Back in the early 80s the Army realized that none of the incoming kids could drive a stick shift anymore, didn’t want to spend the time training them, and spec’d automatics in everything.
Deployed with the US Air Force in the 90s, we had some vehicles with manual transmissions. We just made the young ones drive them while we old farts laughed until they got decent at it!
Not sure I would completely go with an old Jeep, but it wouldn’t take much to upgrade it and still have a reasonable price and performance. Don’t get me started on the F-35 vs upgrades for F-16s/F-15s (my job prior to retiring).