Brigade 170 (hereafter the Brigade) - the force of warships under the Naval Region 1 was founded on 12^th February 1979. Being established when the Navy’s organizational structure was experiencing adjustments, the Brigade quickly stabilized its personnel, actively built up the forces, organized strict training, constantly improved comprehensive quality and combat readiness capability, meeting the requirements of firmly protecting the sea of responsibility in every situation. During the operation, the Brigade’s generations of cadres and soldiers have always upheld vigilance, built high determination to fight, got ready to fight and sacrifice to safeguard the sovereignty of Homeland’s waters and islands. In particular, in recent years, amidst complicated happenings in East Sea in general and within the sea of responsibility in particular, the Brigade has always fully grasped the situation, properly applied Party’s views and guidelines to reality with many resolute, clever, and flexible measures in order to opportunely and effectively handle the incidents at sea, contributing to solidly defending the sovereignty of the Homeland’s waters and islands and maintaining a peaceful and stable environment for the sake of the country’s development. Over 40 years of construction, development and growth, the Brigade’s generations of cadres and soldiers have established the tradition of “being united in coordination, overcoming difficulties, good at training, well maintaining readiness for combat”, always undertook and successfully accomplished all assigned tasks. These efforts have been recognized and highly appreciated by the Party, State, Army and the Navy.

Such glorious achievements and tradition owe to the Brigade’s Party Committee and commanders who have always stood united and adopted many appropriate guidelines and solutions. In which, the improvement in the quality of training and combat readiness has been defined as the central breakthrough and effectuated by various practical and effective ways, creating the basis and motivation for the Brigade to accomplish all the tasks.

To this end, the Brigade has focused on “well carrying out the work of education to raise cadres and soldiers’ awareness and responsibility for the task of training and combat readiness”. First and foremost, the Brigade has directed its agencies and units to make their soldiers thoroughly understand the Party’s military and defence policies and higher echelon’s resolutions and directives on training and combat readiness, especially Resolution 765-NQ/QUTW by the Central Military Commission, Resolution 1050-NQ/ĐUQC by the Navy’s Party Committee and Resolution 319-NQ/ĐU by the Naval Region 1’s Party Committee on “Enhancing the training quality in the 2013 - 2020 period and beyond”. At the same time, the agencies and units have been required to render their soldiers fully aware of the significance and necessity of training and combat readiness for the successful fulfillment of unit’s political tasks; foreign countries’ plots and tricks on the sovereignty of our islands and waters; the advantages, difficulties, objectives during training and combat readiness in harsh environments and complex situations at sea, etc. Therefore, the cadres and soldiers’ awareness and responsibility for training and combat readiness tasks have been heightened while soldiers’ faith in the Navy’s weapons, equipment, and military arts in the new conditions has been cemented. To get high efficiency of education work, the Brigade has instructed its agencies and units to continue effectively implementing the Project “Reforming political education at units in the new period” by synchronous and scientific measures. In particular, due attention has been paid to renovating and making educational forms and methods relevant to each object, task characteristic and area of responsibility under the motto: “Teaching soldiers, tutoring soldiers, caring for soldiers, cooperating with locality, families, and units in educating soldiers, casting off soldier’s pressure of work, psychology, and achievement”. In the process, the Brigade has closely combined education with acceleration of studying and following Ho Chi Minh’s thought, morality, and lifestyle in line with the Directive 05 by the Politburo (12^th tenure), the Campaign “Promoting traditions, devoting talents, deserving to be Uncle Ho’s soldiers”, and the emulation movement Determined to Win. Thanks to education work, in recent years, 100% of the Brigade’s cadres and soldiers have always upheld steadfast political willpower and actively overcome difficulties to well complete the task of training and combat readiness.

In order to ensure that the soldiers reach a high level of combat readiness to satisfy the requirements of modernizing the Navy and protecting the sovereignty of the country’s waters and islands, the Brigade’s Party Committee and commanders have ordered their units to strongly and comprehensively renew the training work. Prior to training season, the agencies and units have both consolidated the contingent of training cadres for each group (offshore and ashore) at all levels and trained and bolstered this contingent’s qualifications and training methods. To date, 100% of the Brigade’s cadres possess the capacity of training soldiers at their corresponding levels. More than 90% of training cadres at squadron and equivalent levels are rated credit and distinction; over 70% of training cadres at ship, company and equivalent levels are rated credit and distinction, etc. In parallel with the preparation of manpower, the Brigade’s affiliated units have actively reformed training contents, programs, and methods in conformity with the tasks, objects, terrains, plans, and combat reality. The preparation of facilities has been renewed with sufficient quantity and enhanced quality. Importance has been attached to promoting initiatives and improving teaching aids with the objective of not only reducing the soldiers’ carriage but also saving money. During the training process, the Brigade has dutifully followed the motto: “Basics, practicality, and thorough grasp” and concentrated on synchronous and intensive training, especially on training soldiers to exploit and master modern weapons and technical equipment. Due regard has been paid to providing strict and proper training with adequate content for all offshore, ashore, and reserve groups and organized training periods, field training, training cooperation with Indian Navy on formation manoeuvre, and joint patrols with Chinese Navy. Besides, training has been combined with political and ideological education, performance of the tasks at sea, regularity building, and discipline maintenance. The Brigade’s training management and operation have also been renovated, ensuring the requirements of being focalized, consistent, synchronized, effective, and not overlapped. In addition, the Brigade has focused on practically renewing the work of conducting contest, examination and evaluation of training results, while attaching the responsibilities of party committees, commanders, and key cadres to training results of their agencies and units. The Brigade has also resolutely opposed the signs of subjectivity, fearfulness about difficulties, lowered requirements, ignorance of safety procedures, principles, and rules, and achievement disease during training. In particular, on a yearly basis, the Brigade has organized a tactical aggregate manoeuver in combination with live firing and participated in manoeuvers held by the Naval Region 1, being highly appreciated by the Naval Region and the Navy. Thereby, this has contributed to improving its cadres’ command capability and combat cooperation between sectors on board and ships within a fleet. In the meantime, it has served as a basis for researching and developing Vietnam People’s Navy fighting arts in the new conditions. After 5 years of implementing the Resolution 765-NQ/QUTW, the Brigade has fulfilled 100% of the training contents and programs for its troops and organized live firing exercises with good results and absolute safety.

Along with that, the combat readiness work has been directed under the motto: “Avoid being fallen into passive and unexpected situations, don’t allow any black points to emerge at sea, don’t let soldiers handle situations in the wrong manner”. Accordingly, while raising soldiers’ vigilance and high sense of willingness to fight, the agencies and units have actively supplemented, adjusted, perfected the system of combat documents and plans; actively applied information technology to the operation of the headquarters; stringently maintained the regimes of duty, patrol, and reconnaissance. To respond to complicated developments in the waters of responsibility and enhance the combat readiness capability in all situations, together with maintaining the prescribed regimes, the Brigade has strengthened unscheduled inspection of forces and vehicles on combat readiness duty and actively cooperated with the units in grasping the situation so as not to be fallen into passivity. As a result, the Brigade has detected, opportunely tackled all the happenings, and firmly defended the sovereignty over the waters and islands of responsibility, contributing to the solid protection of independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of the Fatherland.

The task of training support, especially technical insurance for training and combat readiness has been highly valued and made indispensable to improving the quality of this important task. Under that spirit, the Brigade has concentrated on directing its agencies and units to thoroughly grasp and well execute the Action Program 1748-CTr/ĐU, dated 24^th March 2008 by the Navy’s Party Committee for realizing Resolution 382 -NQ/ĐUQSTW by the Central Military Commission on leading technical work in the new situation. As the Brigade is equipped with many types of warships, missiles, guns, artillery of both old and new generations used in harsh environmental conditions, it has faced difficulties in the exploitation, use, preservation, repair and replacement of components and spare parts. To overcome this problem, the Brigade has closely combined the promotion of on-the-spot resources with the cooperation with higher echelon’s technical agencies in ensuring adequate quantity and quality of ships, vehicles, weapons, and technical equipment for training and combat readiness with the coefficient Kbd ≥ 1. Priority has been given to ensuring technical support for the ships, detachments, and flotillas performing the tasks of field training, long-time exercise, and patrol at sea. Simultaneously, consideration has been given to stepping up the implementation of Campaign 50, especially maintaining the regulations on registering ships, canoes, vehicles, and machines and the regime of drying weapons, technical equipment in the morning and cleaning them in the afternoon on all warships and ship stations. Additionally, the Brigade has effectively exercised “Technical Day”, enhanced the quality of preservation, maintenance, repair and technical coefficient (Kt ≥ 0.89) of its weapons and technical equipment, especially the quality of torpedo storage, and extended its missiles’ lifespan. Thus, the Brigade’s weapons and technical equipment have always satisfied the requirements of training and combat readiness.

Bringing into full play the tradition and recorded achievements, the Brigade will continue renovating its training work, improving its combat readiness, and well completing all assigned tasks, contributing to firmly managing and protecting the sacred sea and island sovereignty of the country.

Col. Nguyen Thinh Tiep, Commander of the Brigade