In addition to the personnel, materiel is the determinant to the Military’s combat strength and victory. Grasping that viewpoint, over the past years, the Army Corps 4’s Technical Department has always advised the Army Corps 4’s Party Committee and Command on renewing and improving the effectiveness of technical work, thereby ensuring the Corps’ successful fulfilment of its task.

The Army Corps 4’s Technical Branch is assigned to maintain technical support for units tasked with training, combat readiness, exercises, contingencies, natural disaster prevention and control, and search and rescue. In addition to advantages, there have been difficulties in the Corps’ technical work. It is worth noting that the Corps is managing a large quantity of technical equipment of all types which have been manufactured, preserved, and used, repaired for many tines and ages. Its technical facilities have been upgraded but yet to meet the requirements for durable maintenance and preservation in some units; funds, materials, spare parts and petroleum are still limited; the price of essential items for technical support sharply rises. Besides, the capability of the technical staff of the grass-roots units, particularly in exploiting and using hi-tech weapons and equipment is still limited while the climate has many unusual developments. There are increased difficulties in ensuring safety of the belt of depots and workshops due to the growth of population, the limited traffic network, and the increased transport demand. All of which have greatly impacted on the Corps’ performance of the technical work. Against that backdrop, the Technical Department’s Party Committee and Command have promoted their advisory role in improving the quality and effectiveness of technical support.

The Corps’ Technical Contest

First, the Technical Department’s Party Committee and Command have been active in building a contingent of technical cadres and employees with sufficient qualities and capabilities as the core in the performance of the technical work. This acts as the determinant to the technical work in both medium and long terms. Thus, the Department has advised the Corps’ Party Committee and Command on directing offices and units to step up political, ideological education to raise technical staff’s awareness and responsibility towards the technical work. Emphasis has been placed on improving their comprehensive capacity, political will, professional ethics, and staff and command capability, ensuring that they closely manage, effectively use and preserve weapons and equipment. At the same time, due attention has been paid to promoting the role of party committees, commands, and technical staff in leading, directing and executing the technical work, heightening the spirit of “proactiveness, creativity, and self-reliance”, well carrying out the Campaign 50 in line with the Determined to Win emulation movement and the study and following of Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, ethics and lifestyle, thereby giving an impetus to raising the quality and effectiveness of the technical work.

Due to the imbalance in majors of the technical staff, the inequality in their professional competence, and the lack of top technicians, the Department has counselled the Corps’ Party Committee and Command to adjust the structure of the technical force at all levels in accord with the particularities of each unit. At the same time, measures have been taken synchronously to standardize the contingent of technical cadres and employees and build a pool of good technicians as the core in the units as well as a corps of repairmen for new-generation weapons and equipment. Units have diversified forms of training their technical staff, both organized on-spot training and dispatched cadres and employees to attend intensive training courses, and strictly maintained the order for technical training courses at each level. To “improve the training quality” as a breakthrough measure, the Department has directed the Corps’ Technical Branch to actively renew and make the training content and method relevant to the objects, requirements and reality of the technical work as well as pay due regard to technical support training during combat. Focuses have been placed on training the technical staff to master the work of technical command, staff, coordination and support at the campaign and tactical levels in each form of warfare. Great value has been attached to training troops to master the exploitation and use of the existing weapons and equipment, particularly new-generation ones and improving the technical staff’s capability to repair and rescue vehicles and materiel in field training and complex terrain and weather. Besides, consideration has been given to training technical detachments’ manoeuvrability and settlement of the situations during marches and operations in hi-tech warfare.

Maintaining the weapons

In addition, the Department has directed units to increase specialist training and organize workmanship contests and exams as an important solution to training the technical staff and making technical offices and detachments strong comprehensively. Adopting those measures, the Corps has overcome many weaknesses and shortcomings in the technical staff while the Technical Branch’s task performance has been improved considerably.

To meet the increasingly higher requirements for the technical work, the Department has directed all-level technical offices to complete the system of technical regulations, renew the mode of technical support, apply technology to managing and operating the technical work, thus contributing to enhancing the quality of technical support for materiel during training and combat readiness tasks. While advising the Corps to make the plan on using the existing materiel in accordance with the task requirements, the Technical Branch has promoted the core role in preserving, maintaining, repairing and synchronizing materiel. The Department has required technical offices and units to well perform the work of repairing and synchronizing materiel at each level, improve the quality of repair and maintenance at units, and closely combine station-and- workshop-based repair with mobile repair on request, particularly in joint operations and long marches. The materiel withdrawn from units have been classified, maintained, repaired and preserved under the regulations at the Corps’ depots; weapons and technical equipment of the combat readiness units within the Corps have been all synchronized. Units and offices at all levels have actively applied cutting-edge technologies to repair and preservation, while enhancing the work of inspecting, accrediting and maintaining the quality and reliability of the repaired weapons and equipment. With the strong determination, the Technical Branch have always fulfiled the targets of the technical work, thereby contributing to sufficiently, accurately, opportunely ensuring technical support for the Corps to accomplish the tasks of training, exercise and combat readiness.

Fire and explosion prevention and control training

Furthermore, the Technical Department has advised the Corps’ Party Committee and Command on directing units to step up standardization of technical work, with a focus on upgrading the system of depots and workshops and improving the quality of technical facilities. To carry out the technical work uniformly within the whole Corps, the Department has studied, formulated and standardized the system of documents to direct and instruct units; closely cooperated with units and offices in grasping the rate of implementation of the programs and targets for the technical work in the 2017-2021 period. Due to the limited budget for the technical support, the Department has counselled the Corps’s Party Committee and Command to build the technical facilities of each unit in a focalized manner, with priority given to essential works serving the technical work of grass-roots units. In medium term, the system of materiel shelters and the lightning protection and fire prevention and control systems have been consolidated and upgraded to meet the criteria set by the Ministry of National Defence. Due attention has been paid to renewing the organization of the system of technical stations and workshops in the Corps and its units in a standard fashion for long-term use. Up to now, its units’ system of technical facilities has been basically consolidated and perfected, i.e. the Division 309’s ammo depot K174, the Garage of the Corps’ Military School, the Artillery Vehicle Shelter of the Brigade 434, the depot of the Battalion 79. At the same time, the Technical Department has directed the Brigade 550 to complete the constructions for the Army-Wide Conference on the Engineering Technical Work and visits. It has ordered offices and units to use part of their agricultural production funds to build, consolidate, and upgrade depots, garages, artillery vehicle shelters, and gun cabinets on a basic, uniform, synchronous, and standard basis.

Besides, the Department has directed the technical offices of units to regularly complete the system of documents, accounts, and diagrams for registration and statistics under the regulations. Significance has been attached to directing, instructing, inspecting and re-examining the management of materiel in units. Most offices and units have applied the computer-based program for the materiel management; therefore, this work has been carried out closely, accurately, and quickly while the quantity and quality of materiel have been managed effectively. The work of receiving, allocating, withdrawing, transferring, managing, and assessing materiel in units has been conducted on a “standardized, uniform, and safe” basis. As a result, the quality of technical support, particularly for materiel has made significant, stable progress.

Over the past years, the Corps’ Technical Branch has sufficiently provided weapons and equipment for units to take part in infantry battalion and brigade-level live-firing exercises safely. Full-strength units and those tasked with combat readiness and air defence duty have always maintained good technical coefficients of weapons and equipment. Those achievements lay a solid foundation for the Corps’ improved manoeuvrability and combat strength and its successful fulfilment of missions in all situations.

Sr. Col. Tran Cuu Long, Head of the Corps’ Technical Department