Today, together with positive effects, activities in cyberspace have been exerting negative influence on every aspect of the social life, including the military and national defence. In such an environment, hostile forces have used all tricks to do damage to our revolution. This requires the military to adopt solutions to enhance capabilities to conduct cyberspace operations, contributing to firm protection of the Fatherland in any situations.

Cyberspace, which is one of five operational environments, plays an important role in the strategy to safeguard the Fatherland. Cyberspace operations is a new type of operations and defined as an organised activity to fight the enemy within the posture of people’s warfare, which aims to safeguard national sovereignty in cyberspace, the national critical information system, and independence, sovereignty, unification, and territorial integrity of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam. Cyberspace operations is conducted in both peacetime and wartime. On deeply grasping the role of cyberspace operations and the Party’s guidelines on military, national defence, and protection of the Fatherland in cyberspace, in recent years, the military in general and the cyber mission force in particular have proactively overcome difficulties and adopt many synchronous, drastic measures to enhance operational capabilities to firmly safeguard national sovereignty in this important environment.

Although the cyber mission force is newly established, operates in a vast, multidimensional space, the Central Military Commission (CMC) and Ministry of National Defence (MND), directly the General Staff have closely led the building of this force in a modern direction in association with building an “adept, compact, strong” military. The training, conduct of exercises, and struggle in cyberspace are studied and reformed by means of many effective, creative methods. The combat posture in cyberspace is closely connected with the whole people’s defence posture and people’s security posture and is developed increasingly strong in both depth and width, which contributes to protection of information security, military secrets, and state secrets in peacetime and guarantee of victory should a war occur. The cyber task forces are adjusted and disposed scientifically in accordance with operational plans and strategies to safeguard the Fatherland and national cybersecurity, etc., capable of conducting cyber recconnaissance, cyber defence, and cyber attack in strategic directions. Legal document system regarding cyberspace operations is steadily developed and improved. Command, control, and protection of modern weapons and equipment are carried out synchronously and closely, which aims to neutralise attacks using high-tech weapons and be ready to launch counteroffensives against enemy attacks in cyberspace. State management of cyberspace operations has received great attention, especially the studies and development of forces and means of struggle, ensuring timely, effective response to contingencies in cyberspace.

MN-286 system help enhancing cyberspace operations

In the coming time, given robust developments of the cyber environment, widespread use of information operations and cyberspace operations becomes an inevitable trend of many countries, especially major powers. As far as Viet Nam is concerned, the national critical information system and military, defence information system, etc., are likely key targets of deliberate cyber attacks. Hostile forces’ distortion on guidelines and policies of the Party and State as well as the military in cyberspace via increasingly subtle, malicious, uncontrollable tricks may witness complex developments. Efforts are being put into streamlining the cyber forces in an adept, compact, strong direction, which enables these forces to advance straight to modernity. The cyber forces continue to be strengthened in terms of organisation, staffing, weapons, equipment, infrastructure, and so on. The situations require the entire military to adopt drastic, synchronous solutions to improve its operational capacity in cyberspace to satisfy the demand of safeguarding the Fatherland in the new situation, most notably the fundamental ones as follows:

First, it is necessary to strengthen party committees’ leadership and enhance commanders’ management of cyberspace operations. Party committees and commanders of departments and units in the entire military, especially the cyber task forces, need to deeply perceive the position and importance of this type of operations, thereby laying the foundation for close, correct adoption of procedures for leadership and management. Attention should be paid to inspection, supervision, preliminary summing-up, and summation, which is aimed to draw experience to supplement and develop theory about operations in cyberspace. There is a need to promote understanding and effective implementation of resolutions and conclusions on the military strategy, national defence strategy, and strategy to safeguard the Fatherland of the Party, most notably the Strategy to Safeguard the Fatherland in the New Situation, Strategy to Protect the Fatherland in Cyberspace, National Cybersecurity Strategy, etc., thus concretising into operational plans suitable to characteristics of missions and capabilities of the cyber task forces as well as operational plans of each department, unit, and force. Cyber defence is to be consolidated, especially in terms of reconnaissance, collection of information, data, and digital materials, and assessment and prediction of situations in cyberspace, which enables the General Staff and MND to advise the Party and State to formulate guidelines and measures for national defence struggle and protection of the Fatherland.

It is imperative to further research and improve legal documents to raise the effectiveness of state management of national sovereignty protection in cyberspace, especially directives, circulars, and instructions on implementation of the Decree No. 53/2022/ND-CP, dated 15 August 2022, of the Government stipulating in detail some articles of the Law on Cybersecurity. The preliminary summing-up of five years’ implementation of the Resolution No. 29-NQ/TW, dated 25 July 2018, of the Politburo on defending the Fatherland in cyberspace must be carried out in a serious, close manner, which provides a solid foundation for drawing lessons learnt and proposing solutions to increased operational capabilities of cyber task forces in the coming period. There is a need to improve and effectively operate mechanisms of leadership, command, and control of forces participating in cyberspace operations, especially the mechanism for coordinating and leveraging the leading role of the MND, Ministry of Public Security, and Ministry of Information and Communications; propose plans to timely and effectively respond to situations in cyberspace without falling into passivity and surprise both at strategic, operational, and tactical levels.

Second, breakthroughs are to be made in renewing and promoting training quality and combat skills of cyber task forces. Party committees and commanders of departments and units, particularly the cyber task forces in the entire military, need to thoroughly grasp and effectively realise the Resolution No. 1659-NQ/QUTW, dated 20 December 2022, of the CMC on enhancing training quality in the 2023 – 2030 period and beyond; make breakthroughs, innovation, and creativeness by means of appropriate, scientific solutions. Based on results of five years’ implementation of the Resolution No. 29-NQ/TW, it is necessary to further improve and standardise training contents and programs to suit mission requirements of operations in the cyberspace and advance of information technology.

Apart from military training and political education according to general regulations, the cyber task forces focus on improving cadres’ knowledge and skills of information security, cybersecurity, cyberspace operations, command and control in cyber operations, cybersecurity emergency response, and so forth. They are also to develop techniques of information technology, information assurance, prevention and response to “peaceful evolution” and “subversion,” and cyberspace operations. The Command 86 needs to cooperate with training institutions at home and abroad to train their cadres in information technology and cyberspace operations; review and appraise training programs to standardise graduates, which contributes to development of the military’s human resource for cyberspace operations.

Third, creation and development of cyberspace operations art. Departments and units in the entire military, especially functional ones, should put a great effort into studying and developing arts and methods of information warfare and cyberspace operations in recent wars in the world, which lays the basis for application to the creation and development of cyberspace operations art, ensuring suitability for the Strategy to Safeguard the Fatherland in the New Situation and Strategy to Safeguard the Fatherland in Cyberspace. There is a need to advise leaders of the MND to organise a uniform leadership and command system for cyberspace operations in the entire military; adopt measures to enhance cyber defence capabilities in the MND Headquarters, operational, strategic department, and special forces. Research in the fields of cyber reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, and rapid detection of enemy cyber weapons and cyber activities is to be combined with measures to deploy and protect our modern weapons, equipment, and cyberspace operations, which enable us to be ready to deter, respond, and neutralise harmful acts of reactionary, terrorist organisations as well as enemy attacks by high-tech weapons. More efforts must be made in improving and issuing the Cyberspace Operations Manual, Regulation on Staff and Operations in Cyberspace, Regulation on Information Technology in Viet Nam People’s Army, and other materials concerned. It is imperative to formulate and implement the Project on improving cyberspace operations capabilities to meet requirements and missions of safeguarding the Fatherland in the new situation”, which contributes to increased combat power of cyber task forces; conduct studies about methodologies and art of coordinating operations in the cyberspace, land, air, sea, space domains to create overall power in the cause of national defence.

Fourth, there is a need to invest in technical infrastructure and promote quality of support work for cyberspace operations. On the basis of existing technical infrastructure, departments and units, directly the cyber task forces, continue to review and advise the higher echelons on what to invest in order to enhance technical infrastructure quality in an increasingly sufficient, synchronous, modern direction; step up cooperation with military enterprises to procure scientific, technological equipment and apply information technology to the building of an electronic Government, striving for a digital Government model in the MND. It is necessary to complete critical infrastructure of the Northern Defence Data Centre, the MND’s secure internetworking interface, and national data networking according to the MND’s Project on digital transformation; produce solutions to information security and cybersecurity for strategic departments, operational-level unit headquarters, and modern weapon systems and equipment of services and arms; promote inspection of developing the electronic Government and digital transformation in departments and units throughout the military; popularise software used for command and control via wireless communications infrastructure; design and develop software in support of tabletop exercises.

Additionally, departments and units in the entire military need to strengthen leadership of logistical support for cyberspace operations; enhance provision of healthcare for soldiers and implementation of preferential policies in connection with fulfilment of targets set by the emulation movement: “The military logistics follows Uncle Ho’s teaching”, which aims to bring about drastic transformation in soldiers’ awareness and actions in the field of logistical support. They are also to make timely, adequate provision of technical equipment and vehicles for cyber task forces in the entire military, especially for combat readiness, training, and scenario-based exercises; promote quality of using and maintaining weapons, technical equipment and vehicles, and information technology; achieve the targets of information security, weapon and technical equipment safety, and traffic safety according to the spirit of Campaign 50, contributing to increase combat strength of the military and firm protection of national sovereignty in cyberspace.

Senior Lieutenant General HUYNH CHIEN THANG, Member of the Party Central Committee, Member of the Central Military Commission, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of Viet Nam People’s Army