Take a hard look at that radio.
L
Yes, I saw that home brew external battery pack. They may have a hard time getting replacement batteries in Syria. Looks like our military would be able to overcome that. smile.
It may be an issue of longer battery life between charging, without multiple battery packs.
Hand helds are very sophisticated now. Almost all have fairly high standby current.
I remember helping build repeaters for mountain top installation with Repco transmitters and receivers. They were used because of the low quiescent current. If I remember correctly the CMOS controlled repeater with Repco boards drew 50 ma quiescent current in standby. It had solar panels and huge capacity deep discharge batteries, was on a 9,020 ft. mountain top. Nearest commercial power was 2 miles.
I thought it was a flashlight taped to the radio but upon closer inspection it is batteries; an Eveready D battery is at the bottom.
I wonder what the reason for that is.