Vietnam trains military pilots for both Laos and Cambodia

Considered a "furnace" for training fighter pilots, the Air Force Officer School also provides military training for Laos and Cambodia.

Established on August 20, 1959 in the North, Colonel Tran Ha Lan, deputy head of the school's political department, said: before 1990, some Vietnamese military pilots still went to Russia and Australia for training. However, since 1990, pilots have been trained entirely by the school and will return to take up duties in military units across the country. The school also trains military pilots for Laos and Cambodia.

Student Nguyen Van Dien prepares for a flight on an L-39 aircraft.

Hard training

The 910th Air Force Regiment is where the “final stage” of the pilot training process of the Air Force Officer School is carried out. After the first two years of basic theory at the school and the third year of familiarizing students with the Yak-52 aircraft, in the fourth year students are trained here with the L-39 aircraft or the Mi-8 helicopter.

At exactly 5:30, the first plane rolled out of the line, took off on the runway, then tore through the wind and soared into the sky.

In the sky, students perform training flights (closed loops, attacking targets in the air, on the ground, flying through clouds...) under the direct guidance of instructors and the command post.

After takeoff, the students will fly for about 50-60 minutes and then return. “The furthest training area where students will practice flying is within a radius of 73km. Each student will perform 2-3 flights in a training session,” said Major Nguyen Minh Nhat, deputy political commissar of Regiment 910.

According to the experience of senior sergeant Hoang Viet Thai, the ability to handle incidents is extremely important for pilots.

The students who are piloting the L-39 aircraft are excellent students, carefully selected to train to become good fighter pilots, aiming to fly modern fighter aircraft.

Therefore, only 1/3 of the students who enter the training program have the capacity and conditions to learn to fly jet planes.

Fighter pilots require much more sophisticated and dangerous techniques when flying aerobatics, combat loops, dives, climbs, spirals... with hundreds of different flight techniques.

To train physical strength, from the beginning, students must practice difficult exercises such as centrifugal rotation, cylindrical rotation, swing... The faster the rotation speed, the more turns will be the way for students to train their vestibular system. A stable vestibular system is a mandatory condition for military pilots when flying at an altitude of thousands of meters and performing combat flight movements. Students must learn to parachute from helicopters to get used to the height.

Colonel Pham Van Dong - deputy political commissar of the school - said that many students finished two years of theory, started practicing flying Yak-52 aircraft but could not fly, were cut from flying, and had to transfer to other training fields. There were even students who successfully trained with Yak-52 but could not fly L-39 aircraft, so had to switch to training with Mi-8 helicopters.

According to Baodatviet