Why Did a Competition Champion Voluntarily Switch "Tracks"?
■ Yan Tao, Qiao Tengduo, Yan Zhenyu + AI illustration
That time, when the annual UAV specialty competition of a certain brigade under the 82nd Group Army drew to a close, Staff Sergeant Second Class Ju Shusen, who had come in second the previous time, pressed forward in one breath and took first place.
Walking off the competition floor, however, he found it hard to feel happy, because the contest had been missing his old rival — the previous champion, He Qinglong.
Squad Leader He is a sergeant in the brigade's UAV reconnaissance detachment, skilled in UAV operations. In the previous specialty competition, he had edged out Ju Shusen to take first place.
Before this competition, Ju Shusen had done extensive preparation. He tracked down video footage of last year's competition and replayed it repeatedly, studying the operational essentials and correcting his shortcomings. He also frequently consulted Squad Leader He in person, eagerly anticipating a decisive showdown at this competition.
As it turned out, Squad Leader He never gave him that opportunity. This year, He made the resolute decision to switch "tracks" — to leave behind the competition arena where pure skill contests had been the focus, and to plunge into the hard problems of combat-realistic training, concentrating on optimizing training methods (训法) and innovating tactics (战法).
Asked why, Squad Leader He brought up a particularly memorable defeat from some time before.
During a UAV exercise, the exercise control group (导调组), closely simulating a combat environment, had added subjects including multi-band electromagnetic jamming and harassment by unknown special situations (未知特情袭扰). Squad Leader He had encountered similar problems in competitions before, and he applied the techniques from his daily training to handle them with practiced ease.
But the methods did not work. The exercise environment was far more complex than the competition arena: surrounding forests, rocky terrain, and various forms of complex electromagnetic interference severely disrupted UAV communications — circumstances that exceeded his expectations.
In the end, Squad Leader He had no choice but to call in an instructor and use additional equipment before the problem was resolved.
When the exercise concluded, Squad Leader He reflected deeply and realized he had fallen into the fixed mindset of "competition thinking" (比武思维): he had focused on honing competition techniques but lacked the proper understanding and capability to handle the dangerous and difficult situations that could arise on a complex battlefield. He could score high marks on an examination, but he lacked the genuine skill to adapt on a battlefield.
Having clearly identified his shortcomings, Squad Leader He proactively shifted his focus from "winning on the competition field" to "studying warfare for the battlefield." He used opportunities such as garrison training exercises and war-gaming (兵棋推演) to seriously study and practice tactics, exploring methods for dealing with combat scenarios including mountain mobility, covert reconnaissance, and special-situation handling (特情处置), and used the company's comprehensive tactical exercises and back-to-back adversarial exercises to identify and fill gaps and refine improvements.
Upon learning of Squad Leader He's experience switching "tracks," Ju Shusen felt deep admiration. He quietly resolved to follow Squad Leader He's example — to let go of his obsession with medals and train hard in the real skills demanded by actual combat.
Company Commander Du also took note of these issues. He found that some competition standouts did indeed have problems of "failing to adapt" (水土不服) in actual combat: Master Sergeant Third Class Squad Leader Lü had achieved second place in a theater-level UAV training competition, yet could not properly control UAV gunnery in combat exercises; Sergeant Xiao Shang had placed in the top three at a group army competition, but experienced UAV signal loss during combat exercises…
"Competition is only a means of training troops; winning in combat is the ultimate goal of training. What we pursue is victory on the battlefield, not rankings in evaluations." After deliberation by the Party branch, active guidance began.
They attempted to adjust the troop-training model: setting up typical combat scenarios; establishing comprehensive tactical and operational research-and-training subjects (全战术战法研训课目); conducting in-depth practical application of multi-UAV coordination, extreme-condition flight, and anti-jamming flight; organizing force composition assessments (编配论证), flexibly grouping personnel based on actual mission requirements to make command coordination smoother; and establishing a "UAV Specialty Workshop" (无人机专修室) to draw more officers and soldiers into the ranks of independent innovation.
With the aim firmly fixed on actual combat, after a period of time the capabilities of several competition standouts in the company changed markedly: Squad Leader He could calmly handle UAV reconnaissance and search missions in complex environments; Squad Leader Lü showed clear progress in UAV research and improvement; Xiao Shang's UAV fault repair skills advanced by leaps and bounds… Sergeant Wang Yifan remarked with feeling that what everyone now pays attention to is no longer who has won the most medals, but who has solved a new problem in exercises and training.
Company Commander Du told this reporter with satisfaction that today the concept of "using competition to drive training, and using training to prepare for war" (以赛促训、以训备战) has taken deep root. The officers and soldiers of the company, with their sights set on actual combat, continue to show rising enthusiasm for training, and many new training methods have emerged accordingly. Multiple results explored and developed — including a "multi-rotor UAV-mounted light weapons precision fire system" and "UAV precision grenade delivery" — have been promoted and applied throughout the group army.