The maintenance team of a brigade of the 72nd Army was internally assessed as having outstanding professional capabilities but was generally incompetent in terms of field survival and wartime support, according to a recent report by the People’s Liberation Army Daily.
According to public information, the 72nd Army of the People’s Liberation Army is under the Eastern Theater Command of China, with its military headquarters located in Huzhou, Zhejiang, and has conducted multiple military exercises against Taiwan.
According to the report, Zhang Xuebing, a sergeant in a brigade service support battalion of the 72nd Army, has more than 10 years of equipment maintenance experience. However, in a maintenance professional assessment last July, Zhang Xuebing’s maintenance team not only did not get any rankings but was rated as unqualified.
The reason for the disqualification was that they usually repaired equipment in fixed locations such as the workshop during training, but this assessment required finding and completing the repair of battle-damaged tanks in the field environment.
During the assessment, Zhang Xuebing’s team drove a repair vehicle to conduct a search, but the main channel was covered by “enemy” firepower and they could not get through. They had to take a circuitous approach from the small road to the target point. However, due to insufficient terrain research and judgment capabilities, they lost their way in the jungle. In the end, as they missed the best repair time, they were judged as unqualified by the assessment team.
After the assessment, the brigade conducted in-depth special investigations and found that the usual equipment training assessments were mostly “old routines” such as the decomposition and combination of components and common troubleshooting; the maintenance personnel had outstanding professional capabilities, but there were obvious shortcomings in field survival and wartime support.
In the summer of this year, the brigade of the 72nd Army once again carried out a comprehensive assessment of equipment rescue and repair in the context of actual combat. Zhang Xuebing led the whole class to quickly carry out vehicle repairs and finally won first place. “Until this moment, the stone in Zhang Xuebing’s heart finally fell to the ground.”
