301 Redirects .. built in?

I was just looking at my htaccess and notice that the rewrites aren't 301 ..

I don't know much about it, but I was told somewhere that 301 is pretty much essential, SEO-wise.

So, I spose the question is: Are the links actually 301 redirected by the system?

Yes, vBSEO sends 301 HTTP code for the redirections. (this is done in php code of the hack, but not in .htaccess though )