Man, I think you have a wrong impression here, field fixes are usually sacrificial, and are made in haste, and often on "this might work." A great tradition it isn't, coat it in 100 MPH tape and 550 cord, and hope it holds. is generally the the solution to most issues.

Not to say there haven't been great innovation, but realistically most of these repairs are being made by guys that barely got out of high school, and had maybe 20 weeks of training. (I was one of them, its not a dig, its reality)

And as much as it pissed me off when a piece of equipment was no longer available, because it got shipped off, I was also equally pissed off when my unit all got sick and was throwing up because our water purification system broke, and a commander told the cooks to add bleach to the water. That is something a soldier has to do, where as a contractor wouldn't be likely to.

In the military you spend a lot of your time pissed off because someone, somewhere is doing something stupid, and it will probably get you killed.