Why are the military interested in Hexayurts?
The short answer is that the military is always looking for new ways to solve problems.
The long answer is more complicated.
Firstly, the role of the military changes over time. The basic job might be pretty well understood, but very little of the complexity of the military can be explained by the simple need to fight and win wars.
No, the truth is that the military is the last resort. Right now, if something totally out of hand happened, like aliens or a giant meteor or a Godzilla attack, the military are the people who get the call. It's their job to protect against the unexpected, against all threats both known and unknown, and to - if necessary - give their lives for that purpose.
Part of what goes along with that is obedience to political authority. For all of the various opinions (and I'm keeping my mouth shut here) that we might have about the policy of the current administration, we would have a much, much worse problem if the military simply refused to follow the orders of the President. That's how countries wind up with a General in charge, rather than a civilian-managed government.
You're reading this page over the Internet. The Internet spun off from ARPANET. Why did the military build ARPANET? Well, at the time, it didn't have direct applications. It was a capability that might be useful in the future.
It sure is.
The military have taken very good care of me and this project for quite a while. They did that because it might come in useful, but also because they are human beings trying to do the right thing, and to use - but not abuse - their enormous power to make the world a better place.
Things are changing at the Pentagon. In 2005, Gordon England signed 3000.05 which says that the military has to develop really advanced capabilities in fixing things up, and that they should get about as good at fixing things as they current are at breaking them. To be more precise, it says:
Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support. They shall be given priority comparable to combat operations and be explicitly addressed and integrated across all DoD activities including doctrine, organizations, training, education, exercises, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities, and planning.
So within that mandate, there's a whole new generation of research and thinking about how to take care of people as if it was as important as, er, being very good at blowing them up.
What's going to come out of that in the long run, I believe, is Internet-class solutions for housing, for shelter in general, for power, for water, for lighting, for cooking, and for every needful thing.
The Hexayurt is a little start. It's part of a much wider picture of development. So don't knock these guys. They brought you the internet, and they're doing the best they can.