There's good and bad. There is a ton of amalgam used in the Army, but no one tells you how to practice. At least on the Army side a lot of it depends on the patient. We are dealing with a pretty unique population, even though soldiers are young and healthy, they live off caffiene and cigarettes. You would too if you had to stay awake for a 12 hour shift on a guard tower with nothing to look at. Constant smoking or dipping and sodas ruins a mouth and for a lot of these guys amalgam is a solid clinical choice. A lot of them don't care about having a little silver in their mouths either. Some of it will vary on the base your at, a base with a big infantry battalion will have worse oral health than those at Fort Sam Houston where most soldiers are medical. You will do more than a few WFT Amalgams (Whole Freakin' Thing in Amalgam), also full cuspal coverage amalgams (where you buildup all the cusp tips in amalgam) are a really good idea if a patient just had a molar endo done and is deploying before he can get a crown on it. It minimizes tha chance one of those weakened walls will crack off and become unrestorable during his deployment, instead just the amalgam just chips and you still have tooth left to do a crown on when he gets home. So, sure the Army uses a lot of amalgam, but in most cases it's not a bad thing.
As far as materials go, it's generally not a big deal unless you are in Korea, Iraq, or some other remote location. Otherwise, your local supply can order pretty much anything you want as long as it's in the Henry Schein catalog, they can special order some other things also. I've never been to a place that doesn't have composite and most places have a good selection of anterior and posterior. You can order whatever posts and things you want, somethings for specialties, like thermafill for endo, would have to be approved by the local endodontist.
Equipment is another story, if it costs more than a couple hundred bucks it needs approval by the clinic commander, which isn't always easy. The other thing is, it's always hard to get things around September/October when the fiscal year changes over.
Overall, it's not too bad, can you choose to have your electric handpiece for crown preps, or the quietest highspeeds you can find? No. Do you usually have everything you need to do high quality dental work? Yes. You can purchase things on your own and use them in the clinic, which I may do when I get back home for stuff I'll use when I get out, like the combined RootZX endo handpiece.
