I would like to introduce you to the principle of dual use. However I imagine you are already familiar with it. Surely you do not consider nmap and gdb to be criminal tools? Was ARPANET a war toy? Is GPS a handy location service for civilians or nuclear warriors?

In order to drive the nail home[^1] in the instant case here are some references for drones and anti-poaching:

Elephants and rhinos benefit from drone surveillance: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25056-elephants-and-rh...

Google gives $5 million to Drone Program That Will Track Poachers: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/google...

[^1]: How do you classify the hammer: carpenter's best friend or murderer's skull bludgeoning tool?

You mean a truck that can cross a river, say, despite a damaged bridge, is not something that might help?

Why then not develop this in the first place instead of first building a military vehicle and maybe later reusing it for different purposes?

The military need it is being built for is "casualty evacuation and cargo resupply". The only thing really distinctly military with regard to these is that the military happens to be a large single customer who, if they purchase it, will secure the future of the company in one fell swoop.

Which is one reason to focus on military first.

Its not really "reuse for different purpose" when you also sell the same thing to civilian customers who have the same kind of needs.

The simplest reason is that the military has the funding and will take risks on new things that the others will not. They also stress the heck out of things, and the military is willing to develop and iterate on things that civilians would get sued over.

Funding

Do you realise that almost all the development of early computers was to contribute to the war effort? Usually to get things done, you have to create things that help a subset of mankind in a specific way.

I realize that. And not only the computer stuff but a lot of things in different areas from advances in medicine to rocket technologies.

But why should we continue this road? We have been living in a world where you can no longer have any serious war for more than 60 years. There are nuclear weapons and having a war is just the dumbest thing you could do.

You can still invade Iraq or Chechnya or Ukraine and beat down a less powerful state but for this we have more then enough weapons, no need to get new ones.

This isn't a weapon, it's an easy-to-fly truck (whereas helicopters are notoriously difficult to fly). Armies need trucks, for humanitarian missions as well as conflicts. Some companies target the military as a first customer because if a product does what they need they'll buy at scale and you can recoup the development costs in a much shorter timeframe.

You are right, plus this is an absurd over-sized gadget. I doubt you could pack it into an aircraft carrier that easily. And if you did get it off to its 'humanitarian military duties' imagine, trundling along a road, taking up both carriageways, I am sure that a few kids with rocks could disable those rotors if the telegraph poles don't get there first. It has no real application hence it is a military 'maybe we need one of these too' gadgets.

Look again. It is less than a lane wide with the blades stowed.

Because if we ever scale the military-industrial complex back we might find out that automation has destroyed even more jobs than the wildest luddite fears.

... I mean or not but it's a trillion dollars or so a year you can't cut spending without destroying the entire state of new mexico.

And recent events confirm the wisdom of that course.

Wait...

China before mongol invasion was like that. Too bad they hated their own warriors, we could had industrial revolution 7 hundred years earlier.