T3 will be displaying along with Darley Defense in booth #7003 at SHOT Show.
During a trip to San Diego last year I stopped by their shop on NAB Coronado and picked up a couple of items. Quality is good and prices are reasonable. For those of you who can’t make it to SHOT Show, check out their catalog at t3gear.net/flip6/My%20Project%203/.
Shown at yesterday’s Darley Days, this Rapid Deployable Shelter from Eureka! turned some heads.
Designed to interface with TEMPER tents, the feature that is drawing folks to the RDS is its articulated unique frame system. It kind of reminds me of those mobile vestibules many use for picnics. You stretch the frame out and use pins to keep it from collapsing.
What’s really neat about it is that you don’t have to lift parts up into the air and held them in place while you get everything lined up.
The RDS also features replaceable windows and the skin is made from a PVC coated, high tenacity polyester fabric.
Darley Defense is showcasing a wide variety of products, but these caught my eye.
Manufactured by Archangel Armor, the Load Bearing Belt is a slimline design with soft loop and Cobra buckle, it’s rated to 3,000 lbs.
The Quickbelt is for garrison wear or for those that travel through security a lot.
Available For unit and agency as well as individual sales from www.darleydefense.com.
This video was posted on Tactical Fanboy after being shot during the recent Darley Days at Joint Base Lewis McChord.
Here, Smith Optics Elite Division’s Chris Cummings goes over the Boogie Regulator goggle.
Darley Defense Day has kicked off at Joint Base Lewis McCord. SSD is on site and will be touring the vendor show with Duffy Cavanaugh, the local Darley representative and POC. There are 30+ manufacturers here now, including WT Tactical, Benchmade Knives, Leupold, Creative Tent International, etc.
Duffy describes the event as an …”An intimate show typically for a brigade to talk one on one with SMEs of the equipment in question and let them talk to the people behind the gear they use (or would potentially like to use). This show was hosted by 1SFG and we wound up inviting a number of SOF units and others. We’ve got 2/75, 19th and 20th group, STS from McCord…4/2 has some folks here, because of the venue any command group or logistics staff were invited. Thing that’s really good is we get to have vendors in a more personal setting…especially let’s folks here get a look at things before SPECOPS West…”
The show is over at the 1SFG Fitness Facility and is open to all military personnel. Come by if you have a minute. Questions, e-mail Duffy from Darley Defense at duffy(at)darleydefense.com.
The show runs until 1600 with a reception after.
Thirteen centuries ago or so, JÄbir ibn HayyÄn distilled water to purify it. Ten centuries ago, Avicenna espoused the straining of water through a cloth, or boiling it (or both) to make it safe to drink. Four centuries ago, Sir Francis Bacon published the results of numerous experiments on percolation, boiling and distillation for the purification of drinking water. Three centuries ago, Joseph Amy was granted a patent for a water filter design. Approximately one century ago, Maj. (later BG) Carl Darnall devised a chlorination system for water supplies, three years after which Maj. (later Col.) William Lyster invented the ‘Lyster Bag’ for the chlorination of drinking water in the field.
Three weeks ago, Darley Defense showed us an in-line filter system for a “reservoir backpack†style hydration system, complete with a small, lightweight pressure pump.
It was definitely one of those forehead-slapping moments. We at Breach-Bang-Clear think it’s one of the coolest things to come down the pike since peanut butter, the multi-tool and x-ray glasses. This thing is going to become as common and ubiquitous as the hydration systems themselves. (If you’re as old as we are, you remember what it was like when CamelBaks first came out, and how kewl they were compared to the standard one-quart canteens we used to lug around on our TA-50 or 782 Gear). This system will fit them all, CamelBak, Hydrapak, Platypus, Coleman or any of the others.
This filter system effectively marries up pieces of equipment already in use to make a unique piece of kit that capitalizes on the strengths of both. It utilizes filters already in use by the British Army and Royal Air Force (Pure Hydration) and a pressure/pump system by Ogwa. The prototypes we saw were less than a month old, but a lot of people have already shown a lot of interest in it.
“I’ve shown it to USASOC and Natick, and they both think highly of it,†said TJ Gilroy (he’s the manager of Darley’s Defense Division, and the one developed this as-yet-unnamed system). “There’s also an ODA from an SFG that’s deploying with them now, but we haven’t gotten any formal AARs yet.â€
You see, the problem with any in-line filter is that it takes a certain amount of pressure to get water through it, applied by the user through the mouthpiece. To adequately draw filtered water through a CamelBak or similar line before, you had to generate the kind of suction normally found only in Olympic swimmers and dancers at Secrets Cabaret outside Ft. Bragg.
With this Darley system, you can put the filter into any line from an extant hydration system, along with a simple baffled pressure pump, in just a few seconds. The 2-stage carbon block and iodine impregnation doesn’t just purify the water, it filters it at the same time—you’ve got Iodinated resin beads between filters, so not only does it kill bacteria and whatnot, you wind up with fresh-tasting water (not like the nastiness we used to have to drink with those tablets out of the WATER PURIFICATION, INDIVIDUAL, IODINE bottles once found on the side of canteen pouches).
It takes 3 psi to pull water through the filter—the pump they’re using goes to about 10 psi, which is more than enough to pull water through it as fast as a user can drink. In fact, it puts out a pretty good push (like if you’re a medic and you need to rinse a wound, for instance, though not enough to beat a SuperSoaker in a straight up fight).
The filter lasts a hundred gallons and it has a positive fail system in it. Once you can no longer pull water through it, the filter is no longer any good and needs to be replaced. They are testing this filter to the NSF 248 Protocol, which in addition to sounding like a cool plot device in a Bourne movie is a measure of the filter’s efficacy.
Think about the advantages to this. It decreases the need to worry about potable water by a unit in the field by an order of magnitude. Running FID operations in Indonesia, or hunting AQ in the Horn of Africa? You can literally just scoop water up from a local source, close the reservoir and get back to work. This filter, which takes up less space then the main course of an MRE, lasts for a hundred gallons—you could keep an ODA in fresh water for months with less than the cargo space available in the back of a cut-vee.
It’s got some advantages to high mountain work too—if your lungs are under duress at altitude, like high in the amounts of Afghanistan or wherever, any additional stress on your lungs is a Bad Thing. This filter obviates that concern.
The system will be distributed by Darley on large scale contracts, not sure how/where they will retail them at the “individual†level, but if they do you can bet we’ll have them at Breach-Bang-Clear (or TJ will be sportin’ bruises and a haunted look). Seriously though, they are still actively looking for people that might be interested in it and may be willing to put some input to it. If you or your unit is interested, contact TJ Gilroy of the Darley Defense Division, www.DarleyDefense.com, tjgilroy@darley.com or 630-735-3538.
Tell him the Mad Duo sent you, and he still owes us lunch money.
If there’s a piece of kit you want looked at or evaluated, dropped us a line. We’ve done it for as varied a list of companies as 5.11 Tactical, Numa Optics, Tactical Duostock, Wellco Boots, the Weyland-Yutani Defense Industries Division and most recently the Umbrella Corporation, and are always interested in looking at new gear.
If you have any ideas for us to review, drop us a line at BreachBangClear.com or FaceBook.com/MadDuo (unless you’re going to complain about our opinions, writing style or philosophy in which case you’d be better off not wasting your time). MAD DUO OUT!
The Mad Duo attended Darley Defense Day held by Darley Defense near Ft. Polk last week and they promised us a couple of reviews. The first review is the Rifleman’s Tool, designed by none other than Walter “Blackie†Collins and coming to the fighting public via Tactical International. So, without further ado, here is their review.
We’re working on a full-blown, in-depth review right now but thought we’d give you the low-down quick and dirty now: this knife is COOL, and it really is more than just a knife—it’s a tool that may be the coolest thing that’s come along (at least in the category of lethal or hard-working cutlery) since the first multi-tool. Now, it’s not a Swiss Army Knife with a vast array of nifty gadgets, so don’t expect that. This piece of kit chooses a few things to do, specifically (as the name implies) for the rifleman, and it does it well.
The Rifleman’s Tool auto-deploys a strong 4†tanto style blade (non-auto versions coming), with the inestimable Mr. Collins’ signature on the side. Inside the body of the knife are several extremely useful implements for a rifle-shooter (particularly if the shooter is also an emergency responder). There’s a front sight adjustment tool, an aluminum shell extractor designed to avoid damage to the locking lugs on the M4 (you’ve seen it happen when someone grabs a multi-tool or a pair of pliers to do it), and a fire-starter that can also be used on the take-down pins to disassemble the weapon. All of these latter tools are accessed by unscrewing the threaded carbide glass-breaking pieces at the end of the knife.
(Sorry about the pictures: our minion was distracted and wasn’t doing such great work with the camera.)
The only thing some people might not like is going to be the price—we’ve seen it as high as nearly $400, averaging about $350 depending upon the retailer. Now, that’s actually not a bad price for a tool of this quality and potential usefulness, but you’re going to have to wrap yourself around the fact that you get what you pay for. This may also be the time you need to use the “yeah but look how many pairs of shoes you have!†argument with Household-6 in order to justify the expense. Note: Going Loud Tactical Outfitters carries the Rifleman’s Tool and is apparently running a special for a little while; enter SoldierSystems as a coupon code at checkout for 15% off the Rifleman’s Tool ($250.00 retail at Going Loud)…we’re not sure how long it’s supposed to last.
The Rifleman’s Tool is also available at Tactical International ($450.00) and DPMS Inc. ($378.00). Rumor has it that Darley Defense may also be offering the tool, but as of this date we couldn’t confirm that.
If you’d like to read a little more about it, Police Magazine did a review here. Otherwise, check back here because there is definitely more to follow!
If you have any ideas for us to review or discuss, drop us a line at Breach-Bang-Clear or FaceBook.com/MadDuo; unless you’re going to complain about our opinions, writing style or philosophy (or you’re a sissy) in which case don’t bother. We’ve got upcoming articles on a half a dozen really cool new pieces of kit and a picture of when we were coined by GW of Tactical Tailor, so it would behoove you to PAY ATTENTION.
MAD DUO OUT!
