#web gear

So, you've chosen your weapon, bought weather-appropriate clothing and ammunition, and now you need something to carry it.

The past 20 years and more, there has been several serious attempts to replace web gear with tactical vests. I'll cover those after.

The basics of web gear are:

yoke

web belt

pouches

Modern (ish) web gear is designed to be incredibly customizable. The web gear doesn't just have to fit every soldier, and every combination of clothing they have to wear, (which, as you might imagine, can get considerable in the winter), it also has to allow different layouts.

The current generation is MOLLE (pronounced Molly). I've never used it, but it looks a lot more robust than back in my day, during the reign of ALICE.

The ALICE in wonderland system had straps that go from the yoke to your pouches. The yoke bears the weight on the shoulders. A web belt is a MUCH wider belt, and bears the weight on the hips, while also keeping you balanced. Loose kit swings. C9 belt box bandoliers always seem to find a way to fall right in front of your groin when going prone.

The pouches then clipped into the web belt or yoke. The web belt and straps could be adjusted and, (in theory), locked. This allows you to quickly adjust the size when you put a jacket on. You can put what pouches you want, where you want.

The US normally goes into battle with just ammo and water. Canadians tend to carry a few meals, and jackets, and M72s. For a rifleman, frontline is 250 rounds, and we normally carry twice that. 5 mags means 150 charged, with 100 carried in a bandolier holding clips, (NOT MAGAZINES). STANAG mags typically come with mag chargers that dramatically speed up mag charging. Our canteen comes with a small stove and cup, allowing us to heat our Individual Meal Packs with poison pills solid fuel tablets. We celebrate when we get our hands on MRE heaters, but the stove and cup are still useful for saying making tea or boiling suspect water.

You probably also have to carry miscellaneous pyrotechnics, like smoke grenades or para-flares.

Still remember the idiocy when they decided that white smoke was bad for our lungs.

I'll save you the long version, but the short version is coughing up rainbow phlegm.

You also want cam paint, and something to wipe up the ball sweat. Not joking.

If you have a pistol, you'll want a holster and ammo. Military holsters are more designed to stay in place as you move about the wilderness instead of quick draw, and typically come with room for two additional mags. Concealing isn't so much of an issue in the bush, as you hopefully have a rifle to go with it.

Tactical vests have two great sins:

lack of versatility

not strong enough

God, the number of tactical vests that aren't designed to be robust enough to survive... combat.

But, if you are buying your own for your own use, you can pick one that suits you.

A lot of people want to get a vest to get a plate carrier, but:

armour isn't that good

if it is, it's heavy

There is no reason for your plate carrier to be your web gear.

Yes, you can combine them, but if the plate carrier is lacking in any way when it comes to web gear, either number or location of pouches, you'd be better getting a simple plate carrier and a vest or web gear to go over top. You also don't have to wear the plate carrier on the outside, and can, in fact, wear jackets over top of it.

TL;DR: the most important thing when getting web gear and/or tac vests is:

suitability for your needs