> Mainly because the "bigger military" I'm referring to doesn't purchase commercial products. Though...the individual solders do bring those products to the ba

> Mainly because the "bigger military" I'm referring to doesn't purchase commercial products. Though...the individual solders do bring those products to the battlefield. I actually got an award during the '03 Iraq invasion for using my personal GPS to rejoin my convoy after breaking-down, getting stuck in the sand and basically committing mutiny when I got tired of my platoon sergeant driving around in circles for some unknown reason. Truth be told I was using a map I pulled out of a burn barrel and a cheap compass but everyone was so happy when we reappeared (we had all the fuel) that I don't think they really cared 'how' and just assumed I was using the GPS. And it's not like I bought the GPS unit specifically to navigate around in the desert but just brought it along because I already owned it and thought it might come in useful -- which it did on multiple occasions because our platoon leaders loved to get lost, I'd regularly walk up to their humvee to see what kind of navigational shitshow they were involved in and be "yeah, were still 10 clicks away from what you're driving around looking for". Can't really complain too much since they never got lost well enough for anyone to get a mountain in Phoenix renamed after them as we were driving around the exact same roads at the exact same time that incident did happen. Anyhoo... the US military has a more bottom-up friendly approach where any random Joe can come up with an idea or novel usage of something and it will get incorporated into operational doctrine as opposed to other militaries which are all about a top-down approach to 'innovation'.