I had heard of Gecko, he was before my time, but I just flipped through that link, and.....damn. Wow. What can one say?
When I was a teenager, I ordered the U.S. Cav catalogs, and saw everything that was "Genuine Issue", and I was SO disappointed when I actually went into the army, and not only did I not get issued all of that stuff, no one else seemed to know or care about it. They had not taken it upon themselves to study the minutae of such things, they actually only knew what the army had told them about their gear. Mindboggling, I know.
I know a kid, well, I guess he's about 19 now, the son of a hunting buddy, and he's obsessed with anything that the marines have, do, or use. Not a bad kid, smart enough to find his butt with less than two hands, and tougher than me, he could survive at least one stretch in the marines. But he had a special modernized Kabar knife, (with a .....advanced sharpening system,) issue boots, underwear, .308 rounds loaded to the exact spec of marine snipers, (failing to understand that BTHP match bullets do NOT make good hunting rounds,) and all he would talk about was his marine reserve friends he played paintball with, and how much of their life he had soaked up. When he had a break in the conversation, I told him that he was going to have a few bubbles busted. The way the military, police, and civilians do things are different, and there are good reasons why. Real 'operators' worry a lot less about their gear than he does, and when (if) he does actually join, his NCOs won't give an overweight rodent's butt how much he knows about gear if he can't do the job with the bare minimum of what he's issued. Knowing this stuff doesn't make you cool. It makes you a geek.