Exercises at the operational and strategic levels of war are of significant importance, which directly enhance the commander’s and staff’s command and control as well as soldiers’ combat readiness. They also provide the foundation for improving operational plans, leadership, and coordination among commissions, ministries, and agencies at the central level and localities and help to address many issues arising from the protection of the Fatherland in the new situation.

Based on the position and role of exercises in enhancing comprehensive quality and combat power of the People’s Army, in recent years, the Central Military Commission (CMC) and Ministry of National Defence (MND) have been determined to lead and direct departments and units in the entire military to raise quality of exercises at the operational, strategic level of war, bringing about comprehensive, positive changes in the execution of this important task. Specifically, the awareness of officers, soldiers, and cadres working for ministries and agencies at the central level and in localities towards exercises has been ceaselessly improved. The leadership and direction of party committees and commanders at all levels, departments, units, and localities have been leveraged. All resolutions and directives of the CMC and MND on exercises at the operational and strategic levels of war have been seriously implemented. Content of exercises has been renewed, close to scenarios mapped out in the operational concept of safeguarding the Fatherland, applied to areas and theatres of war, and tested in all operational environments (air, land, sea, cyberspace, and electromagnatic spectrum). Various forms of operations in types of war, which require response to situations concerning national defence, traditional and non-traditional security, etc., have been practised. Methods to command and control exercises have also witnessed much progress. Importance has been attached to exercises aimed to enhance coordination among forces and live firing of weapon systems equipped for combat units. Some training exercises have been force-on-force ones, carried out at short notice, involved many large weapon systems and equipment, and conducted on complex terrain and in extreme weather conditions. More importantly, in the context of emerging international, regional situation and adjustments in terms of organisation, staffing, and equipment of the People’s Army, the MND has directly instructed and held many large-scale combined arms drills, operations in defence of military regions, and cyber operations such as MT-22, PT-23, TC-23, DT-23, and so on. All of these exercises were successful, achieved the goals, and were absolutely safe, thereby affirming the sound guideline of the Party and State about building an “adept, compact, strong” military while demonstrating combat readiness and power of the People’s Army, who always deserve trust placed in them by the Party, State, and people.  

In the coming time, the international, regional situations are likely to witness many rapid, complex, unforeseeable developments. The cause of building the People’s Army and safeguarding the Fatherland places new, higher requirements on the entire military. To further enhance combat readiness and win war in any situations requires the entire military to carry out all aspects of work drastically. Of note, importance must be further attached to reform and increased quality of training exercises at all levels, especially the operational and strategic levels, which aims to create a breakthrough in comprehensive quality and combat power.

First, enhancing leadership and direction of party committees and commanders at all levels for operational and strategic drills. Operational and strategic exercises are combat missions with content covering the strategic, operational, tactical levels of war, involve many complex senarios, forces, weapon systems, and technical devices, conducted in large areas, and have high demands, thus requiring close leadership and direction. This is also the deciding factor in the success of drills. Therefore, party committees and commanders of departments and units must continue to deeply grasp defence, military viewpoints, resolutions, and directives of the CMC and MND on training and drills, most notably Resolution No. 1659-NQ/QUTW, dated 20 December 2022 of the CMC on enhancing training quality in the 2023 – 2030 period and beyond. They are also requested to have appropriate understanding of the position and significance of exercises and perceive situations and their missions firmly. This will enable them to focus their leadership and direction on exercises, promulgate documents guiding the development and implementation of plans, make breakthroughs in key content, new issues, and weaknesses, resolve to deal with loose leadership, conservatism, fear of difficulty, hardship, and reform as well as the thirst for achievement in training exercises.

Party committees and commanders of departments and units must attach importance to enhanced quality of party work and political work in drills and promote political education with the aim of guiding ideology and creating dramatic changes in cadres’ and soldiers’ awareness and responsibility for this vital mission. There should be a unified understanding that training exercises are a key political task and crucial measure that directly contribute to increased combat readiness, combat power, building of an “adept, compact, strong” military advancing towards modernity, and fulfilment of national defence. By doing so, cadres and soldiers will give prominence to their responsibility for training exercises and operational, strategic drills in particular.

Live firing exercise conducted by Military Corps 12 in 2023

Second, it is necessary to proactively study and reform content and mode of exercises at the operational, strategic level of war, ensuring suitability for the evolving situation, demand of safeguarding the Fatherland, and modern warfare. Recent local wars and military conflicts reveal that the scientific-technological revolution, especially the Fourth Industrial Revolution, has been exerting a profound impact on operational activities and giving rise to new types of war, forms of operations, strategic space, and ways of war. The use of high-tech weapons and application of advancements in science and technology, especially artificial intelligence (AI), have been game changers in operations. Consequently, to meet demand of safeguarding the Fatherland requires functional departments of the MND to continue to successfully carry out strategic studies, assessment, and prediction, to have a thorough understanding of situations, to forecast the development trend of situations and strategic circumstances correctly, and to timely advise leaders of the General Staff, CMC, and MND to create training content for the operational level of war and conduct military drills to improve operational capacity at the strategic level. Attention must be paid to research and development of Vietnamese military art, especially the method at the operational level of war, to ensure suitability for adversaries’ advances as well as the organisation, staffing, weapons, and equipment of our military in the context of the war to safeguard the Fatherland. This will provide a solid foundation for creating manuals of drill for the commanders and staff at the operational and strategic (theatre) levels of war, tactical units, services, arms, and forces in accordance with operational realities. Functional departments are to advise leaders of the MND to direct departments and units to hold field experiment exercies at small, medium, and large scales in various operational environments and areas to devise new content of the war to safeguard the Fatherland; step up applying digital technology, information technology, and simulation technology to drills in order to review and draw lessons learnt for training and drills.

Third, enhancing reform to promote quality and management of exercises. On the basis of their funtions and missions, the operational, strategic departments need to cooperate closely in advising the General Staff, CMC, and MND and instructing units to intensify reform of operational, strategic exercises according to the Party’s new thinking about national defence and military as well as requirement to protect the Fatherland in the new situation. In the short run, they must concentrate on advising relevant authorities to perfect mechanisms for commanding and controlling exercises as stipulated by Resolution No. 1659-NQ/QUTW, Decree No. 21/2019/ND-CP of 22 February 2019 on defence zones, and Decree No. 02/2018/ND-CP of 31 December 2018 on states of national defence, martial law, and curfew to ensure uninamity, synchronocity, and effectiveness without overlap. The most important mechanism is the one which regulates command and control in states of national defence and the participation of the members of the Central Steering Committee on military region defence and defence zones in the Steering Committee on provincial/municipal defence zone exercises. This helps to jointly direct and instruct the operations of province-level commissions, departments, branches, and unions when the locality is transformed into states of national defence, prepares and conducts defence operations, undertakes civil defence, and so forth. The above-mentioned measures serve to bring into full play the comprehensive power of levels, branches, localities, and units and contribute to increased quality of military drills at the operational, strategic level of war. More importantly, the more active involvement of functional agencies of the central commissions, ministries, and branches in exercises aims to instruct, inspect, and urge localities to carry out defence zone exercises. These functional agencies instruct in detail how the province-level commissions, departments, branches, and unions will operate when the locality is transformed into states of national defence, prepares and conducts defence operations, and undertakes civil defence in states of national defence, ensuring unanimity of leadership and direction between local party committees and authorities. Additionally, the Department of Operations continues to work with relevant departments and units to adjust content and methods to command and control exercises, frame suitable exercise themes, produce senarios about the enemy close to each area, give training courses in content which is new and lack of consensus, thus raising awareness of command and control of military drills.

Fourth, attention should be paid to training and enhanced competence of trainers at operational level of war. Conduct of operational exercises, exercises at operational, strategic level of war in particular, is one of the central tasks of departments and units, especially those at the operational, strategic level. Of note, operations departments are tasked with assisting party committees and commanders at all echelons in leading, directing, and coordinating operational training and exercises. Therefore, to meet the increasingly high demand of training and exercises at the operational, strategic level requires the operations departments to keep advising party committees and commanders on the development of long-term training, drill plans and programmes, combat readiness, training at the operational level of war, prediction about new operational methods of adversaries in future wars, operations in defence of military regions in the war to safeguard the Fatherland, staff and operations in defence of military regions, party work and political work, logistical and technical work in command and staff exercises at the operational, strategic level and training exercises of defence zones. Moreover, the operations departments need to instruct other departments and forces to make good preparation for training of commanders, staff, and units, thereby reaching consensus on training content, new types of operations, and effective measures to engage and defeat the enemy in any situations.

In addition to the aforementioned contents and measures, departments, units, and localities attach importance to good preparation for exercises. First of all, they must work with one another to ensure security, safety, and secrecy in military drills; survey and dispose bombs, mines, explosive device, flammable substances, and radioactive substances to ensure absolute safety at the training grounds; conduct electronic reconnaissance, suppress and jam cellular networks, and jam unmanned aerial vehicles illegally approaching the exercise zone. The cyberspace reconnaissance force must timely detect and deal with illegal news and articles relating to the exercises. There is a need to provide sufficient food for forces participating in the exercises, ensure food hygiene and safety and epidemic prevention and response, and ensure technical standards for vehicles participating in the exercises. Departments, units, and localities must also promote inspection, preliminary review, and review of combat readiness, combat training, and operational, strategic exercises at all levels to timely address shortcomings and weaknesses and perfect content and measures to improve quality of training and exercises at the operational, strategic level of war, ensuring that forces in the entire military are always ready to fight and win the wars to firmly safeguard the socialist Vietnamese Fatherland in any situations.

Major General NGUYEN HUY CANH, Director of the Department of Operations