Artillery Training Centre, formerly known as the Artillery Technical School, was established on July 13, 1981, with the task of training and fostering drivers of military vehicles, artillery trailers, and technicians of artillery, B72 rocket, and optical weapons for artillery units of the whole army. At the same time, it was tasked with repair and rescue work as required in the event of training and combat readiness situations of the Artillery Corps.

In response to the new requirements of the artillery force, the Centre has been tasked with new responsibilities. Besides training and fostering technical staff, the Centre is responsible for holding training courses and upgrade exams for drivers and technicians; training non-commissioned artillery officers and missile professional technicians; training reserve forces, etc. However, its teaching and administrative staff is inadequate and somewhat has yet to meet requirements; its weapons and technical equipment has degraded after years of exploitation; its facilities have yet to meet the demand. Facing that fact, in order to successfully complete the assigned tasks, the Party Committee and commanders of the Centre focus on leading and directing to accelerate the implementation of the "3 breakthroughs" in order to build an all-strong, "exemplary and typical" unit.

A training session on the field

First of all, focus on leading, directing and well implementing the work of structural consolidation, and improving the operational efficiency of party, commanding and mass organisations. The Centre directs its organs and units to actively coordinate with functional agencies and units to receive cadres, weapons, technical equipment and staff according to the decision of upper echelons. Promote political education and ideological leadership; focus on thoroughly briefing its troops about the characteristics and tasks of the centre and the artillery corps; foster and improve political zeal; nurture their motivation and determination to receive and successfully complete assigned tasks. In order to make it highly effective, the Centre applies various and synchronous forms and measures of education; links political education with the implementation of the Campaign of promoting tradition, dedicating talents, deserving "Uncle Ho's soldiers" in the new period, the Determine to Win Emulation Movement and the Directive No. 05 of the Politburo (12^th tenure) on promoting the study and following of Ho Chi Minh's thought, morality and style. As a result, the Centre's officers and soldiers are well aware of their tasks, enthusiastic and dedicated to their job, and determined to overcome difficulties and complete their tasks successfully.

Recognising the particular importance of party organisations in leading and building an all-strong unit, the Centre regularly strengthens the structure, improves the leadership capacity and combat power of party organisations, especially the party cells; associates the building of pure and strong party organisations with the building of comprehensively strong organs and units. Party building work is focused on improving the capability to concretise and implement the resolutions; linking the building of party committees with the building of presiding cadres at all levels; strengthening the management and training of cadres and party members, ensuring that the Party committees and commanders at all levels are really the leadership nucleus and the centre of solidarity in the unit. Renovate and improve the quality of party operations, uphold the principle of democratic centralism, collective leadership coupled with individual accountability; strictly implement the principles, regulations and processes of management, evaluation, promotion, appointment and use of cadres. Strengthen inspection and supervision at all levels, promptly prevent cases with signs of disciplinary violations. The centre pays attention to building and educating mass organisations; promoting democracy, directing the creative and innovative activities of mass organisations into the implementation of the unit's political tasks.

The Centre focuses on leadership to improve the quality of training and education, considering it an important and permanent task. Thoroughly grasping and implementing Resolution No. 765-NQ/QUTW, dated December 20, 2012 of the Central Military Commission, Resolution No. 395-NQ/DU, dated March 19, 2013 of the Corps’ Party Committee on improving training quality for the 2013 – 2020 period and beyond, every year, the Party Committee of the Centre formulates a thematic resolution on training; set specific targets of training for each object; clearly identifies the advantages, disadvantages, breakthrough stages and content to focus on. To realise its goals and requirements, the Centre focuses on training and fostering to improve the quality of teachers and administrators; innovates training content, programs and methods; facilitates the plans for training, retraining and on-the-job training according to decentralisation; maintains the order of methodological activities to improve the comprehensive capability of its teaching staff; actively holds teacher and administrator contests; promotes the "teach well, study well" movement; improves the quality of training evenly in the Unit.

Adhering to the motto that: "The quality of education and training of the school is the level of combat of the units", the Centre regularly grasps the actual situation at artillery units in the whole army, especially the ones equipped with new weapon. At the same time, it draws feedbacks from the units on the quality of task performance of its learners as a basis for adjusting, supplementing and perfecting the training and retraining programs to suit each object. Along with the renovation of contents and programs, the Centre promotes the innovation of training methods in the direction of turning the training process into the task performance process according to their responsibilities; directs the teaching staff to research and transform the training content into specific tasks and scenarios, ensuring that learners can practice the contents they learned during their task performance in actual situations at units. As a result, its training has seen significant improvement. In 2020, the Centre trained 495 non-commissioned officers and 42 drivers of military vehicles and artillery trailers; fostered and held driving test for 152 turns of troops. 100% of the test takers met the requirements, in which 90% or above were rated good and outstanding.

In the face of the complicated trend of discipline violations in the whole army and social evils in its stationing area, the Party Committee and commanders of the Centre focus on promoting a breakthrough in enhancing formality construction and discipline management. Thoroughly grasping and implementing the above resolutions and directives on this content, the Party Committee of the Centre issues thematic resolutions; strengthens measures to manage its troops, weapons, equipment, technical means, finance and assets; maintains strict observance of daily and weekly regimes; actively coordinates closely with localities and families to manage, educate and motivate soldiers. In addition, the Centre resolutely punishes the violations of discipline in a timely and serious manner, thus promoting the preventive effect. As a result, its formality construction gradually has been put into order, with normal discipline violations decreasing to below 0.2%, and no serious discipline violations.

 Along with implementing the "3 breakthroughs", the Centre pays attention to ensuring logistics and technical supply for training. As the centre has just moved its stationing area, its campus has yet to meet the training requirements, the Centre actively makes plans, promotes internal resources and the synergy of troops to renovate the base and foster farming to improve soldiers' living standards. Moreover, it maintains technical order and regime, ensures adequate and timely supply of weapons and technical equipment, especially specialised vehicles and artillery hardware for training and combat readiness of the Centre, and the Corps.

Towards the 40^th anniversary of its Traditional Day (July 13, 1981 - July 13, 2021), officers, teachers and learners of the Artillery Training Centre continue to strive to improve further its training quality and build an all-strong, "exemplary and typical" unit, ready to take on and complete all assigned tasks well, highlighting the tradition of "Actively and proactively overcome difficulties to complete the task well” in the new era.

Senior Colonel NGO NGOC TUAN, Commander of the Centre