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New RPG Backpacks from BHI

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Go anywhere in the developing world and you are going to run across the RPG-7 or one of its clones. Up until now, if you needed to schlep its rockets around you were stuck with a rather spartan and often poorly made backpack. Notice I said, “Up until now” because Blackheart International has just released three new backpacks designed specifically for RPG ammo. These days, when I think about Soviet bloc weapons I think about Blackheart. They have really gone all out to develop effective training materials as well as identify accessories for small arms. Now that they have turned their attention to the RPG-7 you can carry it with ease. The packs all take their basic design from the issue items but let’s face it. The launchers themselves aren’t the paragon of manufacturing excellence and the backpacks were almost an afterthought. On the other hand, the new BHI packs will stay secured and not soak up water like a sponge as the older “issue” packs are known to do. You can see the three models in the photo below.

RPG Rocket Quiver This pack will hold two fully assembled rockets complete with attached boosters and the flap secured!

RPG Gunner Backpack This pack has four compartments that will hold two rocket main bodies and two separate boosters.

RPG Assistant Gunner Backpack This version holds three rocket main bodies and three boosters.

BHI RPG Packs

Internal configurations vary but regardless of pack model rockets and boosters are secure via a tri-fold flap system and the outer closure relies on the dependable, yet simple staple fastener closure used by the Spanish Army for for over twenty years. A modernized version of the non-mechanical closure used on the US M1956 ammo pouch, you simply pull the tab and it comes open. Additionally, an oil bottle/spare parts pouch is found inside the top flap. In addition to padded shoulder straps the packs all feature sternum and waist belts to help stabilize the load while moving rapidly under fire. They are available in Black, OD Green, Coyote and UCP.

To order visit www.BHIgear.com.

Kifaru’s Outside The Wire Bag

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

It was great to see Kifaru Tactical exhibiting at SHOT Show. In addition to their currently offered products, Kifaru was quite bold about showing off their prototype Outside The Wire bag. Mel had told me about the concept over the phone a few months ago and I immediately thought of an old school doctor’s bag. Sure enough, when I saw it in person visions of Doc Adams from TV’s “Gunsmoke” immediately came to mind.

Kifaru Tactical's Outside The Wire bag

The advantages are obvious. It’s dimensions are perfect and a lot of work went into getting them right. It will also stand on its own without fall over whether empty or full. Additionally, the stiffened flaps open and close with ease and features dual, stowable handles. Finally, it is large enough so that you can see into it to find what you are looking for.

The Kifaru Koala

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Patrick Smith, owner of Kifaru was kind enough to give us a quick, impromptu demonstration of the new Koala. It is extremely versatile, allowing the wearer to rapidly access a handgun yet retain the outward appearance of just another hiker or man on the street.

BAE to Produce Medium Ruck Prototypes

Monday, January 11th, 2010

On Friday, 8 January, 2010 Natick awarded BAE Systems a Firm fixed Price Purchase Order for 344 Medium Rucksacks. The Medium Rucksacks will be tested in February and march at Fort Bragg, North Carolina to determine if the design is sound and which of three prototype frames will be fielded along with the new bags. About 100 of each design are intended for testing.

EMILE Pack

Monday, January 11th, 2010

The Enhanced Modular Integrated Loadcarrying Equipment (EMILE) pack from Excalibur Products Group is an internal frame military pack which relies on dual aluminum internal stays and features thermomoulded lumbar pad, back pad, waist belt and shoulder straps.

Enhanced Modular Integrated Loadcarrying Equipment EMILE Assault Pack and Sustainment Pouch as Waist Pack

EMILE features a top mounted, removable assault pack and two removable sustainment pouches. One of these converts to a waist pack and the assault pack contours to the shape of the body when worn alone. The main bag is divided and features a separate sleep system compartment which can be zipped open to make one large bag. The ruck also features a removable rain cover with center zipper to ease access.

In total EMILE accommodates 8032 cubic inches broken down as follows: The main bag is 4032 cubic inches with an extra 1200 cubic inches in the sleeping bag compartment. The assault pack is 1800 cubic inches and each of the sustainment pouches are 500 cubic inches each. It is available in MultiCam, UCP, Coyote Brown, AF Digital Tigerstripe, Digital Woodland, Digital Desert, Foliage Green, and Black.

For more information be sure to visit www.excaliburproductsgroup.com.

PRC-117G Assault Bag from Mayflower

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Mayflower AN/PRC-117G Assault BagSomehow this baby slipped below our RADAR but it is definitely worth taking a look at if you are fortunate enough to be issued the Harris AN/PRC-117G but are saddled with the issue bag. It is designed to be worn with the removable shoulder straps or attached directly to the back of armor or load bearing vest with the integrated PALS compatible attachment system. Additionally, the body features PALS webbing so that radio accessories can be attached to the bag.

Mayflower AN/PRC-117G Assault Bag - Side View

The PRC-117G Assault Bag is available in Black, Coyote, Ranger Green, UCP, and MultiCam from Mayflower.

The Koala: Coming Soon from Kifaru Tactical

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

Developed based on a Kifaru message board poster who “envisioned a pouch carried on the chest that you could easily and quickly access a handgun from” the Koala was born.

Koala Interior

The design is very versatile. Here is a list of the carry options:
Koala Worn-Chest carry with an X-Harness and belly strap.
-Shoulder carry with a shoulder sling or contoured shoulder strap.
-Backpack with shoulder straps and waist strap with a dual adjust buckle.
-Lumbar pack with new Omni/Lumbar waistbelt
-Chest carry with a backpack using the new Lift-Kit
-Malice clipped onto a pack
-Malice clipped onto armor or a plate carrier

This article is really just an introduction. For a full synopsis make sure to visit Kifaru’s forum. The Koala will be available soon from Kifaru Tactical.

The Plastic Rucksack Letter

Sunday, December 27th, 2009

This letter is priceless. Take a moment to read through it.

Letter to SefDef

It seems as though members of Congress have taken to talking to any old yahoo they can round up when they are on “fact finding” trips to exotic locales. It doesn’t seem to matter if any of what said yahoo complains about makes any sense.

Nothing like talking to GIs who have no idea what they are talking about. Of course the Soldiers were referring to the MOLLE rucksack. Somehow, the “plastic” frame is now an entire rucksack with matching plastic straps. Newsflash, I had the same problems with my arms and hands falling asleep back in the bad old days before we had high tech “plastic” rucksacks. The ALICE pack, affectionately known as the “big green tick” would put your arms to sleep just the same. This has much more to do with the load and a lot less to do with the pack.

Camo issues? Hello! The Army is knee deep in it. How about you give them a chance to at least bust their own time line before calling them out?

I am still scratching my head over the comments about needing a larger clothing allowance. I was under the impression that the Army is issuing FR ACUs to deployed troops for free. I guess the Overseas COLA isn’t enough to cover beer these days in Vincenza.

Interestingly, the letter wants to know what the Army is doing to “procure a superior replacement rifle, such as those used by our Special Operations forces (sic).” Do they mean like the SCAR? Excuse me while I guffaw. What wonder weapon are they talking about exactly?

Ok, so what do we have here? GIs want MultiCam. GIs hate their “plastic” rucksacks. GIs hate the M4 and want SOF weapons. GIs want even more of a clothing allowance (aka beer money). Hell, they could have found all of that out by spending five minutes on an internet message board.

Leadership and training are going to fix some of these issues long before the material developer can intercede. Until that happen clean your weapons and employ them properly, take a serious look at your load and accept some risk to lighten it, and use basic soldier skills to camouflage yourself and your equipment.

The New Army Medium Rucksack

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

The Army is indeed working a new Medium Rucksack. However, despite reports to the contrary it is still in development and will be, at least at this point a Government design.

The Army envisions a pack of about 3400 cubic inches with a load capacity of about 60 pounds. Prototypes have already been produced based on an in-depth Soldier load analysis conducted over the Summer and information obtained by Soldier Systems Daily indicates that they are pretty satisfied with the bag. What is left is the frame, a problem that also plagues the Marine Corps in their on-again-off-again quest for a new pack. As long as our personnel are wearing armor the interface between man and load is problematic due to the introduction of the armor plate on the back of the wearer. Add to this an external hydration bladder and the load begins to teeter back and forth along the long axis of the back. This is why it is so important that they concentrate on this interface.

Interestingly, yesterday when we mused what type of frame the new pack would have we were right on all counts. Three different frame designs will be tested including an external frame based on the current MOLLE frame yet smaller than even the 1606 Airborne frame, an “internal” frame consisting of foam stiffening, and a hybrid design designed in-house at Natick. Regardless of frame it will have a very minimal waistbelt, probably consisting solely of 1.5 inch nylon webbing and a side-release buckle. This is much akin the waistbelts found on the old ALICE pack. Additionally, the packs will be manufactured from 1000D due to durability concerns.

One hundred test units of each frame style will be produced and tested at Fort Bragg in February and March. No photos have been released of the pack bag nor of any of the frame designs although I have a suspicion that at least the bag will look something like the SOF Assault Pack.

It is important to note that the Army desires that the new Large Airborne Assault Pack and the Medium Rucksack turn out to be the same pack but the requirements are currently quite different. For example, the sizes are somewhat different and the airborne community requires that the air items be built into the assault packs design. Unless acquisition officials are able to reconcile the two requirements they will remain separate.

There is only one Sources Sought Notice on the street and that is for the Large Airborne Assault Pack. The Army has not solicited any industry input for its Medium Rucksack project, at least yet.

Back to the Future - Rucksack Style

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

Large MOLLE RuckMilitary.com’s Defense Tech Blog just published a teaser for an article on a new “Medium” pack for use in Afghanistan. The intent is to provide a pack that fits somewhere in between the current 2000 cubic inch Assault Pack and the 5000 cubic inch Modular Lightweight Load carrying Equipment (MOLLE) Rucksack. Interestingly, the initial variant of the current MOLLE pack was of Medium size and only after a couple of years did the Army change out to the current Large pack.MOLLE Assault PackIn fact, the Large MOLLE ruck was only developed to support light forces like the 10th Mountain Division and there was a great deal of hand wringing over whether it would be appropriate to replace the Medium on general issue. It can be denoted from the earlier version by the addition of a halfmoon zippered compartment on the bottom which is used to carry the sleep system rather than a separate bag.

MOLLE Rucksack with Original Pack As you can see from this photo (actually an early medical version issued to Navy Corpsman supporting the Marines), the original pack was much smaller but fell in line with the modularity of the overall system. It could be used in conjunction with a variety of additional options including the side mounted sustainment pouches as well as the sleeping bag carrier. Later, with the advent of the Ranger variant of MOLLE a waist pack was added to the mix. When MOLLE was initially envisioned the concept was to provide a variety of modules that the user could add or subtract in order to mission tailor the load. There was concern about devloping a pack that could overload the wearer.

The US military used the All-purpose Individual Lightweight Carrying Equipment (ALICE) system up until the late 1990s which included medium as well as large packs. Both fit on a tubular metal frame so the concept of offering several pack options is nothing new. It seems that more and more often, the Army is learning that the Soldier needs several options in his “toolbox”. For example, SOCOM selected an entire suite of pack sizes for their troops.

Medium ALICE Pack Large ALICE Pack

Mystery Ranch SATLOne possible solution is the Mystery Ranch SATL which is issued to SOCOM and integrates MR’s proprietary Bolster Ventilation and Stability (BVS) system which was designed to increase the stability of the pack over body armor. Consider the SATL a daypack on steroids with external pockets to help compartmentalize gear. Its internal frame design helps stabilize teh load yet keep the pack’s weight to a minimum.

As you can see, over time the US has provided multiple pack sizes to its troops. It will be interesting to see how this “new” requirement pans out; whether it is an internal frame, external frame, or a frameless pack and whether it will be adopted into the MOLLE program of record.