>>627020

>half the gear that isn't food and ammo, wouldn't make our soldiers MORE effective at this point.

You'd have to redesign everything from the ground-up to save the muhreens' knees, from the last bit of the equipment to the very doctrine of how infantry should be deployed. Currently there isn't a clear idea, so they just keep developing and adding new equipment. Actually, that has been the situation since at least Vietnam. For example, why should the average grunt carry food if he is part of a completely mechanized army, and isn't part of a light infantry formation? And even if he had to carry food, why should he carry it into a firefight when he could just pull 50-100kg of food on that thing >>626785 and leave it behind at a temporal depot?

>>629812

You do need education to get to that level, otherwise you end up with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child) The problem is with two assumptions. The first one is that there isn't an inherent "upper limit" of intelligence in every person. The second one is that all people are unable to learn on their own, and so they are complete lost without highly developed formal education. After all, smart people are smart even if they are left to their own devices.