Improving the quality of training and combat readiness, assuring victory in all situations are the key targets that have been drastically led and directed by the Party Committee and Command of Military Corps 12 so that the Corps always deserves to be the regular and strategic mobile unit, meeting the task of safeguarding the Fatherland in the new situation.

Implementing the guidelines by the Central Military Commission, Defence Ministry, on 21 November 2023, Minister of National Defence signed Decision No. 6012/QĐ-BQP on establishing the Military Corps 12 – the first “elite, compact, strong” Corps of the Vietnam People’s Army – based on several units of Corps 1 and Corps 2. Since then, the size, force organisation, functions, duties and combat power of the Corps have been significantly improved.

In such great honour and responsibility, together with the strength of spiritual and political foundation, and the building of politically-strengthened unit, the Party Committee and Command of the Corps have intensely made their leadership and direction on improving the quality of training and combat readiness, considering it as the breakthrough, direct and central task deciding the improvement of general quality and combat power, helping the Corps to successfully accomplish all assigned tasks.

Leader of the Corps has a check of training of Division 312

With the right perception, high determination, strict leadership and direction, the training and combat readiness of the Corps have been seriously and effectively maintained. Despite having to simultaneously carry out many tasks, the Corps has well prepared the plans and contents of training and military exercises, maintained the order of combat readiness, and improved the training quality; not letting the adjustment of organisation and staff affect the training or exist any gap in leading, directing and managing the implementation of this important task. Especially, right after its establishment, the Corps has been assigned by the Defence Ministry with the task of holding the live-firing military exercise of combined forces with the participation of many forces, involving many types of modern weapons and equipment. Despite urgent time and huge workload, with its rich experience and traditions in training and combat readiness, the Corps has directed all offices and units to quickly make the preparation and successfully hold the military exercise, which was commended and highly appreciated by the Prime Minister and Minister of National Defence. The military exercise was also seen as the occasion for the Corps to self-evaluate and confirm its combat readiness capability and combat power.

In the forthcoming time, the situations in the region and the world are forecast to have complex development with many unstable factors; the duty of defending the Fatherland have set higher targets and demands for the whole army and Military Corps 12. Based on the right evaluation, the assigned functions and duties, the Corps Party Committee and Command continue to intensely lead and direct the synchronous and comprehensive implementation of solutions to improve the training quality and combat readiness, focusing on several contents as follows:

Firstly, strengthening the leadership and direction of all-level party committees and commands on the tasks of training and combat readiness. This is a basic and important solution deciding the completion of the central political task of the Corps. Accordingly, all offices, units and schools, particularly the party committees and commanders at all levels, need to continuously grasp and effectively implement resolutions, directives and orders on training and combat readiness, focusing on Resolution No. 1659-NQ/QUTW, dated 20 December 2022 by the Central Military Commission, Resolution No. 33-NQ/ĐU, dated 15 January 2024 by the Corps Party Committee on “Improving the training quality in the 2023-2030 period and the following years”, the order on the annual military – defence work by the Chief of General Staff. On this basis, the Corps strengthens the leadership and direction at all levels, the grassroots in particularly; renews the thought of leading and directing, makes resolutions and action programmes on training and combat readiness in each period, focusing on correctly evaluating the reality and tasks, accurately forecasting the situations, making detailed and practical solutions to solve any shortcomings and weaknesses. The Corps also enhances the inspection and supervision in the motto of “real training, real testing, real evaluating”, especially increases sudden examinations; frequently renovates cadres’ working methods and styles in a practical and detailed way; attaches the responsibility of the party committees and commanders to the training results of their subordinate units. Meantime, offices, units and schools enhance their renovation, improve the effectiveness of the party and political work in training and combat readiness; promote the Determined-to-win Emulation movement combined with building the comprehensively strong, “exemplary, typical” units; build the pure and strong party organisations, making contribution to creating drastic changes in the awareness and responsibility of cadres and soldiers for the tasks of training and combat readiness.

Secondly, continuing to innovate and improve the training quality, knowledge and combat readiness capability to meet the task requirements in the new condition. The Corps continues to lead and direct the innovation of training contents, forms and methods toward the “intense, harmonious, synchronous, effective, non-overlapping” way, making them suitable with the learners, areas and tasks of each unit, taking the training of combined forces tactics as the core, the technical training as the basis, and the training of the units as the key; closely combines the training and physical training in order to improve soldiers’ endurance, resistance and the capability of long-range maneuverability in high intensity in all types of terrains and weather conditions. To flexibly adapt to and meet the requirements of modern wars, all units have to enhance the training on preventing and defeating high-tech and modern weapons; train the mobility, the movement of fighting formations, the camouflage and diversion methods; train soldiers to skillfully use weapons and equipment in service, especially the new and modern weapons and equipment, etc., at the same time, actively apply the technological advances, the simulation technology in particular, into reforming the training methods to be suitable with the new task developments. All units also continue to renovate the contests, competitions, examinations and evaluation in the way of increasing the difficulty and targets, and being close to the reality.

Division 325 holds training contest for artillery and air defence platoon leaders in 2025

Together, the Corps continues to reform and improve the quality of all-level military exercises, the joint military exercises with real troops and live-firing in particular; drill methods of protecting key targets, preventing terrorists and armed riots; strengthen coordination of the operational activities within the defence zones to improve the skills and capability of combatting, responding to natural disasters, and firmly protecting the areas, etc. The Corps strictly maintains the discipline and combat readiness; regularly adds and completes the combat documents to be suitable with new development of organisation, staff, weapons, equipment, terrains, weather and combat opponents, and practises all combat plans without being either passive or unexpected in all situations.

Thirdly, closely combining between training and regularity maintenance and discipline training, building the comprehensively strong, “exemplary, typical” units. To this end, the Corps continuously leads and directs the implementation of this combination from grasping and concretising the seniors’ military and defence orders and directives, and other related documents on regularity building and discipline training into the annual resolutions, plans, contents and programmes in order to make agreement on the goals, requirements, tasks and methods for implementation. To gain high effectiveness, all offices and units frequently grasp and seriously draw experience from any disciplinary violations within the entire army, especially the disciplinary violations and unsafety in training and combat readiness, making them as the bases to create policies and solutions for enhancing the management of soldiers’ ideology and discipline, building safe units due to standards of the comprehensively strong, “exemplary, typical” units; intensely bring into play the modelling role and responsibility of all-level commanders in their discipline observance and their training for soldiers to understand and effectively apply all contents of the line-up and management regulation, new documents, directives and instructions on implementing the regular practices, complying with the discipline of the Army and the law of the State into their task performances; pays attention to improving the regularity in training and combat readiness, and the management of personnel, weapons and equipment; closely combines between the military training and the political education, the legal knowledge dissemination, discipline observance; timely holds the ideology, quickly solves any arising problems in order to create the agreement, solidarity and unity within all units, managing to decrease the rate of ordinary disciplinary violations to less than 0.2% per year, without any cases of serious violations or unsafety in training and combat readiness.

Fourthly, well conducting the support for the task of training and combat readiness. In the condition that the military science has gained a strong development, the Corps proactively makes renovation and improves the quality of training support in the timely, comprehensive, effective and focused way, intensely prioritising the sufficient support of materials and training grounds for the newly-established and newly-merged units. The reality has shown that the training quality strongly depends on the training grounds; therefore, in the condition of limited training materials and funding, the Corps has directed all offices and units to overcome difficulties, effectively utilise the budget allocated by the seniors together with mobilising other local sources in order to sufficiently provide the training materials, teachings aids and documents, intensely purchase and install enough learning facilities for specialised classrooms, combat simulation software, weapons and other facilities. The Corps has promoted the movement of making technical initiatives and improvement in all offices and units, effectively applies them into the training, military exercises and multiplies widely in all offices and units. Together, all offices, units and schools have enhanced the effective practice of technical work regulations; combined the storage and maintenance with the effective exploitation and management of weapons, equipment and vehicles; at the same time, sufficiently supported the logistic materials for all tasks, focusing on building the plans of logistic support for the forces which are doing the tasks of combat readiness, natural disaster prevention, search and rescue, and other sudden tasks.

Being proud of its gained achievements, Military Corps 12 continues to enhance the innovation and improvement of the quality of training and combat readiness, building the comprehensively strong, “exemplary, typical” Corps, which can excellently accomplish all assigned tasks, deserving the trust from the Party, State, Army and people.

Major General LE XUAN THUAN, Corps Commander