Chapter 53: Too Strong to Be Allowed to Compete! A Historical Classic Moment!
The rules of the International Tank Competition, hosted by the Russians, were actually quite simple.
It was modeled after a ski relay race. If you’re not familiar with skiing, you can think of it as a car rally race.
The entire race is divided into four stages.
The total race time is three days.
During these three days,
Tank crews need to drive their tanks through a 29-kilometer course.
Along the course, they need to overcome obstacles like serpentines, shallow waters, hills, and cliffs.
Not only that, they also need to complete target attacks within a set time under the pressure of low-flying helicopters at a range of 900-2200 meters.
They must hit five targets to complete the attack. If they miss, they will be penalized with an extra 500-meter drive.
These challenges might seem simple, but in reality, they are quite challenging.
It’s like the difference between running 5 kilometers and doing a 400-meter obstacle course. Many times, veterans would rather run 5 kilometers than do a 400-meter obstacle course.
Besides these surface-level difficulties,
After completing each stage, tank crews have to climb out of their tanks and manually reload shells and refuel.
Only then can they continue to the next stage of the competition.
This doesn’t just test the tank's technical performance, but also the crew's driving skills, team coordination, and weapon operation skills.
To be honest, this format was quite difficult for the GouGou C-type main battle tank.
Although the Chinese team brought experienced veterans with top-notch practical skills, they were still unfamiliar with the operation and power system of this new tank.
This affected them in many aspects.
For example, at the beginning of the competition, on a highly slippery road, the GouGou C-type was going too fast and touched the cones while turning.
If the veteran tank crew hadn’t remained calm and the GouGou C-type didn't possess its excellent performance and sped to 74 kilometers per hour, they wouldn’t have caught up in time.
The Indians were already laughing their heads off.
It was strange that the Indians didn’t seem to care that their 'Arjun' tank had crashed before even starting.
After communicating with the Russians, they decided to use the Russians’ T72 instead.
Even in this situation, they still had the audacity to mock the Eastern powerhouse?
Zhu Rui Lin, standing at the front of the fence, heard the Indians whispering and remained calm. He simply replied in English, "If the 'Arjun' tank made by many nations was built during WWI, it would have been a well-known killing machine!"
Hearing this, the Indians seemed to have stepped on their tails, and they immediately showered Zhu Rui Lin with a volley of Indian-accented English insults.
But Zhu Rui Lin kept a faint, provocative smile on his face.
He was getting to them, he was getting to them!
The Indians were getting flustered. Don’t you know that a single well-placed word can be worth ten thousand?
Unlike the Indians, the Russians' thoughts were easy to guess, they basically didn't even need to be guessed. Whatever was on their minds was evident on their faces.
They knew their stuff.
After the GouGou C-type main battle tank touched the cones, it used its high-speed mobility and the automatic loader to complete three rounds of target attacks, all hitting the target and making up for lost time.
The Russians' faces changed.
They realized that the new tank brought by the Eastern powerhouse was unlike anything they'd seen before.
Not only was its reliability, power, acceleration, and start-up response no weaker than the Russians' T80U, but its fire control, power, and efficiency also subtly exceeded the T80U.
Especially after the three rounds of cone turning were over, the GouGou C-type main battle tank achieved a score of 19 minutes and 44 seconds, with 0 misses, temporarily placing it first in the group. The Russians couldn't accept this result.
Isn't this our home turf?
Shouldn’t we be showing overwhelming dominance?
How can this be?
When did the Eastern powerhouse's third-generation tank reach this level?!
Colonel Andreyev, sitting in the stands, had a terrifyingly dark expression.
If they met on the battlefield...
For a moment, all the other participating teams, except the Eastern powerhouse’s delegation, sensed the awkward atmosphere.
But there were even more things that made Colonel Andreyev uncomfortable...
In the following competition,
Although the Eastern powerhouse didn’t use any advanced equipment like composite armor or laser jammers, they still surpassed the Russians in every aspect with their staring focal plane thermal imager and upper anti-image stabilization sighting system.
Each time they finished a competition item, the cheers coming from the Eastern powerhouse delegation were like setting off fireworks during the New Year, lively and boisterous.
They even forced the Russians to resort to dirty tactics. After seeing the excellent performance of the Eastern powerhouse’s third-generation fin-stabilized discarding sabot armor-piercing projectile, the Russians decided that everyone would use their own conventional armor-piercing projectiles in the following competitions.
After discovering that the Eastern powerhouse’s new generation of tank fire control systems was superior to theirs, the Russians changed the subsequent shooting stages.
They replaced the original 'moving to static' shooting with 'static to static'!
The Russians got even more outrageous. After learning that the Eastern powerhouse’s gun muzzle reference compensation device could automatically input wind speed, wind direction, and launch ammunition coefficients into the fire control computer, and then automatically calculate and adjust muzzle deviation,
They introduced a new rule banning this equipment.
Reason: Other countries don't have it.
Eastern powerhouse delegation: ？？？
If you can’t beat them, ban them?
What are you going to do on the battlefield?
These utterly unreasonable regulations would make even the Koreans of the future call them the grandfathers of unfairness.
Along with the gun muzzle reference compensation device, the 96B high-caliber machine gun's new optical sight was also dismantled.
The Russians got even more abstract. They deliberately set up obstacles during the tank crew's target practice. They would either make the target emergence time much longer than other countries or intentionally reduce the visibility of the target areas to create interference.
However, even under these circumstances,
At the end of the first day, the Eastern powerhouse finished with a total time of 29 minutes and 56 seconds, placing them first.
At the end of the second day, the Eastern powerhouse’s cumulative time was 56 minutes and 21 seconds, still placing them first.
Seeing these scores, Andreyev's face turned black.
How could they demonstrate the military strength of the Russians?
How could they increase military trust between neighboring countries?
How could they sell their arms?
Andreyev was so angry he became shameless.
During the last day of the competition, they even canceled the reloading stage, simply because the Eastern powerhouse soldiers reloaded shells too quickly.
However...
As the last shot from the GouGou C-type main battle tank roared out before the end of the third day's competition, Chen Jian Chao, wearing sunglasses, turned his head and lit a cigarette, exuding an air of disdain and arrogance.
The setting sun was behind him, and the flames of the explosion were behind him.
A true man never looks back at an explosion.
Zhu Rui Lin, somehow managing to find a camera, captured this classic moment.
This moment had already become art.
Like the famous photo "Negative 25", like "Joe's Smile" at the UN General Assembly, and like the photo of "the Don" being attacked and punching back.
...........
.........................
ps: Fourth update delivered! Please show some love with flowers, reviews, monthly tickets, and comments! Thank you!