As a matter of utmost importance, the building of “adept, compact, strong” armed forces under the 13^th Politburo’s Resolution 05-NQ/TW, dated January 17^th, 2022 and the Central Military Commission’s Resolution 230-NQ/QUTW, dated April 2^nd, 2022 has been put at the forefront of leadership and direction of Military Region 1’s Party Committee Standing Board and Command via drastic, synchronous measures and proper steps.

Military Region 1 is located in Northeast Viet Nam, holding a position of importance to the country’s politics, economy, defence, security, and diplomacy. More notably, the Military Region’s armed forces and people have made significant contributions to our country’s land-slide victories in the two resistance wars against the French and the US aggressors as well as in the period of Socialist Fatherland construction and protection.

Bringing into play that tradition, over the years, the Military Region’s Party Committee Standing Board and Command have grasped resolutions and directives by the Party, the Central Military Commission (CMC), and the Ministry of National Defence (MND) to successfully perform military and defence work and all other assigned tasks. The Military Region’s Party Committee and Command have focused their leadership and direction on achieving consensus, great resolve, and appropriate road map towards the building of adept, compact, strong people’s armed forces under resolutions of the Party and the CMC.

Thanks to determination and scientific, suitable measures, up to now, basically, the organisational structure of the Military Region’s armed forces has been adjusted according to the MND’s decisions, with a reasonable balance between offices and units as well as between standing and reserve forces. Noticeably, the Military Region has reduced the strength of its offices by 10%, given priority to sufficiently staffing units tasked with training and combat readiness duty, required its affiliated Military School, infantry divisions, and arms brigades to strictly conform to their new organisational structures, and disbanded local military schools on schedule. In comparison to previous years, the number of offices and units has been decreased, but the synergy and combat power of the Military Region’s armed forces have been considerably improved. All-level military offices have been directed to actively assist local party committees and authorities in devising plans/programmes for military and defence work. Due attention has been paid to closely cooperating with forces in opportunely, effectively settling defence and security situations and protecting national sovereignty and border security, which has been highly appreciated by the CMC, the MND, and local party committees, authorities, and people.

Commandant of the Military Region checks combat readiness

Currently, the situation on global and regional scales continues to witness complex, unpredictable developments. The 4^th Industrial Revolution has been robustly developing, together with the birth of many modern weapons and new forms of warfare. Meanwhile, hostile forces keep enhancing their sabotage strategy against our country’s revolution. Therefore, more demanding requirements of Fatherland protection are being posed to the entire Military in general, the Military Region’s armed forces in particular.

To make contributions to successfully fulfilling the goal of building a revolutionary, regular, highly-skilled, gradually modernised Viet Nam People’s Army (VPA) and working towards a modern VPA by 2030, the Military Region’s Party Committee Standing Board and Command will continue closely, seriously executing the 13^th Politburo’s Resolution 05-NQ/TW, dated January 17^th, 2022 and the CMC’s Resolution 230-NQ/QUTW, dated April 2^nd, 2022 on leadership over the organisation of the VPA in the period of 2021-2030 and beyond, while making the Military Region’s armed forces “adept, compact, strong” with great synergy and combat power to play a core role in the Fatherland protection cause.

First of all, directing party organisations, offices, and units to study and grasp resolutions, directives, and plans by the Party, the CMC, and the MND on force adjustment in a close, serious manner. Doing so will enable all cadres and party members, particularly all-level party committees and commands to fully understand viewpoints, goals, and principles concerning the organisation of the VPA in the period of 2021-2030 and beyond. All staff members of the Military Region’s armed forces will be fully aware that force adjustment represents an objective requirement, gives an incentive to the building of a modern VPA from 2030, and helps make the Military Region’s armed forces increasingly strong, highly mobile, and capable of undertaking and successfully fulfilling all assigned tasks. Thus, all-level party committees and commands should thoroughly grasp directives, resolutions, and decisions by the MND and the Military Region on merger and dissolution, well perform ideological work for cadres and soldiers, anticipate issues on this subject to maintain solidarity within offices and units, resolutely deal with signs of subjectivity, impatience, indifference, and dependence, and create a new incentive for building comprehensively strong offices and units with a high level of combat readiness.

Second, enhancing leadership and direction of all-level party committees and commands, maintaining close coordination between offices and units, and promoting synergy to realise the breakthrough on force organisation. Force adjustment is a complex, sensitive task that is related to many sectors and units and directly impacts on cadres and soldiers’ ideology and sentiment as well as units’ combat readiness capacity and combat power. Hence, under resolutions and directives by the CMC and the MND, especially the Military Region Party Committee’s Resolution, dated May 30^th, 2022 and the Military Region Command’s Plan 1687/KH-QK on implementing the MND’s Decision and the Military Region Party Committee’s Resolution on leadership over the organisation of the VPA in the period of 2021-2030 and beyond, party committees and commands of offices and units should formulate their own specialised resolutions and action plans/programmes on force adjustment closely, synchronously, scientifically in accordance with their particularities, functions, and tasks. Force adjustment should be placed under all-level party committee’s focalised, uniform leadership, while all contents of this work must be democratically discussed at all levels. Simultaneously, great value should be attached to stepping up inspection and supervision work of all-level party organisations and key cadres and heightening a sense of responsibility and vanguard, exemplary role of cadres and party members.

Offices, especially the Military Region Staff as the Standing Agency of the Steering Board on merging and disbanding the Military Region’s affiliates should play a central role in advising the Military Region’s Party Committee and Command to design plans for realising resolutions and decisions relating to force adjustment. In the short term, emphasis should be placed on developing a Plan to receive forces being transferred from other units and re-organise several units of the Military Region after being merged as the basis for the Military Region to draw lessons and submit proposals to the MND on adjusting the organisational structure of provincial-level military commands and affiliated units. The Military Region’s Political Department should give advice on implementing resolutions on force adjustment, consolidating party organisations, performing personnel work, policy work, and propagation work, protecting internal politics, and combating hostile forces’ sabotage strategy relating to force adjustment. The Military Region’s Logistics and Technical Departments should focus on designing a system of logistics and technical stations, depots, and facilities in accordance with each office and unit’s force disposition and the Military Region’s defensive posture. In the process, offices and units should closely combine force adjustment with ideological work, organisational work, and policy work to maintain solidarity and avoid impacting on their task performance and their cadres and soldiers’ ideology and daily life.   

Third, concentrating on making the Military Region’s armed forces revolutionary, regular, highly-skilled, gradually modernised with political steadfastness, great technical and tactical capability, and a high level of combat readiness. To do so, party committees and commands of offices and units should continue renewing and improving political education and ideological orientation to build up their cadres and soldiers’ political zeal. Emphasis should be placed on rendering troops fully aware of Marxism-Leninism, Ho Chi Minh Thought, the Party’s guidelines, the State’s law and policy, tasks of the Military, the Military Region, offices, and units, and hostile forces’ plots and artifices. Due attention should be paid to well carrying out information work to orientate troops’ ideology on new, sensitive issues, proactively combating wrong, hostile viewpoints, and preventing and fighting against internal “self-evolution” and “self-transformation”. It is necessary to keep boosting leadership capacity and combativeness of party organisations and party members. Besides, it is essential to align the building of politically, ideologically, morally, organisationally strong party organisations with the building of a contingent of cadres with political steadfastness, absolute loyalty to the Party, the Fatherland, and the people, great professional expertise, scientific working style, strict self-discipline, and strong determination to overcome difficulties and fulfil all assigned tasks.

Party committees and commands at all levels should keep grasping resolutions and directives by the CMC and the MND on training work, especially the CMC’s Conclusion 60-KL/TW, dated January 18^th, 2019 on continuing to realise the CMC’s Resolution 765-NQ/QUTW on raising the quality of training work in the period of 2013-2020 and beyond. Grounded on those documents, great weight should be added to renewing training programmes, contents, methods, and management as well as providing logistics and technical support for training to create a huge positive change in this important work. Learning from lessons on 10 years of implementing Resolution 765, party committees and commands of offices and units should step up a reform in leadership and direction over training work, while reviewing and supplementing action plans/programmes for the Resolution in a highly feasible, appropriate fashion. At the same time, breakthrough measures should be adopted for focal points, new issues, and weaknesses. It is important to continue adhering to the training motto of “basics, practicality, and solidity”. Significance should be attached to synchronous, intensive training relevant to reality, tasks, projects, areas, and objects of combat, particularly defensive combat and border protection. Due regard should be paid to enhancing the organisation of exercises at all levels, combining campaign-level exercises with tactical exercises, and aligning live-fire field exercises, general exercises, and joint exercises with defensive zone combat exercises. Doing so will help opportunely adjust and supplement operational projects/plans, and improve all-level cadres, commands, and offices’ capabilities in combat command, direction, and coordination.

In addition to those above-mentioned measures, the Military Region will keep directing its offices and units to closely manage their troops, achieve a great positive transformation in military standard order building and the observance of the Military’s discipline and the State’s law, and resolutely prevent serious violation of discipline from occurring and impacting on combat power, virtues, and tradition of “Uncle Ho’s Soldiers”. Troops, weapons, equipment, barracks, and national defence land of offices and units being merged, disbanded, and re-organised will be closely managed. Methods of logistics and technical support will be renewed, while manoeuvrability will be improved to meet requirements of training, combat readiness, and force expansion in the event.

Making Military Region 1’s armed forces “adept, compact, strong” acts as a both urgent and long-term task. When performing this task, all-level party committees and commands should remain persistent, resolute, cautious, democratic, active, proactive, and creative to make contributions to building a modern VPA capable of playing a core role in the Fatherland protection in the new situation.

Lt. Gen. NGUYEN HONG THAI, Member of the Party Central Committee, Commander of Military Region 1