I am starting my first vest build and was wondering what the load out is for our Marines and soldiers. ie how many mags, pouches, etc and placement for these. I did a quick search via yahoo images for some pictures of Marines and soldiers with there vests on but there are not too many good pictures for me to base my vest off of. Thanks guys
LF has a thread on it.
http://lightfighter.net/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9046084761/m/1711043433
Sign up, post an intro, and lurk. A lot of good info there.
Someone here will eventually and inevitably ask you this, so why not me? Why do you feel the need to emulate what they carry?
I don’t know what the current issue vest is, but the one I was issued I found out much later (on here) did not receive the best praises. It donned like a jacket, but did not have MOLLE all around, which greatly limited how much and where you could put your mags/gear. The addition of the side SAPI plate gave us more room as there were MOLLE loops on the cover.
Anyway, our combat load was 7 mags, 6 on our vest and one in the rifle. Each of us also had an IFAK, and I had two hand grenades. I don’t think they taught us this, but I had all of my mags on my support side and my IFAK on my strong side (I think this is the most ideal). I was not issued a sidearm so I did not have any pistol mags. I did however throw some shotgun shells into the MOLLE loops above all the rifle mags.
Different roles will have troops wearing/carrying more or less stuff. Recent pics I see of troops show their gear layout to be a little more laid back, so I can’t say there is a “correct” way for you to base it off of.
I’m pretty sure there’s not really a standard configuration/combination of pouches ect.
Good post, and you beat me to it with the question.
Unless your doing reenacting or something similar, there are a whole bunch of different answers to this one. As was pointed out, there isnt always a SOP on where everything goes, it depends on the unit. If you looking for advice on how to set up your gear, then you need to state your intentions, IE: training rig, competition, airsoft , etc. That would really be helpful for you to get better answers.
It is just going to be a training vest along with zombie invasion. Also i am not trying to emulate anyone CGsteve, i just figure that since these guys do this for a living that they have probably figured out a pretty good setup for there vests, whilst no common SOP i am sure there will be similarities on pouches and what positions work well and not so well, although i am aware this is dependent on body mechanics too. Thanks Kchen, that is exactly what i was looking for.
but if you’re not doing what they are doing why do you care how they are doing it?
Don’t take this personally. These kinds of threads come up all the time. What makes M4C different is that you’re more likely to get a “why do you want to do that” response that in turn moves into helping you evaluate your actual needs vs. other forums that just post pictures and say “dood, get what I got, it’s badass”. Nobody is trying to pick on you, but there is a lot of experience here from people with a lot of rounds downrange in a variety of environments and simply mimicking what you see on CNN isn’t taking full advantage of that knowledgebase.
The OP didn’t say he wanted to emulate an Army/Marine vest. Looking for details regarding how they are setup in order to try and figure out why, and using the good ideas taken from that to help design his own vest, is what I assumed he meant. I wouldn’t mind knowing for those reasons as well. Doesn’t everyone do that to some extent or another, with information gathered here or elsewhere? It goes without saying, or should, that more weight should be given to the advice given here :D, but gathering as much information as possible from as many sources as possible isn’t a bad thing.
I will say this, a lot of those guys don’t have many options on their gear. When I was in Iraq I got stuck with a lot of gear I didn’t want to wear or use but had to. There’s a lot of better stuff out there that the military doesn’t use. Just find what works for you…good luck.
He didn’t?
I have too agree with one of the previous posts, when you are in the military you don’t get much freedom in the gear you use. You generally get what the big army gives you and use it, no choices. If you are lucky your unit will purchase a better harness and issue it out, usually this is a Battalion level decision. When I was in the Army we had a pretty good rig with all pouches all along the front for your seven mags. Then in front of the mags you could attach pouches for med kits and general utility. It was up to us to figure out what the best setup was for us individually.
Tactical Tailor makes some good stuff like what I used in the Army, but it might be more than you need. I’m looking to put together a good simple rig right now and I don’t need all the bells and whistles I had in the Army. I’m going to use the Bravo Company 03 Chest Harness as a base. It holds 4 mags and water on the back. I can add some handgun pouches on the front and a utility pouch on the side for gloves, knife, glasses, ect. and be good to go.
Hope this helps.
What are your intentions an perceptions…everyone is different.
You can go all gung-whore on the gear and find yourself akin to a turtle with very limited range. “Aim small, miss small”.
What you have on under the gear can be just as important(if not more than)as the gear itself… The right pants, belt, shirt, boots, skivvies etc…
One can be vetted here or on LF…at least M4C will give one the courtesy of a reach around and maybe some lube 
And that’s why guys drop the coin and pick up their own kit. The majority of the gear shown in that LF thread is not “issue”. The bottom line, the mission dictates the gear not the other way around.
How and why we wear our gear the way we do is based off of several different requirements, many of them in conflict with effective and efficient gunfighting.
Are you weraing a full armor setup with soft armor and plates, front, back, and sides?
Do you wear a helmet all the time?
Do you have to lug around an IFAK the size of an overloaded butt-pack?
Do you have to maintain 3 quarts of water on your body at all times?
Do you carry 4 flash-bangs and 2 frag grenades?
Are you limited to only using gear issued my Uncle Sam, or can pass off as such?
Do you have to carry 2 radios and 2 days worth of batteries?
Do you have to have three different optics mounted and two different NODs, and marker strobes, with all their associated batteries?
Do you have to carry a notebook of all your different reports, kill cards, maps, map pens, protractor, and compass?
Do you have to carry enough ammo for two pitched battles with redistribution ammo?
Do you have to carry breaching gear and extra ammo for your belt fed machineguns, mortars, 40mm launchers, and rocket launchers?
If not, we might not be the best people to emulate. The primary function of the gear today reflects the reality of the conflict: we face more threat from IEDs than gunfights, and the armor is built to deal with those threats at the expense of mobility and gunfighting ability. Right now, since there isn’t a protracted kinetic need much of our training revolves around things other than gunfighting, at the cost of our effectiveness and baseline equipment appreciation. It is transparent to most since the kinetic threats we face are almost completely incompetant. I would look more at the loadouts of those who primarily gunfight or train people in gunfighting and delete the items that don’t apply to your use. Be aware that sometimes gear is an integrated concept and simply adding or removing one item can distinctly affect the whole.
My personal training/fighting rig is a plate carrier with 3 rifle mags and a small first aid/bleeder kit with a belt for another rifle mag, 2 pistol mags, a Leatherman, and my pistol (and a few little other odds and ends). It handles everything my big, bulky, heavy, overburdened armor package can, at half the weight, with greater flexibility. If you dont have the same task and condition as someone else, mirroring their gear will probably not fulfill your needs and conditions. Make an honest assessment of your role and build your gear around that.
Failure2Stop, while I agree with you in all of the above, probably there is another point to be care of, budget.
I did a hundred of different jobs in the same period of time, from manning a tower to being 9 days stuck on an armored vehicle without resupplies, from doing advances with big ass flags announcing our presence, to crawl and wait in the night shivering for hours. I wish I had the right piece of gear for each of that jobs.
If your job is being a doorkicker 24/7, then it’s different (I think). While IEDs is the main menace for any guy going outside the wire, bullets are still dangerous and are taking lives. And even when the best protection for an IED is a MRAP, the only solution is taking the guys who plant them, the ones who produce them, and the ones selling the parts for them, so sooner or later the same guy riding in a MRAP will be crossing rivers or jumping rocks, maybe not storming a T&AQ safehouse, but looking for them or interacting with locals and being at risk of being shot.
Can a guy buy from his pocket the best equipment for each and all the jobs? Maybe, if he is rich. Will his unit pay for all the best equipment and gear? Maybe, if he is serving in JSOC. So a regular guy must look for a loadout (hate the term) enough flexible to be addapted for different kind of jobs.
My training/job gear is a LowPro Carrier with plates and detachable PALS chest rigs, rigger belt and combat belt. That way I can choose to wear or not the combat belt (pistol, 2 rifle magazines, 2 pistol magazines and rescue hook), and different chest rig configurations (last one for a HighProfile security gig, in or around vehicles most of the time, was 4 rifle magazines, IFAK, radio pouch, 3/4l. bottle and couple more things). Anything else in the vehicle in a 3-Day Assault Pack or a Go Bag.
After using Issued equipment and now paying it of my pocket (or begging for it to the boss) one rule that is tattoed in my mind is that LIGHT IS BETTER. I carry the same capabilities (not the same products) than years ago, in half the weight and bulk.
I skipped all the posts, maybe they covered this.
Typical rifleman load-out is 7 magazines.
Almost every unit SOP is different in terms of pouch placement, and then some units leave it up to their guys where to put what, and what to have. I had my IOTV and a tactical tailor vest when I was deployed. The bigwigs gave me crap on the rare occasions I was on the FOB because my vest was olive drab and not ACU (Big Frickin’ Deal), but you have the ability to have a pink, or neon yellow vest if you’d like. You don’t want to emulate the standard-issue military’s equipment. Trust me.
Get magazine pouches, and put them in places and practice mag changes and see where you like it. You don’t need an IFAK, you don’t need M203 pouches, flashbang pouches, grenade pouches, dump pouches are retarded, and you can keep your gerber in your pocket - it doesn’t require a pouch.
Less is better. I see to many gear junkies running around with tons of pouches and crap they’ll never use.
Do whatever you want.
Please read all posts before posting.
I agree and for somethings that’s what I did…but you can’t do that for everything. Then again it’s been a few years since I was deployed so things might have changed.