Indeed, that's mostly what I took out of it. The fact that Mr. Howe learned 10%-20% from competition shooters is, IMO, supportive of the idea that competition shooting type course are, in fact, a good thing. After all, despite the large disconnect in terms of gear usage and operating environments, Mr. Howe was still able to learn stuff. Considering that most of us here don't have to shoot under NODs while wearing body armor and gloves in the jungle, clearly the amount that we would be able to take away would be much, much larger, and thus definitely generate a useful body of knowledge.
Of course, as Tamara stated, many people are sure to misconstrue Mr. Howe's words as a slam against competition shooters, since they like to think of themselves as tactical cool cats and think most of their shooting will be done jocked up in plates, fighting against a squad of Vympel or AQ sleeper agents, which is unfortunate of course, but I figured most of the peeps here on PF would be smart enough to realize that the very reasoning behind Mr. Howe's preference for tactical courses would lead many of us there to actually embrace competition shooting as a viable source of education.