Fully aware that seas and island are the Homeland’s sacred territory, over the past years, the Brigade 161’s Party Committee and Command have taken various measures to enhance its synergy and combat power, thereby safeguarding the national sovereignty over the seas and islands of responsibility.

The Brigade 161 (under the Naval Zone 3, the Navy) is tasked with maintaining training and combat readiness, defending the national sovereignty and sovereign right over the strategic seas, islands and continental shelf, transporting goods to islands, patrolling to protect oil exploitation and exploration, and carrying out search and rescue operations at sea. Over the past 40 years of building, fighting and maturing (February 12^th 1979), the Brigade’s generations of cadres and soldiers have always united in overcoming difficulties, building a comprehensively strong unit, successfully fulfilling all assigned tasks, and building up its tradition of “actively overcoming difficulties, staying close to the seas and islands, and successfully fulfilling the task”. With those achievements, the Brigade was given the First-Class Fatherland Protection Order, its Ship 799 and Flotilla 311 were given the Third-Class Fatherland Protection Order by the State many other noble awards.

 At present, the task of sea and island protection in the new situation imposes new increasingly higher requirements on the Brigade. Meanwhile, the seas of responsibility are large and complex; most of its materiel and ships have been in use for many years and regularly deployed for enduring operations at sea; the duty order is very strict; families of many cadres and soldiers face difficult circumstances. Clearly understanding the situation, the assigned tasks and difficulties and challenges, the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command have been focusing on adopting various measures to build a comprehensively strong unit with the enhanced synergy and combat strength, being ready to fight and achieve victory in all situations.

Tracking the targets at the bottom of the sea

To that end, the Brigade has focused on making itself politically strong as the basis for improving its synergy and combat power. As its staff members work in an independent environment, directly face and deal with complex, dangerous situations, it is critically important to build up their political will, absolute faith in the leadership and command, sense of unity and consensus in willpower and action as well as revolutionary vigilance. Thus, significance has been attached to carrying out the work of political, ideological education, carefully introducing the task to troops, raising the effectiveness of the party and political work in all operations, particularly the leadership and direction of all-level party committees and commands over the tasks of training and combat readiness. Over the past years, the Brigade has rendered its cadres and soldiers fully aware of the Party and State’s guidelines, policies and strategies for settling the issues in the East Sea as well as higher echelons’ resolutions and commands, and the Brigade’s task requirements. At the same time, it has regularly provided information on the situation and new developments at sea, particularly in the seas and islands of responsibility, thereby opportunely orienting troops’ ideology and rendering troops fully aware of partners, opponents, and hostile forces’ plots and artifices. Executing the Project on renewing political education in units in the new period, the Brigade has attached importance to renewing the content, form and method of political education, making it shorter and easier to remember and understand. Moreover, it has stepped up the implementation of the Regulations on grass-roots level democracy. Cadres and commanders at all levels have always stayed close to the units, grasping the units’ situation, encouraging cadres and soldiers, particularly those on the ships tasked with enduring, difficult, complex operations at sea, opportunely detecting and handling ideological issues, avoiding being fallen into passivity, preventing “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” from within.

In addition, consideration has been given to the Party building as the key to making the Brigade politically strong, maintaining the combat goal under any circumstance. By taking proper measures and especially 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 and the Determined to Win emulation movements, the Brigade has created a huge change in the leadership and combativeness of party committees and organizations, particularly on combat ships and those tasked with the BM mission. Units have concentrated on elaborating higher echelons’ resolutions and directives, combined the building of party committees with that of key cadres, making their cadres and party members really loyal, exemplary, ready to overcome all hardships, and the core in leadership and unity of units. Yearly, 100% of the Brigade’s party organizations and over 90% of its party members have been recognized to successfully fulfil the task.

To achieve the goal of “departing when being ordered, and fulfilling all assigned tasks successfully”, the Brigade has concentrated on renewing and improving the training quality. Grounded on the Central Military Commission’s Resolution 765-NQ/QUTW, the Navy’s Party Committee’s Resolution 1050-NQ/ĐU, and the Naval Zone 3’s Party Committee’s Resolution 509-NQ/ĐU on enhancing the training quality in the 2013-2020 period and beyond”, annually, the Brigade’s Party Committee issues a special resolution on combat training in accord with the situation, tasks, and combat projects. At the same time, it directs units to strengthen the all-level party committees and commands’ leadership and direction over the training task. To meet the development of the situation and the task, it has set very high targets for training, directed units to abide by the training motto of “basics, practicality, and thorough grasp”, focus on training troops to master weapons and technical equipment and maintain the safety rules, and take the tasks of protecting seas, islands and continental shelf and building a revolutionary, regular, elite, modern Navy as the training targets. The Brigade has focused on training its cadres to grasp the new issues and overcome the weaknesses, and particularly employ the method to organize technical, tactical training. As for new cadres, the Brigade has required ships to train these cadres to master basic knowledge, technical and tactical functions, and regulations on the use of the equipment. Concerning professional servicemen and technical employees, the Brigade has required comprehensive training, with a focus on training skills in exploiting, using, and repairing weapons and equipment. For those who have more than 5 years of service, the Brigade has directed units to intensively train them to repair, exploit and master weapons and equipment, especially modern ones. Regarding detachments, the Brigade has focused on training them to master detachment-level tactics, deal with difficult simulation situations, increasing nighttime training according to the situations and combat projects at sea under the harsh weather condition in the hi-tech warfare. To make combat training really effective, the Brigade has attached great importance to renewing the training method, reducing theory training, increasing practice duration, and combining training with the tasks of patrolling, managing and protecting the national sovereignty over the seas of responsibility.

Practising the combat project

One of the central tasks of the Brigade is to improve its combat readiness capacity. To avoid falling into passivity in all situations, the Brigade has stepped up the work of education to raise its staff’s revolutionary vigilance and sense of combat readiness, while stringently maintaining the order for practising the combat projects and situations at all levels. Besides, it has proactively cooperated with forces in grasping the situation, opportunely detecting opponents’ moves and plots, actively supplementing, completing and building new combat determination and projects, and system of plans for sea and island protection in tune with the development of the situation and higher echelons’ combat intention. As maritime operations occur quickly and require the close coordination between ships and forces, the Brigade has practised combat projects in coordination with other forces of the Navy and organized the aggregate exercises. At the same time, it has maintained the forces and vehicles on combat readiness duty, particularly according to the BM and BV projects, readily taking part in search and rescue in the event. As a result, the Brigade’s capability in command, manoeuvre and combat coordination has been raised considerably. In 2018, in the shooting test for the BM mission, 100% of its ships got credit and distinction while all of its ships and squadrons successfully fulfilled the targets of the aggregate, live-firing exercises with 60% of them achieving distinction. This provides an important basis for the Brigade to successful fulfil every assigned task.

As a technical unit which fights and operates in the harsh environment, the Brigade’s combat readiness and strength depends a lot on the work of logistics-technical support. Perceiving that, the Brigade has attached significance to improving the quality of logistics-technical support, focusing on well implementing the Campaign entitled “Managing and exploiting weapons and technical equipment effectively, sustainably, safely, economically, and traffic safety” and the two breakthrough measures set by the Navy’s Technical Branch (technical standardization and mastery of weapons and technical equipment). While regularly consolidating a contingent of technical cadres and employees with the sufficient quantity, the Brigade has attached great value to improving their professional competence via technical training and making them a core force in units’ technical work. At the same time, it has founded mobile repair teams, enhanced the technical capacity of ships on duty and under repair, strictly maintained the order for technical work, especially in the “Technical Days”. Consequently, the technical coefficient of its materiel has always achieved the targets and exceeded by 3%-5%. Moreover, the Brigade has directed its units to actively improve troops’ life and health, develop the plan for logistics support for both on land and at sea as well as the projects for logistics support so that ships could quickly depart and independently, enduringly operate at sea.

Being proud of the glorious 40-year tradition of construction and development, cadres and soldiers of the Naval Brigade 161 will continue making its Party Committee pure and strong, building a comprehensively strong Brigade, enhancing the synergy and combat readiness capability, contributing to safeguarding the Homeland’s sea and island sovereignty.

Captain Doan Bao Anh, Commander of the Brigade