Depot K286 (Technical Department, Service of Air Defence – Air Force), which was established on 20/3/1993, has the duties of receiving, issuing, managing, maintaining and storing types of equipment, missiles, anti-aircraft artillery, anti-personnel weapons, specialised vehicles and other technical materials. Over 30 years of its establishment and development, all cadres, staff and soldiers in the Depot have closely followed the guidelines of building the Service, promoted the spirit of self-reliance, resilience and overcoming difficulties to receive, keep and assure enough materials, weapons and ammunition for units doing their missions of training and combat readiness, making contribution to the protection of the Homeland airspace. In recognition of these achievements, the Depot was awarded with the Third-class Homeland Defence Order by President Ho Chi Minh, the Certificate of Merit by Ministry of National Defence on building the Army, reinforcing the national defence and protecting the Homeland; the Title of Determination-to-win Unit and Flag of Emulation by the Service for many years. In 2022, the Depot was awarded the Emulation Flag for excellently accomplishing its missions, being the completely strong, “exemplary, typical” unit.

With the requirements for building the “revolutionary, regular, highly-skilled, modernised” Service, there are new developments in the Depot’s missions. Together with storing and technical maintenance for large quantity of out-of-date weapons and technical equipment, the Depot has been tasked with managing and storing many modern weapons and equipment, strategically-reserved equipment for the Defence Ministry with stricter process of maintenance and storage. Besides, owing to the effects of weather and climate, some of the weapons, technical equipment and air defence materials, which have been made for a long time, have been downgraded significantly; the needs for technical support were large, while the number of technical staff of the Depot who has specialist knowledge was fewer than the standards with different skills; the systems of facilities and supporting materials, especially the special ones have not met the demands for storing, maintenance, repairing, etc. Based on the reality, the Depot’s Party Committee and command have many policies and solutions to promote the spirit of self-reliance, resilience, focusing the improvement of the technical work to meet the mission requirements.

At first, it is necessary to strengthen the leadership and direction of all-level party committees and commands in implementing the technical work. Seriously grasping and implementing the Resolution No. 382-NQ/ĐUQSTW, dated 29/11/2007 by the Central Military Party Committee (now the Central Military Commission); Resolution No. 1656-NQ/QUTW, dated 20/12/2022 by the Central Military Commission on “Leading the technical work to 2030 and the following years”; the technical orders and plans by the Technical Department of the Service, annually, the Depot’s party committee issues special resolutions on the technical work, leading and directing the party committees and commands of all directly-managed units to make leading resolutions, building plans and action programs, in which, to clearly specify the standards, targets and solutions. In order to achieve high effectiveness, in the implementation of these resolutions, the Depot’s party committee and command have asked offices and units to focus on promoting the roles of executive committees and commanders in their leadership and direction, especially the Technical Council’s roles in advising, directing and implementing; focus on main contents and completely repair the weaknesses pointed out in the periodical meetings and checking periods by the seniors, at the same time, enhance the education and improve all cadres, officers and soldiers’ awareness of characteristics and missions of the Service generally and the Depot particularly, especially the new requirements for the technical work to meet the demands for building the Service towards the modernity, also the position, roles and necessity to build and maintain the weapons and technical equipment which are in store, etc., through which to build for cadres and staff the right motivation, high awareness and responsibility, scientific working style so that they can actively learn to improve their knowledge, be ready to receive and well accomplish the assigned missions.

Maintenance procedure at the depot

With the motto of well storing and durably using, considering stored weapons and equipment are the national defence reserves for the combat readiness missions of the Service and the Army, in the past few years, the Depot has focused on maintaining the regulations of the technical work scientifically and closely according to the technological procedures. Every year, on closely following the guidelines by the Technical Department, the Depot built its military plans, concretised the missions and standards of each section, and proposed the solutions for implementing the technical work. On that basis, the Depot directed offices, sections to concretise into the general implementation plans for each period, quarter, month and implement synchronously. To gain high effectiveness, before its receiving, repairing, synchronising and storing weapons and technical equipment, the Depot has grasped and assigned missions in detail to each part, group and individual; given further training and surveyed, evaluated the technical conditions of the weapons and technical equipment, making the basis to build preparation plans for materials, take full advantage of on-site materials and make favourite conditions for implementing the missions of technical support. In the implementation process, the Depot has asked the Technical Council to give guidelines, check and encourage sections to carry out all regulations of the technical work, follow fully all steps of the technological procedure. Especially, with complex and rare materials and equipment such as the missiles and air defence radar, of which the steps of unsealing, deploying,  periodically maintaining of mechanical parts, electricity, parameter adjustment, etc. are really complicated, the technical offices and section leaders needed to closely follow all technical groups and individuals, the step orders and safety precautions, implement the motto of “making every step reliable”.

On finishing the technical process, the Depot has established a council to inspect and check the results, when assuring the technical requirements, taken them to warehouses and sealed them by vacuum desiccation and absorbed the moisture by using Silica gel. Since 2017, the Depot has organised the periodical store and maintenance for over 1,500 weapons and equipment; sealed and unsealed 20 radars and anti-aircraft missiles, 95 electricity terminals, 491 cars and tracked vehicles, 30 complexes of anti-aircraft artillery 3CY-23, 12 anti-aircraft artilleries and 12,500 infantry weapons, etc., making sure the technical process, plans, quality and safety, and received the recognition from the Acceptance Council of the Technical Department.

Promoting the construction of regularity in the Technical Department and assuring safety are considered by the Depot as the breaking point, making the basis to improve the quality of store, maintenance and seal of weapons and technical equipment. On grasping the seniors’ directions and guidelines, directly the Instruction No. 90/HD-TCKT, dated 08/01/2016 by the General Department of Technology on building the regularity in technical depots; the Instruction No. 1492/HD-CKT, dated 12/4/2017 by the Service’s Technical Department on building the regularity in technical branches and closely following the reality, the Depot has concretised and implemented consistently these directions in all units. Among them, the Depot has standardised all technical contents, ranging from plans for technical support, depot management documents, regulations, schemes, signs and rules to positions of each type of weapons in the warehouses, at the same time, directed all offices and units to well carry out the stock taking, closely manage the types, quality, quantity, goods values and technological equipment, making sure the accuracy of the real statistics and the documents; exactly evaluate and arrange each type of materials and equipment. According to the specific features of each type of materials, especially bombs and ammunition, the Depot often checks, classifies and takes experiment and chemical samples to be the basis to evaluate and classify the quality; timely isolates in separate places, makes request for withdrawal of the level-5 equipment which is in safety danger. In order to improve the management ability, meeting the demands for modernisation, the Depot has actively applied the information technology into its management both of quality, quantity, types, synchronousness, technical conditions, boxes of each type of weapons and of the operation and supervision of the professional activities. Up to now, 100% of systems of signs, notebooks and equipment have been encoded and entered onto computers, which has improved the quality and effectiveness of the receiving, delivering and management activities. This is the important basis for the Depot to prepare the resources, building materials for plans, making sure the strict and practical techniques; select the time of maintenance, unseal and reseal, and also make preparation to give suitable conditions for the activities of storing, maintenance, repairing and sealing due to the process, assuring the safety and high effectiveness.

Simultaneously, the Depot has actively renovated the contents, forms and methods of organising technical training, in which, given more focus on training mobile support for units, contributing to the improvement of knowledge and skills for technical cadres and staff. Considering this a difficult task, the Depot has assigned and given tasks in details to each office, section, group and individual; built and implemented the training plans practically to each participant. For cadres, the Depot has focused on training to improve the skills of technical and staff leadership, methods of leading and managing technical activities, especially in mobile settings, deploying and withdrawing equipment. For technical staff, the Depot has focused on training about the process of unsealing missiles, radars; practice of tactic line-ups, activities of boarding and getting off the vehicles, guarding, camouflage of weapons, equipment, and methods for keeping secrets when moving. In the process of training, to gain high effectiveness, the Depot has carried out the training from segments, steps and phases to general training, focusing on training the verbal commands, movements and manners. To make it practical, the Depot has cooperated with Division 361, Factory A31, Z119 to organise the practice training, improve the skills of parameter adjustment, equipment and other contents of technical support in combat. With its active and highly determined spirit, in 2022, the Depot excellently accomplished the “NK-22” exercise mission of changing statuses of combat readiness, with the participation  of real troops, which was awarded the Certificate of Merit by the Service. Through its training, contests and competitions and exercises, technical cadres and staff have improved completely and firmly their skills and knowledge, definitely meeting the mission requirements at present and in the long run.

Being honoured and proud of the traditions in 30 years of building, devoting and growth, Depot K286’s cadres and soldiers will continue promoting their achieved results and experience, managing to develop and build the “regularity, modernity and safety”, excellently accomplish all assigned missions in order to contribute to the construction of the “revolutionary, regular, highly-skilled and modern” Service, firmly safeguarding the Homeland airspace.

Colonel HOANG TIEN HUNG, Head of the Depot