Each year, the VA bears the long-term cost of joint injuries sustained in service, while investment in lighter load carriage systems remains limited. The weight carried by Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen doesn’t just impact performance in the moment—it reduces mobility, increases fatigue, and raises the risk of injury. Over time, that burden follows them home, affecting quality of life long after their service ends.
When troops are required to carry outdated government-designed gear instead of lighter Commercially-developed innovation, it not only decreases their lethality and survivability during combat operations but also drastically reduces their quality of life after they’ve served to protect our freedom. We believe that it is cheaper to upgrade to lighter equipment than to buy joint replacements.
This 2021 article from ScienceDirect stated that heavy loads “impact the biomechanics of human gait […] increasing the risk of musculoskeletal injury.” A handful of top-tier load carriage manufacturers focused on creating lighter gear but lighter kit is only practical if it holds up to combat use. A pouch or a lighter attachment system that saves weight but fails under field conditions is worse than useless, it’s a liability. This is why the material used to build Blue Force Gear’s patented Helium Whisper is as important as the design itself.
Blue Force Gear (“BFG”) utilizes their proprietary ULTRACOMP high-performance fabric facing laminate on their revolutionary MOLLE attachment system. ULTRACOMP is deceivingly thin, but its performance under testing tells the real story. ULTRACOMP exceeds the durability of 1000D Cordura (the gold standard fabric in military load carriage) in both tear and abrasion resistance. Tested to ASTM 3884, ULTRACOMP survived more than 8,000 cycles on a 50-gram Taber abrasion test without failure.
ULTRACOMP is self-extinguishing with no melt and no drip properties and antimicrobial, so bacteria and fungus aren’t an issue. It’s also hydrophobic, meaning it won’t absorb water (more on this in a future article). This is not a material that was chosen because it was light enough. It was chosen because it outperforms the alternatives across every metric that matters in the field and empowers lighter designs by replace both fabric and webbing through innovative designs.
The weight savings Helium Whisper delivers, as much as 50%percent over legacy MOLLE pouch equivalents, come without any compromise to the durability warfighters depend on. The modern warfighter is already carrying an unsustainable load. Saving their knees and backs cannot come at the cost of gear reliability. ULTRACOMP ensures it doesn’t have to. Superior material, superior design, superior performance – at a fraction of the weight.
To learn more about how your unit can increase lethality and survivability and drastically reduce load carriage weight by upgrading to Helium Whisper, contact the BFG Military Department or visit BlueForceGear.com.
