Over the past 55 years of construction, combat, and development, generations of cadres, cadets, and soldiers of the Air Defence - Air Force Academy (its forerunner was the Anti-Aircraft Officer School, founded on July 16^th 1964) have overcome many difficulties, successfully fulfilled all assigned tasks, and built up the tradition of “being united, courageous, self-reliant, proactively, creatively overcoming difficulties to teach and learn well, resolutely fulfilling the task”. With its achievements, on November 3^rd 2004, the Academy was given the title of “Hero of the People’s Armed Forces” by the State.

To meet the new requirements for managing and defending the Homeland’s airspace, the Air Defence - Air Force Service has been invested to move forward to modernity by the Party and State. However, in addition to materiel modernization, human factor still acts as the determinant. Thus, it is important to build a contingent of air defence - air force cadres with political zeal, good morality, comprehensive capacity, and scientific, effective commanding style. To that end, the Air Defence - Air Force Academy must well perform its role as a centre for training officers of the Service and the Military. Fully aware of that, the Academy’s Party Committee and Directorate have promoted the synergy of all forces and organizations and adopted the measures synchronously to renew and improve the quality of education and training.

Maj. Gen. Bui Duc Thanh chairing the Academy’s Party Committee’s conference to issue the Resolution for the second half of 2019

First of all, the Academy’s Party Committee and Directorate have focused on building a politically strong Academy as the basis for enhancing the quality of education and training. In the process, the Academy’s Party Committee has attached great value to building strong party organizations politically, morally, ideologically, and organizationally; maintaining the leadership principle, the order, and the regulations, strengthening unity, actively renewing the content and form of meetings; aligning the building of pure, strong party organizations with that of comprehensively strong offices and units; making party committees, commands, party members, cadres, and instructors strong. At the same time, due attention has been paid to effectively implementing the Resolution of the 12^th Party Central Committee’s 4^th Plenum on the Party building and rectification, the 12^th Politburo’s Directive 05-CT/TW, the Central Military Commission Standing Board’s Directive 87 on studying and following Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, ethics, and lifestyle, and the Campaign entitled “promote tradition, devote talent, deserve to be Uncle Ho’s soldiers”, with emphasis placed on the education and training task and weaknesses of each office, faculty, and unit. Consideration has been given to raising the quality and effectiveness of political education to render staff members and cadets fully aware of the Academy’s education and training task amidst the requirements for modernizing the Service, heightening a sense of responsibility for teaching and learning, building up the motive for study, well managing the relationship between instructors and cadets, and preventing negative practices from penetrating into the Academy’s training environment. The all-level party committees and commands have frequently grasped and managed staff members and cadets’ ideology and aspirations; proactively forecast and opportunely settled the issues; actively prevented and combated the hostile forces’ “peaceful evolution” strategy and their tricks of “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” from within and “depoliticization” of our Military. Doing so has provided a motivation for cadres, instructors, and cadets to overcome difficulties in teaching, learning, and scientific research, and to build a “revolutionary, regular, standard, modern” Academy.

Fully aware that cadres and instructors play a decisive role in enhancing the quality of education and training, the Academy has attached great value to building and standardizing a contingent of instructors and managerial cadres both qualitatively and quantitatively. The Academy has formulated the Regulations and strictly maintained the procedures for recruiting instructors; both organized on-spot training courses and dispatched cadres and instructors for further education at universities at home and abroad, with priority given to top instructors. Under the guidelines on “close collaboration between schools and units”, the Academy has actively deployed its cadres and instructors to hold managerial and commanding positions in units, particularly the units equipped with new materiel in order to improve their knowledge, commanding style, and hands-on experience. Faculties have focused on enhancing their teaching and research methods, maintaining the order and quality of pedagogical activities, such as lesson plan approval, lecture attendance, and model lecture. Yearly, the Academy organizes the refresher courses on teaching method and good instructor contests at all levels, and considers these as a criterion for cadre and instructor assessment, arrangement, and appointment. Moreover, it receives the feedback from cadets to assess its instructors and managerial cadres; encourages instructors and managerial cadres to attend post-graduate, foreign language, information technology courses as the basis for studying and mastering new materiel and enhancing their teaching capacity. As a result, its cadres and instructors have political zeal and good professional morality, teaching, managerial and commanding capacity, and working style. Up to now, 100% of its cadres and instructors have held bachelor’s degree, 71% of them have held post-graduate degree.

Organizing cadets’ graduation exercise

Grasping the directives and resolutions by the Party and the Central Military Commission on education and training, particularly the Resolution of the 11^th Party Central Committee’s 8^th Plenum on the basic, comprehensive reform in education and training, the Academy has focused on renewing and standardizing teaching-learning content, program, and method. Adhering to the program to train air defence - air force command and staff cadres, the Academy has reviewed the whole content, program, procedure, and duration for training air defence - air force specialities and opportunely identified shortcomings and inappropriate issues. At the same time, it has actively improved the quality of translating documents and designing electronic lesson plans and simulation software to serve training and teaching according to the Service’s new materiel. Up to now, the Academy has standardized the training programs for 8 out of 16 groups of learners. Besides, it has focused on raising the quality of teaching and learning foreign languages, putting English and Russian in cadets’ graduation exam.

In order to improve cadets’ knowledge and necessary skills, the Academy has increased the duration for practice within the curriculum and extra-curricular training; combined training based on simulation equipment with training based on real equipment; aligned training at classroom with field trips, internship, and exercises; enhanced the quality of cadets’ self-study. The procedure, content, and method of internship have been renewed and standardized; cadets would take charge of positions from squad to company levels and other positions at combat units. As for practice and graduate exercise, the Academy intensifies tactical manoeuvre exercise and night-time marching in accordance with reality and requirements set by combat task. Annually, the Academy organizes training and takes part in air defence artillery and missile firing at the Range TB1 held by the Service; dispatches delegations to get feedback from units on the quality of graduates from the Academy so as to supplement and complete the training program and content in accordance with reality. As a result, the Academy’s training quality has been increasingly raised; over 70% of its cadets have been rated good and excellent; graduates from the Academy have been basically capable of their first positions.

To further the quality of education and training, the Academy has put store by building a healthy pedagogical environment. The Academy’s Party Committee and Directorate have focused their leadership and direction on reviewing, supplementing, and completing the Regulations on the management of education and training. The Academy’s Directorate has directed faculties, offices, and cadet management units to stringently maintain the order for education, training, and discipline management in classrooms and on training grounds; to effectively execute the campaigns entitled: “each instructor is a moral, self-study, and creative example”, “say no to negative practices in exams and achievement disease in education”; to actively renew and diversify the methods of examination, such as written exam, multiple-choice exam, oral exam, and practice exam. At the same time, they have been required to step up the movement of cadets’ self-study and self-improvement with many effective, creative models and approaches, such as “excellent cadets”, “cadets undertake scientific research”, “foreign language”, and “martial art” clubs.

Moreover, due regard has been paid to gradually modernizing facilities and teaching equipment with the application of information technology to improve the quality of education and training. Up to now, the Academy has built 75 general classrooms and 77 modern specialized classrooms; the system of classrooms and training grounds has well served the task of education and training.

Adopting the above-mentioned measures, the Academy has kept improving the quality of its education and training. In the school year of 2017-2018, the Academy was given the Flag of Top Unit of the Determination to Win Emulation Movement by the Ministry of National Defence; it was presented the Certificate of Merit by the Ministry of Education and Training.

Promoting the obtained achievements and experiences, in the upcoming time, the Air Defence - Air Force Academy will continue further enhancing the quality of education and training so as to make contributions to training and building a contingent of “both red and expert” air defence - air force cadres.

Maj. Gen. Bui Duc Thanh, Commissar of the Academy