Holy shit, this explains everything.
I was an electronics engineer in the army for 9 years. In Gulf War 1 I was in a command briefing when an officer asked if there was any way to recoup and re-use the energy lost through vehicle earth spikes, I shit you not.
The next day my section were deployed by a Rodney to a grid reference which he got wrong and ended up being behind enemy lines. We ended up surrounded, under enemy fire - and then US Forces saw us, thought we were enemy (radio silence so said Rodney literally ordered us to disconnect our comms) and fired MLRS at us. True story.