My understanding is that it’s more for logging in industries like aerospace, where it’s imperative to be sure that bolt X was tightened with force Y if you don’t want the airplane to fall apart. Networking isn’t the only way to do this, or even the only automated way, but I guess they didn’t want to have to hook each wrench up to a USB cable at the end of every shift to download its log.
(The comments section on Ars is studded with remarks about Boeing, as you would expect.)