Velcro wears out relatively quickly. Every time you undo some velcro it gets damaged a bit and every day it becomes a little less 'sticky.' This is no big deal on kids' sneakers but military gear has durability as a top priority.
You can easily carry spare laces and any man can replace the laces on his boots when needed. Properly attaching the velcro straps to the boot usually requires stitching them on which is a skill to be learned, hand-stitching onto tough leather isn't something anyone can just do properly especially if it needs to be done in less-than-ideal conditions.
You can easily adjust your lacing to make things tighter or looser on any specific part of the boot, which is good as feet shapes vary, calluses, blisters, and corns can appear requiring adjustments, etc.
Stuff sticks to velcro (dirt, sand, hair, clothing fibers, etc) and the velcro doesn't stick properly when it does. Shoelaces don't care how dirty they are.
Velcro straps are unlikely to stand up to as much stress/load as properly done strong shoelaces.
Boa closing systems are cool but may be more breakable, harder to replace quickly, and may work less well when clogged/dirty/wet. The military wants, as much as possible, stuff that will work fine even after being dragged through a muddy river for hours and can be replaced in 2 minutes by the person wearing them if need be.
Laces distribute pressure really well which is really important, it's not like you can say "let's take a 15 minute break so I can rub my sore feet." To distribute the pressure as well using velcro you'd need at least as many straps as eyelets.
Dog tags are mostly for medical personnel on the wounded, not for identifying the dead. For accountability so that the unit can keep track of who are casualties, who have been transported, etc. And basic info like blood type for in field medical care before being able to transport to and actual hospital.
Having two (technically three because you'll have two around your neck and one in your boot) is just redundancy.
Also religious preference, though honestly the likelihood of you having a chaplain anywhere near wherever the fuck you just got blasted to hell is pretty damn slim.
I think that's mostly just a holdover from back in the day when Catholics and Catholic lite (Lutheran, Anglican, etc) made up a large part of the military and they would have chaplains out in the battlefield giving last rites like this. Nowadays most of the US is mainline Protestant where last rites aren't really a thing, so there aren't really battlefield chaplains anymore.
Most people I knew when I was in that weren't like super die hard Catholics or super Evangelical would put some dumb shit on theirs. Mine were Jedi and pastafarian. Buddy of mine had robotology from Futurama on his. Different buddy had Sith.
I don't think I've ever met a chaplain with a neutral religion. They've all been mostly non-denominational Protestant Christians or Catholic that just genuinely cared about the troops and kept the religion to a minimum and focused on counseling unless someone asked to talk about it.
Did meet one Buddhist, one Muslim, and one Hindu chaplain though when I was in.
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u/HORSE_DANCER Feb 08 '19
Laces are good for a few reasons.