Being imbued with President Ho Chi Minh’s teachings for the Signal Force: “it is necessary to keep improving political knowledge and strive to enhance professional, technical competence in order to ensure timely, correct, secret, safe, increasingly advanced communication and obtain more new achievements,” cadres and soldiers of Signal Brigade 139 have always surmounted all difficulties to successfully fulfil their assigned missions.

Signal Brigade 139 is a strategic-level mobile general communication station of the Ministry of National Defence, tasked with maintaining routine communication, combat readiness, and live television for significant political events of our Party, State, and Military and performing other contingency missions. Although the Brigade has to perform extremely heavy tasks, the majority of its facilities and technical equipment have been in use for many years. Besides, its budget for missions is still limited. Notably, the guidelines on building the Signal Corps straight to modernity and the “Strategy to develop the military communication system in the period of 2021-2030, with a vision towards 2045” have been imposing more higher task requirements on the Signal Force in general, the Brigade in particular. Against such a backdrop, the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command have stepped up the study and following of Uncle Ho’s teachings for the Signal Force as an incentive for the Brigade’s successful fulfilment of all assigned missions.

First of all, the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command have focused on following Uncle Ho’s teachings on “improving political knowledge” of troops and considered it as a core solution to building a politically strong Brigade. To do so, the Brigade has directed all-level party committees and commands to concentrate their leadership on renewing and improving political and ideological education. Emphasis has been placed on effectively executing the Project to “renew political education at military units in the new period” and studying specialised political topics and the Party’s resolutions and directives with proper, diverse forms. Currently, the Brigade is grasping and realising the Central Military Commission’s Resolution 847-NQ/QUTW, dated December 28^th, 2021 on “bringing into play the virtues of Uncle Ho’s soldiers and resolutely fighting individualism in the new situation” in tandem with the 13^th Politburo’s Conclusion 01-KL/TW, dated May 18^th, 2021 on “continuing studying and following Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, ethics, and lifestyle” and the Campaign entitled “promoting tradition, devoting talent, deserving to be Uncle Ho’s soldiers” in the new period via creative, effective approaches. Doing so has helped instil Marxism-Leninism, Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, and the Party’s guidelines into cadres and soldiers of the Brigade, encourage them to actively build up revolutionary morality and a pure, healthy lifestyle, and enable them to grasp tasks of the Military, the Corps, and the Brigade, remain vigilance against hostile forces’ “peaceful evolution,” and resolutely prevent and push back “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” from within.

In order to increase cadres and soldiers’ political zeal and “immunity” against hostile forces’ sabotage strategy, all-level party committees and commands have frequently educated troops on the position of a strategic-level signal unit and advantages and difficulties in ensuring communication. They have orientated cadres and soldiers’ awareness, ideology, and action and built up troops’ motivation, determination, and enthusiasm for studying to master the exploitation and maintenance of signal equipment. In addition, affiliates of the Brigade have attached importance to educating troops on the Signal Force’s heroic tradition and achievements and feats of arms of the Corps and the Brigade via political lectures, internal radio systems, knowledge contests, visits to the Brigade’s History House, and talk shows. Doing so has helped arouse honour and pride amongst cadres and soldiers, create their spiritual motivation, and encourage them to better themselves, broaden their experience, and heighten their political responsibility to successfully fulfil their assigned missions. Being imbued with Uncle Ho’s teachings on the role of “democracy” as a “master key to dealing with all difficulties,” the Brigade has always maintained Regulations on Grass-Roots Level Democracy and created a democratic environment, trust, and solidarity between staff members and all-level leaderships and commands. At the same time, it has adopted psychological measures under the motto of “staying close to troops, understanding troops, and trusting in troops” in order to proactively grasp, manage, and opportunely, completely settle troops’ ideological issues and avoid affecting its task performance. Due regard has been paid to improving troops’ material and mental life and well implementing policies for the Army Rear to enable cadres and soldiers to keep their mind on their work.

Ensuring communication for the Army Games of 2021

To meet the Brigade’s more demanding task requirements, it is vital to further improve troops’ professional, technical knowledge so as to ensure timely, accurate, secret, safe, increasingly advanced communication according to Uncle Ho’s teachings as the basis for building a comprehensively strong Brigade capable of moving straight to modernity. To that end, party committees and commands of offices and units have grasped higher echelons’ resolutions and conclusions and focused their leadership on raising the quality of training and combat readiness. In the process, the Brigade has always adhered to training-related viewpoints, principles, mottos, and connections, considered the training of cadres as the key, regarded technical training as the centre, and taken tactical training as the basis, closely combined basic training with intensive training, and aligned theory with practice. It has actively renewed contents and methods of directing and operating training courses. Significance has been attached to carefully preparing models, equipment, lesson plans, and grounds for training work and encouraging the self-study movement under the guidelines on building a “Corps of Study” and a pool of “Electronic Warfare Officers.” Due attention has been paid to well implementing the breakthrough in raising the quality of training amongst tactical-level units’ cadres, bettering the training of independent communication stations and teams, improving mobile technical support teams’ skills in dealing with communication incidents during the exploitation of modern equipment, and turning cadres and soldiers into experts in traditional, mobile, and hi-tech communication. In the training process, the Brigade has required its affiliates to strictly maintain regulations to ensure the absolute safety. Competent offices of the Brigade have proactively evaluated the training outcome and staff members’ mastery of technical equipment to give advice to the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command on measures to raise the training quality, while guiding, monitoring, and inspecting units’ training plan execution, refresher courses, and contests aimed at improving all-level cadres’ command and staff capacity and training direction and operation. On a yearly basis, the Brigade has always provided sufficient training contents and programmes for troops. As a result, all tactical-level mobile communication units of the Brigade have reached “elite” level and fulfilled criteria, namely good political and ideological quality, great unity and strict discipline, right organisational structure, good professional competence, flexible and effective combat, good health, and successful fulfilment of all assigned tasks.

In spite of difficulties in facilities and technical equipment, with their determination to study and follow Uncle Ho’s teachings for “timely, accurate, secret, safe communication,” affiliates of the Brigade have focused on stringently maintaining tactical-level work plans, particularly within tactical-level mobile communication units to guarantee timely, smooth, solid communication in all situations and missions. Priority has been given to maintaining the operation of key technical teams as the core force in ensuring mobile technical support and providing technical support for digital communication stations. The Brigade has proactively collaborated with telecommunication units and enterprises both inside and outside the Military in exchanging and developing communication infrastructures, while applying information technology to commanding, managing, operating, and exploiting communication systems in order to achieve the goal of “modernising” technical communication equipment and meet the requirements set by hi-tech information warfare. Also, it has regularly supplemented, adjusted, and practised combat readiness documents under the pre-set projects to readily, effectively deal with situations at the request. It has strictly maintained duty regulations to ensure communication for the defence of national sovereignty at borders, A2 mission, natural disaster prevention and control, search and rescue, organised live television for conferences, contests, and exercises of the Ministry of National Defence and other units across the Military, opportunely handled communication incidents, and patrolled cable lines under its management.

Offices and units of the Brigade have promoted technical initiatives and innovations to make contributions to raising the quality of the Campaign titled “managing and exploiting weapons and technical equipment effectively, sustainably, safely, economically and ensuring traffic safety.” Due attention has been paid to maintaining and repairing technical equipment at all levels via the “Technical Day.” As a result, affiliates of the Brigade have always opportunely, correctly evaluated the quality of technical equipment to take measures to maintain and increase the technical coefficient of equipment for guaranteeing smooth, solid mobile and combat readiness communication and television.

The effectiveness of studying and following Uncle Ho’s teachings for the Signal Force amongst cadres and soldiers of Signal Brigade 139 has provided a solid foundation for the Brigade to keep improving its task performance, facilitating its modernisation process, and preserving the Emulation Flag given by the Ministry of National Defence.

Sr. Col. NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG, Commissar of the Brigade