"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.