“It’s a lethality competition,” said United States army colonel Justin Harper last week about the Sullivan Cup, an American military tournament to find the best armoured vehicle crew.“Lethality is really what the army is all about, so we’re here to learn things about the best competitors in the army, about the platforms and how to display combat excellence in this environment,” he told Stars and Stripes military news organisation, echoing the bellicose language of the US secretary of defence Pete Hegseth.Over the course of a week, the Sullivan Cup pits various branches of the US military against each other, along with a handful of international teams.In the end, the most “lethal” team came not from the US military but from Ireland. Earlier this month, a five-man crew from the Irish Army’s Cavalry Corps beat six US teams in the operation of the M2 Bradley, a 35-tonne tracked vehicle. Though it bears a strong resemblance to a tank, the M2 Bradley is technically an “armoured fighting vehicle”.What made the achievement even more remarkable was that the Irish Army does not operate any tracked vehicles, much less any Bradleys. None of the crew had even seen a Bradley in real life, meaning they had to learn from scratch how to operate the platform in advance of the competition.“The country had never competed in that competition before, never even seen the Bradley. We never expected to win,” says Sgt Shane Molloy, the gunner on the Irish team.A Mowag at the Curragh Camp in Co Kildare with a recently-unveiled RS6 remote-weapon station. Photograph: Alan Betson