If you were to check the creation dates on most MIL Specs you would see why
they are not quick to change.  The majority of these were written during the
post W.W.II period when the military was flooded with men and women with
little to do.  Since then, the military has been constantly cutting back on
man power so fewer people are available to perform the updates and/or
changes.

The only recent instance of a MIL spec changing caused a nightmare.  Instead
of changing their spec, they elected to just allow it to expire and adopted
an IPC standard.

Little consideration was given to the huge amounts of paperwork this would
cause their industrial suppliers because the military had required they have
very specific call outs on their internal instructions.  Hence a mountain of
drawings, operating procedures, inspection manuals, training manuals and so
on had to be re-written to incorporate the deletion of MIL spec and the
addition of the IPC standard.  You must realize the majority of these were
not on electronic media due to the age of the paperwork so where the
military was taking a shortcut to save time and money, industry was forced
to add personnel and rush to make the changes.

Sometimes it just seems to be a no win situation, or more simply
put...damned if you do; damned if you don't.

Paul B.

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