Its predecessor, the Vietnamese National Army, was the armed forces of the State of Vietnam (formed in 1949), before it became a republic in 1955.

[4] Created out from ex-French Union Army colonial Indochinese auxiliary units (French: Supplétifs), gathered earlier on 8 December 1950 into the Vietnamese National Army or VNA (Vietnamese: Quân Đội Quốc Gia Việt Nam – QĐQGVN), Armée Nationale Vietnamiènne (ANV) in French, when France and Vietnam signed an international treaty on 8 December 1950.

The treaty was based on the Franco-Vietnamese Summit in Đà Lạt on November 5, the conference estimated that within five years, the Vietnamese armed forces would consist of 115,000 men, with military equipment and weapons provided by the United States.

[6] The armed forces of the new state consisted in the mid-1950s of ground, air, and naval branches of service, respectively, the Republic of Vietnam Military Forces day is also celebrated (mostly by the overseas Vietnamese people) every years in 19 June Their roles were defined as follows: to protect the sovereignty of the Vietnamese nation and that of the Republic; to maintain the political and social order and the rule of law; to defend the newly independent Republic of Vietnam from external (and internal) threats; and ultimately, to help reunify Vietnam – divided since the Geneva Accords in July 1954 into two transitional states, one at the north ruled by Ho Chi Minh’s Lao Dong Party regime and the other in the south under Ngô Đình Diệm's authoritarian regime.

[7] The nation's officer corps still suffered from the promotion and retention of generals due to their political loyalties, not their professional abilities.