The International Army Games 2020 (IAG 2020) came to an end on September 5, local time in Moscow. In addition to medals, the Chinese participating troops had more important gains in the IAG 2020.  

The combat vehicle race of the Airborne Platoon contest was held at a shooting range in Pskov region, Russia on August 25, local time. In the equipment display before the game, Sgt. Tu Zhijun from the Chinese team, who has been a combat vehicle driver for 10 years, heard the rumble of vehicle motors was getting closer and closer, but saw nothing. After a careful search, he found the rumble was from three perfectly camouflaged Russian combat vehicles. The combat vehicles were camouflaged by tree branches and leaves, and it was difficult to identify with naked eyes from a distance. 

More challenges were ahead. "Why didn't the referee release the target?" In the contest, when Sgt. Tu's vehicle entered the shooting position to prepare for shooting, the shooter scratched his head anxiously because he could not find the target. "The appearance of the targets is not in the preplanned order of far, medium, and near, but a variety of targets at different distances were displayed in a short time, and some targets have different heights and angles." At the reminder of Sgt. Tu, the shooter quickly made an adjustment and successfully detected and hit the targets.

Getting out of the vehicle, Sgt. Tu said that the contest was like a real combat and he enjoyed himself to the full in it.

The combat effectiveness must be tempered under complex environmental conditions. The harsher the competition environment is, and the fiercer the competition and confrontation are, more conducive it will be to improving the actual combat capabilities of the troops," said Professor Ji Gaixian of the PLA Army Engineering University. Prof. Ji believes that, the Chinese troops, when competing with foreign troops in international arenas, while demonstrating their own capabilities, should also examine themselves with top standards in the coordinate system of global armed forces, so as to identify weaknesses and directions for improvements.

Throughout the six contests the Chinese teams participated in, both the items and environments of all the events are all basically designed in accordance with the real operations of the respective arms. The IAG highlights testing soldiers’ combat capability and adaptability of armaments under extreme conditions similar to real wars.

The competitions basically covered all the combat skills required for an organizational airborne platoon”, said Snr. Col. Zhao Dongsheng, leader of the Chinese team in the Airborne Platoon game. “In each competition, the soldiers must finish an off-road weight carrying race of more than 10 kilometers, the shooting contest followed straightly the armed cross-country race of four to five kilometers and the shooting time was strictly limited, which was designed to test the shooting stability of soldiers after heavy physical exhaustion. Such training and competition are worth learning from," said Snr. Col. Zhao.