Vietnam turns to DNA science to name 7,000 fallen soldiers 🧬

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Vietnam is turning to science to honor its national memory. Dubbed « 500 Days and Nights, » a nationwide genetic data collection campaign officially launched on April 2, 2026, and will run through July 27, 2027. The goal: to collect DNA samples from the relatives of missing soldiers, giving them back their names a little more than fifty years after the war ended.

Vietnam’s search for its heroes 🇻🇳

The scale is staggering. Some 230,000 graves of soldiers killed in combat remain unidentified, and another 175,000 sets of remains have yet to be located since the war ended. Facing this unresolved chapter of national memory, Vietnamese authorities have chosen a technological path, treating the task of restoring these heroes’ names as what officials have called a « command from the heart. » Concretely, the campaign aims to identify 7,000 remains, drawing on close to 18,000 DNA samples. The end goal is a genetic database of martyrs’ relatives, designed to make future matches easier.

The project is led by the Center for Genetic Identification, part of the Institute of Biology at the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology. Professor Nguyễn Trung Nam, the Institute’s deputy director, sums up the stakes: the campaign is about giving back a name to those who fell for the homeland. According to him, traditional DNA testing methods — STR (Short Tandem Repeat) analysis and mitochondrial DNA — have long proven their worth. But their effectiveness runs into a major obstacle: sample quality, often too degraded by time to be usable.

NGS-SNP: a more reliable answer to degraded DNA 🔬

This is where the innovation comes in. Using SNP markers (single-nucleotide polymorphisms), NGS-SNP technology can analyze thousands of genetic markers at once, within a single sample of badly degraded DNA. Precise, automated, and capable of handling large volumes of data, the method is opening up new possibilities for remains buried for decades in unforgiving climate conditions.

The catch: genetic distance between relatives can complicate matches, especially when only distant relatives are still alive. Rigorous data collection and processing become decisive steps in the operation — as does unifying DNA standards around a common protocol. Looking ahead, artificial intelligence could help speed up and improve the reliability of processing these vast volumes of genetic data.

The initiative also draws on international support, including from the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) and the U.S. government. That cooperation has allowed the Center for Genetic Identification to progressively access advanced technologies and strengthen its technical capacity — particularly for processing severely degraded remains and building large-scale DNA databases.

The « 500 Days and Nights » campaign is now underway, driven by the belief that technology can restore what time has erased.

What do you think — could AI and cutting-edge gene sequencing eventually help countries like Cameroon trace their own missing? Tell us in the comments.