Thoroughly grasping the instructions of General Secretary, President, and Secretary of the Central Military Commission To Lam regarding the “5-solids” motto, Tank Brigade 201 has concretised its implementation through many synchronised solutions, creating a solid foundation to improve its overall quality and combat strength, building an elite, compact, strong, and modern Brigade, successfully accomplishing all assigned tasks.
Tank Brigade 201 of the Tank and Armoured Corps was established on 18 November 1971. With the mentality of “Rushing to the frontlines to fight, heading towards the battlefields to win”, throughout its 55 years of establishment, combat, and growth, generations of the Brigade’s cadres and soldiers have consistently upheld the spirit of solidarity, self-reliance, resilience, proactiveness, and creativity to overcome all difficulties, and fulfilled all assigned duties excellently, building the tradition of “Unity to overcome difficulties, active creativity, strict discipline, successfully accomplish all tasks - Surely win once deployed”. For its outstanding achievements in national construction and defence, the Brigade was honoured to be awarded the title of Hero of the People's Armed Forces in the renewal era by the State, along with many other noble awards.
In recent years, implementing the policy on building a modern Army, the Brigade has received more investment and necessary upgrades in terms of weapons, equipment, and infrastructure, including many new and modern weapons. While this provides favourable conditions to enhance the combat strength, it also presents the Brigade with demanding new requirements, numerous difficulties and challenges. To fulfill its assigned responsibilities, the Brigade's Party Committee and Command have been deploying synchronous solutions to raise its overall quality and combat power. Among these, grasping and concretising the “5 solids” principle into practical tasks is identified as a core solution.
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| Leader of the Brigade commends tank crews after a live-fire exercise |
“Solid politics” – a solid foundation of will and determination
As a combat-ready unit tasked with the A2 mission to protect key targets of the Party, the State, the Ministry of National Defence, Hanoi Capital, and various ad-hoc duties, officers and soldiers of the Brigade must always maintain the mindset of “being ready to enter combat and win right from the first battle upon receiving the order”. Being fully aware of this and the great significance of the “5-solids” motto, the Brigade's Party Committee and Command have concretised the motto into leadership resolutions, work plans, and evaluation criteria closely tailored to the tasks of each agency and unit. Among them, “political solidness” is the top priority, serving as the foundation for building the “iron will” of armoured soldiers in the new condition.
To effectively implement this content, the Brigade steps up political propaganda and education through various practical forms; places importance on combining regular education with thematic education, and “building” with “fighting”, so that all officers and soldiers comprehensively and deeply understand the core meanings and requirements of “solid politics” and the measures to carry it out. Together, it promotes the application of IT and AI to build concise, intuitive, easy-to-remember, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-execute propaganda videos and images; maximises the effectiveness of models, such as: “Political officer's voice”, “Golden star newsletters”, Zalo and Facebook groups, etc. to increase the duration and content of propaganda, helping solders access information quickly, conveniently, and effectively.
In particular, the Brigade focuses on building pure and strong party organisations based on the “4-goods” criteria, combined with strictly implementing the regulations on the exemplary responsibility of cadres and party members, especially the leaders at all levels, in the spirit of the “7 dares” and “6 clears”. It enhances the inspection and supervision to promptly detect and prevent any signs of violations from the grassroots level, enhancing the leadership capacity and combat power of the party organisations, building a contingent of cadres with sufficient qualities, competence, and prestige to meet mission requirements. Therefore, the entire Brigade forms a solid, unified bloc; all officers and soldiers possess steadfast political stance, stay committed to job, and are always ready to accept and successfully complete all assigned tasks.
“Solid discipline” - ensuring the unity in organisation and action
Discipline is the strength of the Army. With this awareness, the Brigade’s Party Committee and Command attach special importance to leading and directing the improvement of regularity building and discipline training, taking this as a key task and a breakthrough in building a comprehensively strong, “exemplary and typical” unit. Accordingly, on the one hand, the Brigade enhances the education to raise soldiers’ awareness, consciousness, and responsibility for “Solid discipline”. Particularly, it thoroughly grasps and clarifies the position, role, targets, and measures for regularity building and discipline management in accordance with Directive No. 76/CT-BQP, dated 28 April 2026, by the Minister of National Defence “On strengthening political education, ideological management, discipline maintenance, and safety assurance in the Vietnam People's Army”.
On the other hand, the Brigade strictly maintains routines and regulations; tightly manages military personnel, weapons, and technical equipment; promotes delegation and decentralisation of authority combined with upholding the responsibility of all-level commanding officers in managing and training soldiers, the ones in scattered or detached units in particular. Especially, in sensitive periods of receiving new recruits or reserve soldiers, or soldiers’ preparing for demobilisation, etc., it sends officers to units to directly monitor, inspect, and guide, promptly detecting, preventing, and handling arising issues right from the start. At the same time, it pays attention to promoting grassroots democracy, dialogues, and closely coordinating with families and local authorities in managing and educating soldiers to proactively prevent violations from an early stage and afar. As a result, the Brigade's discipline has been kept stable, with no serious violations, ensuring safety in all activities.
“Solid technology” - a driving force for building a modern Brigade
As the unit tasked with managing and operating various new-generation weapons integrated with high technology and complex automation, the demand of “Solid technology” at the Brigade does not limit to proficient management and utilisation but the master of the technical and tactical features, and good maintenance of equipment to meet the requirements of training and combat readiness.
To carry it out, the Brigade has built an action programme and an implementation plan for the tasks of science, technology, innovation, and digital transformation suited to its specific features, focusing on renovating the leadership, command, management, administration, and training methods toward promoting the application of digital technology; improving the capability to master modern weapons and technical equipment, systems of fire control, observation, and communication, as well as the synchronised electronic equipment. Along with that, emphasis has been placed on effectively exploiting technical features, improving the troubleshooting capabilities, and mastering the technical assurance for weapons and equipment. It’s also promoted research, technical initiatives, improvements, and the application of technology to solve problems arising from practical training and official duties.
The Brigade has stepped up the digitisation of documents, weapons, equipment, materials management, and vehicles, contributing to completing data within the Corps' digital ecosystem; effectively implemented the “Digital mass education” movement, building a team of “digital soldiers”, and improving digital skills for officers and soldiers, contributing to building a regular and modern Brigade.
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| Conduct tactical training |
“Solid military art” - enhancing the level of organisation, command, and combat power
"Solid military art" is a critical factor that directly enhances organisation and command proficiency, cooperative capabilities, and combat strength, ensuring the successful fulfillment of the role as the Ministry of National Defence's strategic mobile reserve force. Accordingly, the Brigade focuses on reviewing practical experience, especially the operations of tank - armoured forces in recent wars and conflicts around the world to draw lessons, apply, and develop the art of deploying armoured vehicles, thereby ensuring a close combination of tradition and modernity under new conditions.
Together, the Brigade strongly promotes the innovation of training contents and methods towards being “basic, practical, and solid”, closely matching the mission, combat objects, and the development of modern warfare; focuses on technical and tactical training, flexible thinking, decisive handling capacity, and the mastery of existing weapons and technical equipment; increases the time of practice, night training, field training, and training in using new weapons and equipment; improves the capabilities of mobility and combat readiness transition. Especially, in the face of the rapid development of unmanned aerial vehicles and high-tech weapons, the Brigade has proactively researched and updated new issues, timely incorporating them into the training sessions and exercises.
Simultaneously, the Brigade increases the training and alert checks on combat, disaster prevention, and rescue plans, etc., promptly detects and solves shortcomings and limitations, enhancing the “readiness” of all units. As a result, the Brigade’s training and exercise results have been significantly improved; annual inspections by the Corps and superiors were all rated excellent; in the “PT-23”, “DT-23”, “TG-24”, and “HN-24” exercises, the Brigade was awarded a Certificate of Merit by the Ministry of National Defence.
“Solid living conditions for soldiers” - a foundation for combat power
“Solid soldiers’ living conditions” means the practice of the thought of “sufficient provisions making a strong army”. Hence, over the past time, the Brigade has focused on synchronously deploying measures to improve the quality of logistics, especially in ensuring the soldiers’ health and living conditions. Offices and units have fully provided sufficient standards and allowances; intensely improved the meal quality; effectively conducted the hygiene, disease prevention and control; boosted production to proactively create a solid on-site food supply, contributing to improving the soldiers’ living standards and physical strength. They have also mobilised resources to build regular, bright, green, clean, and beautiful barracks, creating a democratic and healthy military cultural environment that motivates officers and soldiers to feel secure in their work and dedicated to building the units.
In celebration of the 55th Traditional Day, officers and soldiers of Tank Brigade 201 continue to emulate in “physical training, moral cultivation, and profession mastery”; building a pure, strong, and exemplary Party organisation and an all-strong, “exemplary, typical” brigade; successfully accomplishing all assigned tasks, further enriching the glorious tradition of “Surely win once deployed” of the heroic Tank and Armoured Soldiers.
Senior Colonel TRAN VAN HANH, Political Commissar of the Brigade
