I don't think electrical tape is high on the unmet-needs list of most GIs. If you need it, someone always has some. AA and AAA batteries are always hard to come by, though.
Since the government stopped putting cigarettes in field rations in the early 1970s, I always thought batteries would have been a nice substitute.
The military buys zillions of that kind of battery, and there's a list in one of the issues of Ranger Rick's Digest that gives the proper federal stock number to order them.