"What do you mean you can’t use our equipment? Can you find someone useful among your men!"

Even before entering the command center, Lancaster’s furious roar was heard from afar.

It’s been a month, and the entire front line is retreating step by step. If it weren’t for the overwhelming precision artillery bombardment and the air force securing air superiority to crazily bomb the players’ bases, relying solely on Cuba’s ground forces, they might have been pushed all the way to Havana in a month’s time.

Sure, he attended a proper military academy, but the incompetence of the Cuban army successfully refreshed Lancaster’s perception of humanity’s lower limits.

Firstly, the most important point

At the start, the battles were weak, so European military aid consisted mainly of weapons and equipment, without sending troops.

However, the illiteracy rate in Cuba is incredibly high, and almost none of the lower-ranked soldiers can read.

Initially, he didn’t care about it, or rather, he hadn’t even considered the issue because European military companies had simplified weapon development as much as possible. As long as you could read, you could use them.

Evidently, Europe overestimated others based on its own standards.

In the cyber world, high-tech is everywhere, with things like simultaneous translation packages breaking barriers in communication.

In Lancaster’s view, even if you didn’t understand the German or French on the equipment, you could surely recognize it after translating it into Spanish or English using a translator, right?

The Cuban lower-ranked soldiers chuckled.

Don’t know.

In the past, after using the equipment for a long time, it didn’t matter if you couldn’t read; the old would teach the new. But now with the new European military aid, even the veterans can’t figure it out.

Mere translation doesn’t work, they need to ’point and read,’ letting the software give them a read-out to understand what the string of English in the manual means.

When encountering technical terms, they need to listen to explanations to even vaguely understand.

This is still the cyber era; a century ago, if you gave an African army an FPV drone, they would kneel down and worship it like a deity.

Compared to the Cuban army, Night City’s Animal Gang is made up of high-educated people; even if they can’t write, they can at least read and understand.

The individual quality gaps are pulled far by the Netherworld Dogs.

The result of this situation is that a massive amount of smart weapons were sent to them, and before they even learned how to use them, the players attacked.

Once the two sides engage in close proximity, it turns into a one-sided defeat.

The new gadgets in hand, such as smart loitering munitions, remote-control turrets, unmanned combat vehicles, powerful gloves... were all lost before they even warmed up.

Had they really been lost or destroyed, Lancaster would have accepted it; after all, Europe has a big family business and doesn’t lack these. But the things ended up in the players’ hands.

A bunch of soldiers at least high school graduates, with a median around college level, whose intelligence lower-limit is far beyond what these illiterates can compare to.

Once the stuff is in their hands, they figure out how to play with them after barely weighing them.

This situation wasn’t that severe at the beginning of the war because the Cubans didn’t know what they were fighting against; they thought the opponent was at most like the few warlords next door.

After having fought a few tough battles head-on, they quickly realized how significant the difference in strength between the two sides was. Their original courage and morale vanished immediately, and once in battle, they fell apart, managing only distant artillery attacks relying on their overwhelming cannon power.

Upon learning of the situation, Lancaster was furious, cursing the Cuban army as a bunch of wastrels.

But to Hardlin

You can say whatever you want; this isn’t just his problem; he’s just given up.

Could Cuba handle education?

No way.

Why?

Would anyone normal who received proper education be okay with this kind of mess?

Educated people are the hardest to manage and the easiest to cause trouble.

Cubans know this, and even Europe, the United States, Neon, any country nowadays all know

Just look at Night City’s ex-corporate mercenaries, Lin Miao can easily find a bunch of high-quality technical talent, which only clusters in big corporate areas. Even there, buildings are blown up and stolen from often, and middle management is replaced every three years.

In Havana, it’s a nightmare even in their dreams.

So Cuban drug lords monopolized education; only the offspring of higher echelons in the organization can study in Europe, either returning to manage the family in Cuba or staying in Europe to get employed, while the rest might study biology to come back and research new drugs.

So there’s a common understanding in Europe, the United States, Neon – smart men don’t become soldiers.

Those with ability either become lawyers, doctors, agents or inherit the family business and join companies.

Only the worst bunch in society is sent off to the military as grunts.

That brings about the second issue of the Cuban army.

Because of low education levels, they can’t understand orders from superiors, and they’re loose, lacking military discipline.

Maneuvers, infiltration, encirclement, raids... Slightly complex tactics can’t be executed.

A forced march of five kilometers would take half an hour.

Even when shifting lines, it’s common for 100 to leave a trench and only 95 to arrive.

It would be fine to lose people, but the scariest is that 100 leave and 105 arrive, and if it weren’t for five people missing lunch, the company commander wouldn’t even know such a thing happened.

With such a military beneath him, Lancaster is simply numb.

This is completely different from what he’s seen in military school cases; they can’t even manage the basics.