I'm mostly talking about the whole company approach to such time-sensitive customers.
In general, military (electronic) gear is designed to be difficult to repair because repair and reverse-engineer are pretty similar. One radio being out is a small problem. The radio system's crypto being compromised because it was captured and reversed is a big Problem.
The suggested notion that anti-tamper integration exists on arbitrary whathaveyou weapon systems is, at best, misinformed. Field updating of operational software at the box level over e.g. 1553, or ARINC 429 via 615, or even vanilla RS-485 PHY via bespoke protocol, is very much a thing and almost de facto mandatory capability for most systems. If we broaden the scope of the term "field" to include intermediate-level maintenance in forward-operating labs staffed by uniformed personnel, then even firmware updates of cherry-picked circuit card assemblies can be a thing (although much simpler isolation to a replaceable circuit card or modular assembly is a lot more typical; CCA-level firmware updating is usually reserved for depot or OEM activity).
> In general, military (electronic) gear is designed to be difficult to repair because repair and reverse-engineer are pretty similar.
Bullshit. In fact the exact opposite is almost always boilerplate baked into acquisition performance objectives, sometimes even down to defining explicit MTTR targets. Certain systems even modularize the anti-tamper crypto applique portion to enable repair of everything else that isn't anywhere near as sensitive and much more probable to fail based on analysis.
The real meta is an adversarial one where private defense contractors are intentionally exploiting a complex process with the objective intent of locking in the ever so lucrative OEM sole source sustainment dependency, and the corrupt influence on DFARS statutory language as it relates to technical data rights is a critical part of that game.
Ha...you've clearly never been a software engineer in the encumbered world of fielded defense systems.
With that said, if a commander orders someone under his command to smash the piece of equipment with a hammer, the contract won't interfere, but he will report the situation.
The issue is, most of the equipment at this point is well beyond the knowledge a company commander would have, they aren't qualified to know if this is something that can be fixed in the field, and a soldier under his command that is qualified isn't in a position to refuse the capt. order. So they fry the equipment.
The army is pretty big on redundancy, and having contingencies, it would be very rare that an operation couldn't continue without a single piece of equipment. It might be harder, and may be a greater risk, but in a place where lots of things get shot, you make a plan, then you make due.
I'm not saying the scenarios I'm describing fit all situations, but I can say that far less equipment was destroyed after they came on board.