Possibly ironically, one of the reasons BD is looking for consumer-sale alternatives is that it specifically didn't meet the bar for military tech. The Big Dog

Possibly ironically, one of the reasons BD is looking for consumer-sale alternatives is that it specifically didn't meet the bar for military tech. The Big Dog project started as an idea for a field heavy-pack machine to offload some of the weight marines deep-inserted into a theater need to carry. It failed to meet either the noise limitation or power demand needs for that use-case. Turns out for military applications, "Just send some trained dudes with guns" is a lot easier, still, than ground-based drones. Air drones are, of course, a whole different kettle of missiles<delete>fish.