the medium term, it is necessary to review, supplement and complete guiding documents on the repair work, standardise technological procedures and regulations for technical zones in accordance with the particularities of each unit. During the development of repair plans, it is essential to save labour, energy, and materials, carefully analyse the technological procedures for repairing each type of weapons and technical equipment, and apply pieces of modern software to optimising repair plans. The work of commanding and operating repair plans must be carried out in a timely and scientific manner. Technological procedures, repair orders, and safety regulations must be stringently maintained.

Furthermore, the work of managing the quality of weapons and technical equipment should be conducted regularly in order to practically evaluate the effectiveness of repair in each step. Besides, importance should be attached to closely inspecting the operational process, parts, details, and technical coefficients of weapons and equipment that need repairing or replacing. After being repaired, weapons and technical equipment should be tested according to each sector’s criteria for product quality. Besides, it is important to keep in touch with units to collect feedback on the technical condition and reliability of the repaired weapons and technical equipment as the basis for adjusting and completing technological procedures and raising the quality of repairing weapons and technical equipment.

Third, make more investments in technological equipment and materials for repair. This solution serves as a determinant to the productivity and the quality of repairing weapons and technical equipment. The technical branch and repair facilities should closely cooperate with competent offices in practically evaluating the existing equipment’s capacity of production, repair, and synchronisation as well as units’ demands for repairing their weapons and equipment so as to opportunely advise higher echelons on modernising the system of technological equipment to meet the requirements of repair in both long and short terms. Investment in upgrading technological equipment should be focalised, while there should be a balance between units’ resources and demands for repair. New equipment must be combined with the existing one and serve the development of units’ missions. Priority should be given to the equipment which is highly accurate, reliable and capable of manufacturing a lot of specialised products for sectors’ long-term repair work within army corps. In the medium term, repair facilities at army corps should be provided with CNC equipment (Computer Numerical Control). Mechanical units should be equipped with modern machines to replace the manually-operated ones. Units in charge of repairing vehicles and engines should be provided with modern equipment for testing and repairing. In addition, great value should be attached to acquiring small, compact devices for testing and repairing that could be integrated into newly-manufactured construction vehicles or the existing ones (applying researches by the Technical Support Institute under the General Technical Department) in order to improve army corps’ mobile repair of their weapons and technical equipment.

Against the scarcity of materials and spare parts, repair units should promote scientific researches and apply technical initiatives to raising the quality of repairing weapons and technical equipment. In this regard, emphasis should be placed on exploiting the equivalent materials in the market, cooperating with factories and repair facilities both inside and outside the Military in manufacturing technical materials, closely managing units’ existing materials, and recording materials and spare parts that are scarce and easily deteriorate. Moreover, it is vital to propose measures to supplement backup materials and develop projects on readily receiving and transferring new technologies for manufacturing technical materials and spare parts so as to be self-sufficient in several types of materials for repair.

Well implementing those above-mentioned solutions will contribute to raising the quality of repairing weapons and technical equipment as the basis for ensuring army corps’ synergy and combat power. This is an important mission that should continue to be studied both theoretically and practically to satisfy the requirements set by national defence consolidation, military build-up, and the Homeland protection.

PHAM ANH TUAN, PhD

Department of Schools, General Staff of the VPA