Originally Posted by
Bob Viking
I love how we always fool ourselves that ‘military grade’ = better. What it really means is ‘military grade’ = lower quality but four times as expensive.
I’m being very facetious and I am in no way implying that this is the case here but I always smile when I see things advertised as ‘military grade’ thereby suggesting it is tough and unbreakable.
BV
My experience suggests that this is now true.
When I joined a lot of kit was mechanically over-engineered to the point of being almost indestructible - think of things like the old Larkspur and then Clansman radios with their massive cast aluminium cases (even they got broken from time to time). The stuff must have cost a fortune and the performance was nothing to write home about.
Nowadays it looks as if there is little difference between normal civilian kit and a fair bit of military kit. Clothing, in particular, often seems poorer in quality than some decent civilian outdoor kit, and, as we've been seeing in Ukraine, modified civilian vehicles, pretty ancient weapons, commercial drones and ordinary mobile phones seem to be very effective, and almost certainly very much cheaper than "military grade" kit.