>>7638The Soviets tried to convert military gear to civilian use, in order to claw back some of that value. Like they tried to convert tanks into tractors and construction work machinery. Most of that didn't work well because tanks are fuel guzzlers and maintenance hogs.
Some of it did work tho.
-They managed to build a north-pole explorer vehicle on the basis of a converted tank which was pretty inspired.
-Then there are the spectacular rail de-icing/snow-clearing machines that use old jet engines like enormous hair-dryers.
-They build the ultimate fire-engine by taking a tank and sticking a custom turret on it that uses 2 jet-engines with water injection. This thing was powerful enough to spray out the infernal fire-torrent of burning oil-pipelines.
Military transport helicopters, and supply-trucks were also successfully converted to civilian use. There is a very successful company that makes super rugged all terrain trucks that came out of this.
The US has a cargo-lifter helicopter with a unusual inter-meshing dual rotor design, which got converted from doing military supply drops, to search/rescue and forest-fire-fighting.