Johnnie,
You are one of the few that really get it. As one who was part of the Materials Command when I was in, as I still cannot tell people what I know, I explain it just as you did when they question our capabilities.
If you remember all of the whining before the Gulf War I about how our equipment would never live through the desert environment, blah, blah, blah. I just smiled and told people, in the vein of the redneck joke about “watch this”;
Yea, yea, just keep watchin’ cause you’re gonna see $h!t that will make your head spin.
I do remember, especially the briefings that told us that we had a very limited capability against the Iraqi T-72. It caused us to do a massive upgrade of tank units to field M1A1 (120mm gun) in lieu of M1 (105mm gun). Only a single M1 equipped tank battalion was deployed to the Gulf.
The results turned out to be very different from the threat briefings. Not only did the single M1 battalion do fine against the T72s, but M2 Bradleys were easily destroying T72s at about 3000 meters (beyond T72 effective range) by elevating their 25mm guns and walking plunging fire into the target. 25mm HE easily penetrated the engine decks and brewed up the T72.