You've surely seen the scenario in movies. A battered and bloody soldier behind enemy lines stumbles through the underbrush, a squad of enemies in hot pursuit. He cuts left, runs through a clearing leading to a pristine beach and falls to his knees. The camera pans out, juxtaposing a white sandy beach – heaven on any other day – with a burning jungle punctuated by explosions. But then it happens, at his last moment of desperation, with his pursuers getting closer with every lapping wave, his eyes focus on salvation. A leftover supply crate rolling in the surf less than 10 feet away. Inside that crate was the radio the soldier needed to call his friends, tell them his location, and get him to safety – and the one key component that made it possible (apart form his iron will) was reliable military packaging.

Around the world, military packaging – otherwise known as mil-spec packaging – is approached with the utmost level of care and precision. According to the Defense Logistics Agency "Military Packaging exists based upon the lessons learned when improper packaging failed to protect material in combat logistics support missions.' Additionally, the DLA continually asserts that these lessons must be capitalized on to benefit from greater reliability and efficiency while potentially saving more lives and serving the various members of the military more effectively.

Many of the most prominent innovations in the packaging industry were developed first for military uses. While some military supplies are commonly packaged in the same packaging materials as any other product, other military packaging is required to transport materiel, supplies, food, electronics, and more under an extremely wide variety of distribution and storage conditions.

Because of the many demanding requirement of military packaging and the absolutely critical nature of the products being packaged, packaging distributors have found the need to come up with a number of creative packaging solutions.

For example, one variety of mil spec packaging (used in the example at the beginning of this article) is the mil-spec crate. Mil-spec cleated plywood boxes, load bearing boxes, and crates are a few of the many kinds of mil spec crates that get the armed forces what they need reliably. In the earlier example, where the lone soldier finds an intact and properly working radio to call for help, there's also a good chance that that radio was contained in a moisture free anti-static mil spec bag that also protected it from water and the elements. In any case, you can clearly see that having a standard for military packaging can come into play both on and off the field in serious ways,

The paper published on the Defense Logistics Agency's website, The History and Significance of Military Packaging thoroughly examines the need and genesis of military packaging, and explains that "as [world war II] progressed, military packaging "gradually evolved from inadequate and haphazard processes to better defined, detailed instructions relating to the cleaning, spraying, and sealing of principle items before they were packed." This "cleaning and spraying" may involve the steps taken to prevent the eventuality of water and corrosion damage, serving as yet another instance of the gradual improvement in the field of military packaging.

However strange it may sound, it can be said with 100% certainty that effective military packaging has had a definite impact on war efforts around the world. Would you have ever thought about that before?