Over the last 50 years of foundation, struggle and development, the Air-Defense - Air Force has attained many achievements. Currently, it is being built in the “revolutionary, regular, seasoned, modern” direction, continuously improving its combat readiness with the determination of never leaving the Fatherland to contingency.
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In the Vietnam People’s Army’s modernization process, the Air Defense - Air Force is one of few forces that have been given priority to develop to become modern straight away. On profoundly perceiving the position and role of the Air Defense - Air Force in the new era, its Party Committee and Command have implemented the guideline of building a powerful service which has high capability and ability of combat and combat readiness, ensuring the initiative in every aerial situation with the determination of not leaving the Fatherland to contingency. To meet those objectives and requirements, the Service should focus on addressing properly the following principal issues.
Firstly, making the Service strong politically, a key element to successfully fulfilling every task in the new situation. Given the current complicated developments and the high demand of national defense, the Service has paid its special attention to educating and training its troops to enable them to thoroughly grasp the tasks of their Service and units; to be fully conscious of the situation, the adversaries’ intrigues and acts of sabotage against our country through their “Peaceful Evolution” strategy; to adhere to the Party’s standpoints to properly identify adversaries, partners and their interwoven transformation in the course of international integration. In the process of propagation and education, the Service’s units have taken great interest in dealing with the manifestation of equivocality, subjectiveness, lack of vigilance, pessimism, vacillation and lack of belief in existing weapons and technical equipment and the power of the people’s air defense force and posture. Furthermore, the troops are equipped with the thought of military arts “using the few to counter the many, using the high quality to counter the huge quantity, using the unmodern weapons to counter the foes with modern weapons and technical equipment”.
Besides, it is necessary to focus on building the Service’s Party Committee strong politically, ideologically and organizationally; Party’s organizations are built in line with the construction of commanding bodies and organizations of the masses; to continuously improve the leadership capability and combat strength of the Party’s cells and to bring into full play the pioneering and exemplary role of the staff of cadres and Party’s members during their mission execution. At the same time, the implementation of the Resolution of the 4th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (the 11th tenure) on “Some current urgent issues on party building” is attached to the implementation of the Politburo’s Directive 03-CT/TW (the 11th Tenure) on “continued increase of studying and following Ho Chi Minh’s moral example” and the intensification of the “Determination to Win” Emulation Movement, creating the driving force for the Service and its subordinate units to accomplish their assigned political task.
Secondly, mastering modern weapons and equipment, improving the ability of technical self-reliance to combat under any conditions with high efficiency. The Service has improved the capability of self-maintenance and self-support of weapons, technical equipment in its units and the capability of mobile servicing of its factories. Also, the Service continues to speed up and create a breakthrough in its manufacture, improvement, servicing and restoration of materials and spare parts...; striving for manufacturing and restoring 25% to 30% of its value of materials and finished products by the year 2015. The Service has proactively coordinated with agencies, departments and industries both inside and outside the army (including foreign companies) in order to promote scientific studies, improvement and manufacture of several new weapons and technical equipment, meeting the requirement of management and protection of the Fatherland’s airspace.
Thirdly, actively reforming and raising the education and training quality to meet the requirement of combat readiness of the forces. Training is adhered to the “Basic, Practical, Solid, Safe, Economical” motto. For the Air Force, its training focuses on improving the pilots’ (crew’s) professional qualification and capability of combat readiness, skilful handling of breakdowns and mishaps under any conditions of weather, night or day, air or sea or land; training to use weapon systems and equipment on board well, training to shoot targets in the air, at sea, on land; attaching importance to training in maritime and night flying, landing on short, narrow runways; search-and-rescue flying. Priorities are given to training key pilots for specific missions, young and new pilots. For the Air Defense, the training focuses on improving combat readiness, airspace management of missile combat crews, radar squads, anti-aircraft artillery batteries, and headquarters combat teams at all levels; increased training in tactics, rapid deployment and removal of forces, night-time training and field training exercises that are close to combat requirements; to attach importance to training good missile, radar and headquarters squads excelling at tackling basic situations and knowing how to deal with complicated ones when the enemies employ high-tech weapons, appear suddenly and fly at low altitudes. Training concentrates on skillfully handling the available weapons and technical equipment, and mastering and effectively employing the new ones.
Fourthly, ready to successfully carry out the regular and urgent missions under every condition and circumstance. The Service has undertaken many critical missions such as disposition, redisposition of forces in every strategic area, defense zone, amendment to operational plans and so on. Moreover, it strictly upholds orders and regulations of combat readiness duty, undertakes combat duty at airfields, assigns combat duty to missile crews, radar squads, anti-aircraft artillery batteries; to frequently sound the alarm to inspect the transformation of command level at all levels, and the radar operation in detecting, tracking and reporting all the targets in charge in a full, correct and timely manner; to closely manage and control all the flights within the airspace of Vietnam. Forces on combat duty, especially aircraft on duty, are ready to take off, resolutely dealing with situations in the air in conformity with Vietnam and international laws. Additionally, the Service has coordinated with the Civil Aviation in managing and controlling flights over the sky of Vietnam. The Service and Civil Aviation develop plans to re-arrange and optimize airways, ensuring aviation security; bringing about favorable conditions for the Civil Aviation administration, contributing to increasing foreign currencies for the country, while creating conditions and time for the armed forces, especially the Air Defense – Air Force, to opportunely track, control and cope with any aerial situations, not leaving the Fatherland to contingency.
Lt Gen Phuong Minh Hoa
Member of the Party’s Central Committee, Chief of the Service