For John A- military equipment insurance

John- a while ago you asked something along the lines of "who'd be dumb
enough to insure military equipment?"

Years ago when I was a student, I went to a lecture by Terry Jones, the
Python, on Chaucer's "Knight's tale", in which he mentioned the
situation in
medieval Italy, specifically Milan, which I think hired a lot of broken
lances as well as condotta companies.  The terms of hire included an
undertaking to refund the value of any horse killed in battle. 
Naturally,
the heroic warrior would turn up for hire on a fine and costly steed,
but in
battle would ride some old nag, making sure it got killed.  He'd get his
compensation then set off to do it all again somewhere else (cities
eventually branded the insured horse to stop the fraud).

So, it doesn't work but at least it's been tried!