As General Schwarzkopf pointed out, comparing combat to something else is not a good idea. He said something to the effect that comparing war to a symphony didn’t work because in the symphony, no one came charging out of the percussion section with a knife trying to kill you. Tanks are not sports. We didn’t win the CAT trophy for years because, quite frankly, it was irrelevant. The US Army was training thousands of tank crews to win wars, not a few to win a trophy. Hitting targets with the main gun and machineguns on a range is important, but it’s not the only thing. The targets don’t shoot back. I had a friend who was on the American team that won the CAT. That was serious business. I am just not sure that Obama and company would take this seriously, and that would be giving a needless black eye to our military. I’ve been out of the hatch for a while, but I’m pretty confident that as a whole, we still have the best trained tankers in the world. They need to take it seriously or stay out.
The only problem that I see with today’s tank crews is their dependence on computers. It’s all good while it’s working but in likely scenario during combat, computers may be disabled and crew must be involved in the art of war. I remember, few years ago, reading article in Israeli newspaper about shooting competition between current tank crews and reservists in their late 40’s.Reservists used tanks with no computers and no gyroscopes at the range of over 4 kilometers. Reservists won hands down. As expected by me.:-)