The supply of decent kit by the military has always fallen behind the availability of equivalent civilian equipment. GORTEX was designed for the mountaineer/hillwalker in the mid-80's, it was issued to specialist in NI in 1990 and on general issue in 1995/6. The Army had the 58 pattern large pack on geenral issue through most of the 80's, civilian pattern bergans (in green) were bought by my battalion in the late 80's to go to NI. Just 2 examples - the logistic organisation tends to work on long lead times, cheap products and requirements set by a customer 1 who sits in Puzzle Palace.