The Institute of Weaponry (under The General Department of Defense Industry) was founded on 04 February 1947. Its tasks include designing, manufacturing, innovating, repairing weapons, equipment, and ammunition of the Army; ensuring technical maintenance for defense production; measuring, testing, evaluating the quality of weapons, technical equipment; consulting and evaluating projects of weapon development. Over the past 70 years, its cadres, engineers, and employees have always heightened their self–reliance and strived to successfully accomplish all the assigned tasks of the Institute. Thanks to its efforts in conducting research, designing, and manufacturing, a number of different kinds of weapons were made in Vietnam, timely meeting the combat demand in the battles and contributing greatly to the cause of national liberation. The notable ones include: Bazooka, AT, SKZ60, SKZ 81, SKZ 120, etc in the resistance war against the French; the AK sub-machine gun, the TUL-1 machine gun, the B40, B41, CT.62 anti-tank guns, the “Liberation” mortar, 120mm mortar, 160mm mortar, magnet mine, the MĐH.10 directional mine, etc in the resistance war against the US.

Embarking on the new stage of Fatherland construction and protection, the Institute was among the pioneer units in conducting research and developing weapons for the ground forces. It has achieved positive results, such as hundreds of researches, including focal ones of the State and the Ministry of National Defence. Its cadres and engineers have been close to the reality, proactively studied, created, conducted research, designed and manufactured various kinds of new weapons for the ground forces with advanced technical and tactical features. Notably, it has successfully designed many portable weapons for infantry divisions and taken part in designing and manufacturing some high-tech weapons with the transfer of technology from foreign countries. Besides, it has complied hundreds of documents on technical condition and quality standard which provide important ground for defense production, etc.

As a multi-aspect and highly specific research unit, human resource is of special importance to the Institute. Fully aware of this and facing the inadequacy of its staff, the Institute’s Party Committee and leaders have implemented breakthrough solutions for building high quality human resource. It has conducted a variety of different training methods; combined closely on-job training with sending engineers to domestic and foreign facilities for advanced training. Especially, it has attached importance to training its cadres through practice; encouraged them to carry out self study and self training to enhance their technical skills. Moreover, it has also proactively assigned tasks to the young cadres and sent them to factories to acquire practical experience. This is also the way the Institute discovers highly qualified cadres for long-term uses. Besides, it has coordinated with functioning agencies of the General Department of Defence Industry to employ highly qualified engineers and provide them with favorable treatments. To date, 100% of its staff has bachelor degrees,  68% of them are MA and 12 are doctors. It has successfully built a staff of industry - leading cadres in the fields of engineering, explosive chemistry, electricity and electronic. They are capable of leading major projects and designing high-tech products.

Together with human resource development, the Institute has also had in-depth investment to upgrade its facilities and conduct technology innovation towards modern, synchronous direction to create technical background for enhancing capability of conducting research, designing and innovating weapons. For the past time, it has proactively made plan on mobilizing different resources for planning and implementing a number of major projects, namely the Weapon Laboratory Project, the Project of Building and Modernizing Facilities of the Institute, etc. Facing the fast changing of science and technology and the high requirements in studying, the Institute has applied new managerial and operational mechanism, renewed its thinking and method of doing scientific research. Accordingly, the concentrated and unified management of the Institute’s leaders is combined closely with empowerment for its affiliated departments and engineers. The procedure and method of choosing research topic have also been renewed in the direction that the final product is the aim and criteria for assessing the quality of research. Research topic is adhered to the military equipping orientation of the Ministry and programs and projects to implement the Resolution 06-NQ/TW. Priorities are given to basic research, theoretical development on weapon designing; weapon innovation and military modernization; studying specific and new technology; the application of spearhead technology, dual-use technology, automation technology, etc.

Due to its specific mission, defence factories and military units serve as “labs” for the Institute in the testing and trial procedure of new weapons. Therefore, the Institue has always been active in coordinating with them to carry out research and  find out new issues emerging from operational reality. Besides, the Institute has strengthened its cooperation with other credible establishments, such as The Military Technical Academy, Ha Noi University of Science and Technology, etc to make use of their advantages in facilities and technology.

With its activeness, creativeness, strong determination and feasible measures, the Institute has experienced comprehensive and steady developments. Its capacity of conducting research, designing, manufacturing weapons has improved significantly; its scientific and technological activities have grown robustly in terms of quantity, quality and scale of the projects. In the 2010 – 2015 period, the Institute completed 96 projects at different levels producing high quality weapons, equipment, ammunition which have been mass-produced for the military to meet the requirement of training and modern combat. In addition, the Institute has successfully accomplished its mission of technical maintenance for defense production, timely and effective addressed technical issues emerging in the production procedures of weapons and ammunition, thereby enhancing the quality of defense products.

Upholding its experience and tradition, the Institute continues to strive for successfully accomplishing its functions and assigned tasks, deserving to be a leading technical think tank of defence industry sector, contributing positively to the cause of Military construction and Fatherland protection in the new situation.

Senior Colonel Bui Tuan Anh

Director of the Weaponry Institute