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Guys, can we not do line-by-line? It makes the posts unreadable and the arguments difficult to follow. Break out your high school essay skills!
As a matter of fact, I did go to a school for geniuses. ;p I'm perfectly aware of the various issues associated with the physical composition of matter. All I'm saying is that if something acts like it's matter, it's reasonable to assume that it -is- matter; devices get damaged in ways that suggest that the stuff they're made of is, er, really there, instead of a projection of some type. It's not unreasonable that they can summon their composition from "somewhere else" - Caro summons freakin' Godzilla at one point, so it's not a magical effect from outside the knowledge of people in the show!
RH design... yeah yeah, original RH designer, but we -know- that its actual manifestation was at least partly up to Nanoha. That much is in the show. We can't hand-wave it away. It wasn't pre-determined that Nanoha would come up with a staff with a big red ball and a curvy bit around it at one end, or that pink would appear anywhere in the design, any more than her barrier jacket was predetermined to resemble a school uniform with metal bits and more foo-foo.
At the same time, we know that it's at least possible to create a device whose manifestation is at least somewhat up to the creator, because that's what Shari is doing, and the barrier jackets created by the device are at least nominally influenced by the captains' jackets. That said, they're still hardly uniform, they're still pretty custom, and the only one that really actually looks like the captain's uniform is Subaru's jacket (and, er, Subaru herself is also pretty influenced by Nanoha!)
To explain the TSAB, it makes at least a little sense to say "cultural issues". Honestly, that might explain a whole bunch about their Keystone Kops-like ineptitude! ;p Militaries do tend to ossify their thinking if they're in peacetime for a long time, and the TSAB has other signs of that sort of thing too (like rank inflation!) Maybe the original "staves" really did have to be staff-like to start with? If your soldiers are used to their magic thingies looking like staves, then culturally, they're going to want to carry around staves. (This goes double if the pre-TSAB society equated magic power with status, and thus a magic staff would be a symbol of rank too - same reason we still use gold braid on military uniforms, for example.) By the time you get more advanced devices that really can look like what the user wants, there's a more-or-less standard "I am a magic staff" appearance and most people just stick with it. The fact that it's outdated may not stop them - Poland attempted to hold back the Wehrmacht with horse cavalry! ;p
One final argument - we know that the Gadgets are pretty resistant to magic, and can only be damaged by magical attacks if they are (a) really overpowered, e.g. Nanoha, (b) hax, e.g. Teana, or (c) physical in nature. Subaru can punch out a gadget because she's actually hitting it, not ramming it with a big bunch of magic. Vita's attacks are effective against the drones; this implies that the balls she's calling up out of nowhere are actually physical objects, as are Zafira's spikes. For that matter, we never see anyone break the Tank Barrier, and given that Vita's magical effects tend to focus on physical manifestations, maybe it -also- really exists? (Like, it looks like a crystal shield 'cause it is one?)
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