Soldier's limb blown off? Not a problem, just print a new one.
Why wait for an injury? Upgrade our soldiers piece by piece, until they are they are stronger, faster, more reactive than the Amaokians.
Acknowledged, but these are very minor advantages. We won't be able to deploy our high tech stuff on the front for a while. I mean, we can't even deploy radio.
Create living power armour.
Heck, create living vehicles. Transport our soldiers around in half-organic flying creature-machines, which require no pilot, and are capable of faster, more nimble manoeuvres.
Replace crude, mechanical systems with elegant, living ones.
Why do any of this? Why make vehicles that can starve or bleed to death, why make power armor that needs to be fed.Why waste effort to do stuff biologically when the mechanical thing simply works.
The question remains : What makes life actually better?
We already have the ability to integrate circuitry into metal, why develop something redundant?
Applications of bio-printing is the perfect synthesis of the two. Power armor already needs to be fed, in power, oil, and god knows what else. Be nice if we could reduce a lot of the power and oil needs down protein blocks.
Biology is REALLY good at self replication and healing. Mechanical objects are REALLY good at lasting forever. We developed integrated circuitry on an unprecedented level, I'd like to apply the some concept to biology to create a merger. Literal biotech.
Imagine, if you would, a fighter that isn't piloted via a stick, pedals, and computer readouts, but is integrated into every last nerve of the pilot. We're not talking about a bio-fighter with slow and flapping wings like some ponderous pterodactyl, we're talking about something that can still support and integrate engines and modern weapons systems- ones that have the same connected weave of circuitry that allows them to be live as connected parts of the pilot.
I'm not saying LETS SUDDENLY SWITCH TO FLESHTECH. I'm saying, why can't we incorporate the strengths of biology into our printing, some as we did integrated circuits?
I suppose a better name than bio-printing would be: Living Materials. Not just flesh, not just machine, and certainly not some Frankenstein cybernetic graft, but a synthesis of the two.