Guns are sexy. It’s a known fact that linking firearms (as well as many other odd things) to sex increases sales. That’s what keeps good-looking models, both male and female, working.
However, as anyone who has dealt with any kind of military force understands, there is a very great deal of other, non-firearm equipment out there, and most of it can only be sexualized in the grossest of manners. As a result, the ‘zhush‘ tends to get lost in the shuffle when people think about “things military”.
What do I mean by ‘zhush‘? Simply, the “other stuff”: uniforms and boots, personal load-bearing gear, helmets, gas masks, tools, computers, desks, engineering vehicles…in short, virtually everything you could find in all of an office complex, a clothing outlet, and a construction company, you will find in the organizational table of a light infantry or military police battalion.
The problem for supply officers around the world, especially those serving in armies below the
top tier, is how to get at that gear and equipment on a razor-thin budget. Psychologically speaking, it is humiliating for a formally-organized armed force – which relies on the concepts of duty, honor and pride to function reliably and effectively – to accept hand-me-downs from wealthier states, except in the most dire of circumstances; the Free French and other remnants of European forces overrun by Nazi Germany that escaped to Britain after the evacuation at Dunkirk, France, in 1940 come to mind. At the same time, there may well be no real domestic industrial base for an army to draw upon in a small country. Doubly damaging for a small state’s force, is the idea of buying second-, third- or even fourth-hand surplus, and having to mark over the originating nation’s identifying marks from the gear.
For decades, this was the conundrum – small, poorly funded armies had to either swallow their pride and accept handouts, or look like a street gang until either domestic production came online, or money was let from their (often horrifyingly corrupt) governments to contract out production to foreign companies to produce basic equipment to their specifications.
Globalization and the rise of the Internet, however, have radically revolutionized the small-state military supply problem…and leading that charge is the Chinese clearinghouse known as the Alibaba Group (although Vietnamese competition is coming on strong).
While shopping sites such as Amazon cater to the individual buyer, sites like Alibaba have a far more extensive wholesale section, where buyers can take advantage of the mass production capacities of several dozen Chinese companies, giving them access to at least “good enough” military equipment, as well as expendable supplies and tools that would have been prohibitively expensive for a small army to purchase before about 1999.
The only items not available via Alibaba and other suppliers are actual firearms and larger military weapons, ammunition, explosives and drugs; however, those items are not overly difficult to get with an End User Certificate, even for non-state actors. While a disadvantage for the military buyer, the ability to equip everything else more than makes up for the lack of military-grade weapons on the site.
This is an advantage that cannot be overstated. While a rifle, three magazines, a cheap water bottle and a box of breakfast cereal might seem like a workable equipping plan for supplying and army, especially if that force is bereft of money, it is most definitely not. The ability to equip a relatively capable military force for comparative peanuts leaves no excuses for anyone with pretensions of logistical competence – if you have access to the internet and a credit card, there is no excuse for sticking with the abysmal state of the past.
About Author
Michael Cessna
Michael Cessna is a former Active Duty United States Marine, a long-time personal protection specialist, security and defense analyst, military subjects instructor, general information researcher and amateur historian. He has been contributing security and defense writing since 2015.
