Improved combat readiness and mobile capability is a matter of importance which enables the entire military in general and the Army Corps No.1 (hereafter the Corps) in particular to acquire increased all-round quality and combat strength. Therefore, the Corps has attached great importance to this matter via its various synchronous solutions.

Maj. Gen. Tran Duy Giang addressing the conference on reviewing the Corps’s discipline management and safety in the 2015-2017 period (photo: qdnd.vn)

The Army Corps No.1 (also known as Determined to Win Corps) is the VPA’s strategic mobile force whose primary task involves combat readiness training and mobility, defence diplomacy and other contingencies. Promoted combat readiness and mobile capability are central to the Corps’s task fulfilment among others as evidenced by numerous synchronous and breakthrough solutions have been carried out by the Corps’s Party Executive Committee and High Command over the past years, thereby raising cadres and soldiers’ awareness of combat readiness and mobile missions, effecting positive transformation in commanding and coordination abilities, and contributing to the enhancement of all-round quality and combat strength as a basis for the Corps’s successful completion of every assigned task.

Regardless of recorded results, some cadres and soldiers have yet to be fully aware of combat readiness and mobile capability. Mobility in big groups via complex types of terrain still exposes limitations. In addition, there has been a lack of coordination in handling situations in mobile process, etc. In the time to come, regional security and political situations, especially East Sea disputes, have seen complicated and unpredictable developments as evidenced by the fact that hostile forces have stepped up the strategy of “peaceful evolution” with increasingly complex artifices and stratagems. Against this backdrop, for the sake of improved combat readiness and mobile capability, the Corps has focused its attention on taking measures to meet task requirements in the new situation as follows.

First, education work should be accelerated to heighten cadres and soldiers’ awareness of mobile and combat readiness tasks. The Corps is made up of many forces (infantry, mechanized, and other arms) and diffusely stationed. In practice, mobility and combat readiness training and drills, especially long-distance loaded marching training across various types of terrain under complex weather conditions require high stamina and determination while the dark side of the market mechanism and fierce sabotage activities by hostile forces have impacted greatly on cadres and soldiers’ ideology on a daily basis. Hence, accelerated education work will lead to heightened sense of consistency in awareness and action among cadres and soldiers, ensuring the Corps’s proper fulfilment of mobile and combat readiness missions. Annually, grounded in Chief of the General Staff’s Decree on defence and military work and Directive on combat readiness, the Corps has increasingly introduced and provided cadres and soldiers with political education whose main contents involve the Party’s defence and military viewpoints and policies, the military function and task, the Corps’s task and the peoples’ military tradition, especially the Corps’s “lightning speed and determined to win” tradition in the anti-French and anti-US resistance wars. Education work must render soldiers fully aware of hi-tech combat artifices and stratagems by hostile forces as well as the importance of the Corps’s combat mobility, thereby enhancing soldiers’ sense of responsibility and resolve to surmount difficulties and hardships in the line of duty.

The Corps has always attached great importance to flexibly and creatively renewing and diversifying forms and contents of political education in line with its particularities under the spirit of the Project “Renewing the work of political education in military units in the new situation” while growing emphasis is placed on combining various forms of political education with those of propagation work through cultural and performance activities, and on grasping ideological developments and concomitant ideological orientation and resolutely handling relevant emerging problems. Due attention is paid to promoting the role of a contingent of key cadres at all levels, first and foremost political ones in the work of political and ideological education. The combination of the performance of military offices and units’ mobile and combat readiness missions and that of key cadres’ missions at diverse levels is an assessment criterion of their missions, thereby fostering the role of a contingent of key cadres as the core in deciding the Corps’s performance of mobile and combat readiness tasks. Simultaneously, it is essential to accelerate the study and following of Uncle Ho’s thoughts, morality, and lifestyle under Directive No. 05 by the Politburo (the 12^th tenure) in alignment with the effective execution of norms of “determined to win” emulation movements, thereby effecting positive transformations in cadres and soldiers’ awareness and ideology.

Second, promoting the quality of mobility and combat preparedness training and drills. In doing so, grounded in its affiliates’ tasks and strength, the characteristics of its stationed areas as well as higher authorities’ resolutions, directives, and orders pertaining to training, especially Resolution No. 765-NQ/QUTW, dated 20-12-2012 by the Central Military Commission on “Improving training quality in the 2013-2020 period and beyond”, the Corps has made a major breakthrough in fostering mobile and combat readiness capability with a focus on situational training, mobility training, night training, and physical training, thereby bringing about profound transformation to all groups of troops and units. Additionally, the Corps also offers training courses to boost command capability, training ability, and mobility and combat readiness drills for a pool of cadres at all levels. Accordingly, a situation team is formed (under the direction of the General Staff), responsible for working out situations upon which pilot training is carried out for the purpose of lesson-learning and multiplication throughout the Corps. Preparation for training contents, programs, and plans should be properly made with priority given to additional time frame for night training and mobility and mobility-supported one such as exercises of infantry combat technique, mechanized infantry, and tactics; intensive physical training; river-crossing and long-range mobile marching training, etc. Training aids and facilities should be adequately supplied in line with units’ particularities and strength with emphasis placed on preparing routes for long-range mobile training. When it comes to force mobility, the Corps properly adopts a set of procedure under rules of staff work for combat training, ranging from simple training to complex one, from technical training to tactical one, etc.

For the sake of heightened in-depth training, trainee soldiers are partitioned into different specific groups on which training contents and methods are based. For freshman soldiers, following basic training programs, units intensify physical and endurance training, techniques for packing personal effects and carrying personal weapons and equipment, and marching training with an increasing degree of weight and route length. In particular, for soldiers of mechanized infantry units, the Corps concentrates its training on arranging the formation of mechanized vehicles, techniques for getting on and off mechanized vehicles, etc for mobile preparedness whenever ordered. For second-year infantry soldiers, the focus of their training is on combining intensive firearm techniques with tactical training; high-intensity long-range loaded marching for drill mission and live-fire drills. For soldiers of various arms, their training primarily involves the mastery of on-vehicle gun-firing technique in combat groups, techniques for obstacle swimming, river-crossing. For the sake of effectiveness of combat mobility, the Corps conducts training for various readiness levels and strategy and campaign-level drills according to ratified combat plans, thereby contributing to enhancement of cadres’ command capability and inter-unit coordination as a basis for the Corps’s satisfactory completion of combat mobility.

Third, closely working with local defensive areas to ensure mobile and combat readiness missions on all fronts. The Corps’s function and task mainly involves its mobility to diffusely execute campaign and strategy-level missions across complex terrain. Therefore, tight cooperation with other relevant forces and the local defensive areas is a matter of importance in improving the Corps’s mobile and combat readiness capability. Pursuant to the Determination to defend the Homeland, strategic combat determination on all battlefields, and other combat documents approved by higher authorities, the Corps directs its affiliates to make their specific cooperative schedules with other relevant forces and the local defensive areas for the sake of mobility effectiveness with a focus on mobile routes, river-crossing docks, and troop assembly points in a bid to readily handle arising situations in the course of mobile process. The common-sense approach is that those fortifications serve the purpose for training and exercises in peacetime, and are fully upgraded in the event of a war. Great importance is attached to making reconnaissance of the enemy, carrying out on-the-spot combat plans, and providing logistic support to main and minor routes, repair stations, and damaged weapons and equipment cashes, while due attention is paid to working with other relevant forces and the local defensive areas to opportunely deal with possible situations during mobile process such as demonstrations and subversive activities, thereby promoting mobile and combat readiness capabilities and meeting mission requirements in the new situation.

Major General Tran Duy Giang, Commander of Army Corps No.1