A recent competition hosted in part by the U.S. Army and designed to test core tank crew skills saw European crews take the top honors, while crews from the U.S. Army failed to place. The results raise the question of whether the Army—after more than a decade of focusing on guerrilla warfare—has devoted adequate training to address “big war” skills.

Held from May 10 to 12 and jointly hosted by the U.S. Army and the German Bundeswher at the Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany, the the Strong Europe Tank Challenge included challengers from six NATO countries: Denmark, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Slovenia—which sent tank platoons of four tanks each to compete— and the United States, which sent two platoons.

The competition involved tank crews conducting both offensive and defensive operations, and both mounted and dismounted activities. Crews fired ten main gun rounds from various positions. In one event, crews had to correctly identify 25 friendly and unfriendly (read: Russian) vehicles while traveling a course. Other events involved operating in the aftermath of a chemical weapons attack, dealing with improvised explosive devices, and medical emergencies.

A German tank crew from Mountain Panzer Battalion 7, Panzer Brigade 12 took top honors, followed by a Danish crew from their country’s 1st Tank Battalion in second. Third place went to a Polish crew from the 34th Armored Cavalry brigade. It’s unknown where the American crews placed, only that they weren’t in the top three.

Epic fail! via Popular Mechanics

All they did was paper over the cracks, and establish a two-tier system where competency counted only for whites and other non-protected minorities. If you had the right “qualifications”, like being one of the few “Asian-Pacific Islanders” in a given career field, you could damn near get away with raping the Colonel’s daughter on the conference table, and still get selected by your “unbiased” promotion board.

Racism is alive and well, in the US Army. All that’s changed is the color of the victim’s skin. Merit and competency play almost no role in determining who gets promoted–It’s all about the percentages. You’re a white boy with mediocre-looking records? You’re never seeing E-7. Black guy? Hispanic? Asian-Pacific Islander? Same sort of records? You just need to keep breathing, brother–You’ll hit below the zone, every damn time. Watched it happen–I know there were minority NCOs with significant black marks like relief for cause NCOERs, DWI, all kinds of shit, and they all got promoted by the centralized boards. Meanwhile, the white guys who didn’t have that shit in their records? Nope, no rank for you.

You knew the fix was in for this shit when they did away with the Skills Qualification Testing back in the early ’90s. Right now, there is literally nothing in the Army system that either encourages or checks for actual verified competency in your basic MOS skills. Nobody cares–It’s all about how good you look in a uniform, how well you can march troops, and what color your skin is.

Mark my words–There will be a comeuppance, and likely, damn soon. Wonder why we just came in last, in that little tank gunnery competition in Europe? Yeah… Chickens coming home to roost, baby. Hollow Army? Yeah… Empty Army, more like it.