President Ho Chi Minh ever said: “it is necessary to ceaselessly improve the political will and professional competence to ensure the timely, accurate, secret, safe, increasingly advanced communications”. Thus, the Signal Brigade 596 has considered Uncle Ho’s teachings as the guidelines to unceasingly enhance its capacity to master weapons and technical equipment and maintain the smooth communications in all situations.

Currently, the Brigade is assigned to manage, maintain, and exploit a large quantity of modern military hardware and technical equipment. While ensuring communications for leaders and commanders’ military-defence activities, the Brigade is tasked with implementing key signal projects and maintaining communications for the tasks of combat readiness, national defence, sea and island protection, search and rescue, and disaster prevention and control of the military units in the South. The Brigade’s stations and posts are scattered in provinces and cities, many of its stations and posts are stationed in the remote, isolated areas, and its troops work in the harsh weather and face a lot of complex, unpredictable situations.

To make its staff imbued with Uncle Ho’s teachings, the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command have put store by the work of education to build up its staff’s political will, responsibility and determination to overcome difficulties and accomplish the assigned task. It has focused on introducing resolutions and directives by higher echelons, particularly by the Signal Corps’ Party Committee and Command to its troops and executing the program for political education under the regulations. At the same time, it has included several contents and regulations related to the work of training and combat readiness as well as the regulations on maintaining communications and materiel in the program for political education. In the process, units at all level have clarified their advantages and challenges and clearly assigned responsibility to fulfil the task to each collective and individual. Lecturers and speakers have carefully made lesson plans, rehearsed the lectures, built models, and collected statistics and images to make lectures more diverse, attractive and relevant to reality. It should be noted that in each topic, the Brigade’s lecturers have cleverly grasped troops’ thought and aspirations to help commanders of the units opportunely deal with the issues arising from troops’ life. In spite of various affiliates and groups of troops, the Brigade has fulfilled the plan for political education with the participation of all troops. 100% of its staff members have passed the annual political knowledge test, 91% of them have got credit and distinction. Its staff members have always had strong political will and great self-awareness of their task, readily undertaken and successfully fulfilled every assigned task.

Following Uncle Ho’s teachings, for the task of combat readiness, the Brigade’s Party and Command have directed units to stringently maintain the order for daily duty, command duty, and combat duty, opportunely reinforce personnel and equipment, practise combat projects, attach significance to improving the capability of combat teams and mobile signal groups to avoid falling into passivity in all situations. To provide the basis for improving the capability in combat readiness, the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command have directed its affiliates to well perform the work of combat training in accordance with the guidelines, methods and requirements for maintaining communications. Units have elaborately prepared training program, lesson plans, personnel and facilities for combat training. The Brigade has attached great value to training its contingent of cadres. Focuses have been placed on maintaining the order for training the cadres prior to each training season and weekly and monthly as well as facilitating and encouraging its cadres’ self-study. Due to the particularities of a technical unit, the Brigade has adhered to the motto of “basics, practicality, and thorough grasp”, with a focus on synchronously, intensively training stations and duty teams in accordance with its task, area, organizational structure and existing technical equipment. At the same time, it has proactively built a core force of technical cadres with good knowledge of information technology to meet the requirements of modern science-technology and military hardware. To enhance the capability in exploiting and using new military hardware, military digital network and army-wide computer network as the basis for the all-level command automation, in 2018, the Brigade organized 13 intensive refresher courses for the technical staff of its affiliates. Besides, it held training courses on communications maintenance for the Field Hospital under the Department of Peacekeeping Operations to take part in the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan.

Following the Decision by the Corps’ Commander on the plan for regional communications and the method to organize and maintain regional and multi-sectoral communications, the Brigade has required units to grasp the Signal Operations and Staff Regulations and the Regulations on operating, exploiting and managing the system of military communications. At the same time, units have been asked to exploit the system of communications effectively, access and master modern signal hardware, and assign experienced cadres to be in charge of the units tasked with central missions and stationed in the areas in difficulty. Besides, the Brigade has cooperated with telecommunications enterprises and military signal units in building and completing the projects for maintaining communications with priority given to the North-South axis of communications, key units of the Naval Zones 2, 4, and 5, the Coast Guard Zone 3, border posts, outpost islands in the Southwest as well as units of the Ministry of National Defence and the Military Regions in its area. In 2018, the Brigade completed many constructions, building the optical fibre cable line 24FO, moving the station QB20, establishing the VG310 device in 18 border districts and units of the Military Regions 7 and 9, taking part in establishing, inspecting and exploiting the station HUB/A98 Band KU in the phase 2.

The Brigade has managed, used and exploited the existing old-generation military hardware in line with new-generation one, promoted the technical staff’s capability in maintaining, repairing and extending the lifespan and efficiency of equipment, and made best use of old-generation hardware. At the same time, it has encouraged this staff to actively, creatively exploit and use modern technical equipment. It has closely cooperated with telecommunications enterprises both inside and outside the Military in training its technical staff to gradually master advanced equipment and technologies, and effectively exploit the Vinasat satellite communications system, thereby opportunely ensuring communications and television network for islands, platforms, naval and coast guard ships, and border posts, helping commanders quickly grasp the situation of the key areas in the event. The Brigade has cooperated with units of the Signal Corps in effectively exploiting the military digital network and the military computer network as the basis for the all-level command automation. Moreover, it has directed offices and units to strictly maintain the order for technical work and the regulations on preserving, maintaining, repairing and extending the lifespan of signal hardware and equipment. It has stepped up the implementation of the Campaign entitled “managing and exploiting weapons and technical equipment effectively, sustainably, safely, economically and traffic safety”, while encouraging cadres and soldiers to apply technical initiatives and innovations to training and ensuring communications. It has promoted the role of mobile technical teams and technical support centres in fixing technical malfunctions from afar and regularly inspecting the technical condition of cars and motorcycles used for delivering documents and vehicles when taking part in traffic. Via mobile maintenance and repair campaigns, the Brigade has improved the stations’ technical staff’s management, repair and maintenance capability, contributing to effectively managing and exploiting the system of military communications, meeting the task requirements in all situations. As a result, the Brigade’s cadres, technicians and soldiers’ capability in exploiting and maintaining communications has been raised considerably. The deployment of mobile stations and general stations has met the technical requirements; communications have been established quickly and qualitatively.

Actively, proactively, creatively following Uncle Ho’s teachings, the Brigade has greatly enhanced its training quality and capacity to manage, exploit and master materiel. Since 2012, the Brigade has been given 2 Fatherland Protection Orders (Third Class and Second Class) by the State President, 3 Emulation Flags by the Ministry of National Defence (2012, 2013, and 2015), and 2 Emulation Flags by the Government (2016 and 2017).

To conclude, the Signal Brigade 596’s following of Uncle Ho’s teachings has contributed to positively changing its cadres and soldiers’ way of thinking, responsibility and determination to overcome difficulties and challenges during the performance of their task as well as maintaining “timely, accurate, secret, and safe” communications in all situations.

Sr. Col. Vu Ngoc Minh, Commissar of the Brigade