I think those that you had have thin kevlar inserts that are supposed to be sufficient to stop a 9mm projectile. I wasn't issued them but they still had some lying around during my time in the Marines.




Same thing with these tanks!



This shot is a good example of the gear I had overseas. Pretty similar to the stuff in the OP. Almost all of it is issued and reissued until it is obsolete or worn out, then destroyed at DRMO. There's also a bunch of stuff that isn't pictured, like your pack, daypack, sleeping system, etc. It's safe to say that after everything is said and done each soldier is issued several thousand dollars' worth of individual gear. There's also a smaller amount of serialized gear like weapons and NVGs that bump the cost up a bit more. I tend to think that $17,500 seems a bit steep, though.

The reason I mentioned that $156 is steep, is because having read the very interesting and enlightening book War is a racket by Major General Smedley D. Butler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket I understood that prices are ''inflated'' in a way.

For example he mentions : ''Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ [cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them -- a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers -- all got theirs.'' In general he describes how so many companies/industries made up to 2000% profit at the time (and I guess it wasn't the first nor the last time of sth like that happening).

Wasn't there a scandal about the cost of toilet seats and other items sometime in the past?

Yes. The one I remember was the Space Shuttle but there were others.
https://www.google.com/search?q=space+shuttle+toiilet+seat+scandal&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Something these article never mention is the Mil specs required by the government that drive the costs up. It's not like you can just go to the local hardware store to buy it or anything when it comes to Government procurement. They have a laundry list of tests and procedures that must be followed when it comes to EVERYTHING they buy and those costs to the manufacturer are generally a huge source of the overall costs associated to the item/s when purchased.


Wheels

Even (especially?) during WW2 I’m sure there were black projects that had to be funded in some way that would never be on the books, what better way than to inflate the unit price of something inexpensive that you’d make by the millions - underwear, socks, bandages, ammo - at budget time then shift the excess to your black project?

First, our VMI rat looks great in his gear. Fancy stuff!

Second, the 600 dollar "impact generator" hammer that pops up from time to time is creative book keeping.

Often times the way procurement contracts are written in such a way that there are caps in how much is allowed for reimbursement or payment in one area of a project but not another.

Let's say we agree that you will build me a go-cart with certain capabilities, size, etc., and I am willing to pay $2,000 dollars for it. You say you could build it for that, but there are development and tooling costs that can't be covered in that price. We agree that I will pay an additional 500 dollars in development and 500 dollars in tooling fees.

Well, it may come as a shock, but the price of that go cart is going to be $3,000 dollars, and not one penny less. Losses in one area are going to be made up in another. Or, the budget costs are going to be made to match the allowable procurement obligation amount. Suddenly a twenty dollar hammer is a hundred dollar "impact generator" on the billing manifest.

Some of it is ridiculous specifications. The C-130 coffee maker is a perfect example. As an electronic component assembly, it is held to the same standards of every other electronic component on the aircraft. If there is an EMP strike, be sure the coffee maker will still work. Whatever the max G force load is required of the radar systems or landing gear sensors also apply. Does it need to be that robust? No. One could simply run a transformer and bungee a Bunn maker to the shelf and it would be okay. But thanks to blanket specifications, the USAF finds itself paying five or ten grand for a coffee maker. Which is why they started omitting them.

[edit]

I ran into "over spec" stuff when building my airplane. There are a lot of people who insist only aviation grade nuts and bolts should be used on aircraft. Rubbish. There are a lot of places on an aircraft where there are zero or very light loads of any sort placed on an assembly, or things are there purely for cosmetic reasons. There are more than a couple normal sheet metal screws, grade 6 or 8 bolts, etc., in my aircraft, as the only measurable difference between a grade 6 bolt and an AN3 bolt holding a form to support turtle deck stringers is three dollars. Per bolt.

We somewhat covered the same ground regarding blanket specifications Dart but you always say it so much more eloquently.


Wheels

We were typing at the same time!

I could imagine that they aren't thinking in terms of actual technical requirement, nor of artificially inflating the price, but rather as a means to avoid (very costly) errors in maintenance later if you mix bolt types. For the average plane owner it may actually not matter much whether his multi-million dollar aircraft is 30,000.- USD overpriced because of "overspecced nuts and bolts". He's more interested in streamlining the maintenance process while minimizing sources of error - particularly if he's not maintaining the plane himself but rather has to manage a whole fleet of them.
I agree very much with everything else that you wrote, it's just that in this case it may neither be malice nor incompetence, but a different frameset of thinking. Your plane is going to be "your baby", and it's natural that you know everything about it, literally down to the individual nut and bolt. If you're managing many, possibly changing planes with maintenance technicians that may come and go, process error management becomes way more important than cost-efficiency with the small parts. Even though it certainly adds up.

The main issues for the vast majority of combat deaths, was the lack of low level combat medical training soldiers received. In Vietnam they identified approximately 2500 preventable deaths solely from un-managed external bleeding (which is completely treatable), which is about 5% of ALL us fatalities in Vietnam (I couldn't find a number for actual combat deaths). Medical training for the grunt and even the medic hadn't changed much from WW2 up through Vietnam. For medics there was a slow but steady buildup from Vietnam that incorporated a lot of civilian advanced medicine that EMT's and Paramedics were using more and more of. The SF community had gone a lot further afield and started to steal from a lot of different places post Vietnam, but this wouldn't start to trickle into the "big military" until after GW1. For the average grunt until the advent of TCCC, medical training wasn't terribly far removed from what a GI in WW2 would have gotten.

-Jenrick

Snake, the average airplane owner has about 100K in his plane, not millions.*

Certified (factory) aircraft are super expensive to maintain because of the restrictions on materials. Part of this is that one can't use OEM parts...they all have to be certified (by the government) in the USA. That's why a clock for a Cessna 172 is 300 dollars.

I make no judgement on this, just stating the fact of it.

The cost of maintenance was one of the drivers behind my decision to build my own.

* I balance out the owner of the 200K Baron with my 13K Nieuport.