Military vs Civilian Kit - Belt, Plate & Carrier!!!

What's up guys, it's Daylen and Gabriel and today we're going to be going over gear and the things that we've learned in our military career over the years. I think the first thing that I want to talk about is belts, just because more prominently you're going to be wearing a belt, right? I'll get into mine, things that I have on it and why I run it the way I do. Our belts are set up a little differently. This is my belt. I have ran this belt for roughly two and a half, three years-ish. This is the front of the belt. This is a core belt. I do love core. I don't think I'll ever swap between belts. I like the rigidness. I like how stiff it is and they're insanely durable and there's so much real estate on this belt that I just can't see myself running anything different left to right. I do have a belt extension hider. This is from Estac. I do like this because whenever you have a belt and you're running things just like this and it's flapping and flying in the wind, it tends to get caught on things and I have noticed that. So, me being able to run this, I'm able to tuck it, stow it away and it's not in the way of anything. Also, it will add extra molly panel on it for me to do whatever I need to do to it. I keep it pretty slicked right there. I do run one pistol mag in the front. This is my speed mag. So, in any situation where I do need to change that mag really quickly, I'll instantly go to this first one. Then, I also am running two more on the side. I prominently run a lot more pistol mags on my belt just because I don't run a lot on my kit. I don't care to run a lot of pistol mags on my kit. Gear is 100% personal. I mean, there's rights, there's wrongs, but at the end of the day, it's whatever you're comfortable with. I mean, if you're comfortable with pistol mags all the way around, run it, man. If that's what you like, do it. I run three on my belt because I don't prominently run them on my plate carrier. I do run one rifle mag on my belt because I prominently run rifle mags on my plate carrier. These are all S-TAC. I love the elastic. Some people like tacos. Some people like the fold over Velcro, whatever. I like these elastics. I've never had an issue. I've never had a mag fall out. They still keep their stretchiness and rigidity over the course of the years. To my mini IFAK in the back, this is from Wilder Tactical. For a while, I searched and searched and tried to find a super small compact rear mounted IFAK for the belt system. I think I've been through maybe three or four different brands of them. I ended up finding Wilder. It's super small and it's compact. It was just what I was looking for. I'm running minimum things in here. Bowling chest seal, combat gauze, packing gauze, and burnproof dressing. That's pretty much all that I run on the rear of my belt. I would run a little more med on my IFAK. Coming around to the other side, I do have the core drop leg plate. I do prefer these just because they're a lot more slim line and they're super lightweight. I don't have a big shroud covering my leg like the Safari Lands will. Coming around to the front, I do run a tourniquet on my front. This is just an elastic pouch. It will never come out unless I pull on it. Now, I have easy access to my tourniquet. I also run a carabiner here on the front. This is mainly for holding my gloves or holding my chem lights. I do recommend running a carabiner or some kind of loop attachment. Like I said, at the end of the day, it's 100% personal preference. This is my belt. We're going to go ahead and show you guys another belt setup. Gabe? I wish I had brought a chem light bundle. I really had one here the other day just because if you don't know what that is, let us know. I'll actually show you how to make one. You'll see Daylen. His belt is more towards the range aspect of just kind of everything he needs. This is more of a work belt. I'm not going to lie. You're going to notice some stark differences between the two. Let's start with the base. I'm using a Ferro bison belt. This is no longer made. Now, it's been replaced by the Bora belt. Very similar belt. Great system. You're going to notice I'm not going to have anything on the front, right? Besides these carabiners, I keep my front super flat. I'm able to tighten this down to my body. Not that tight, obviously. The main reason for that is I like the ability to be able to lay down comfortably. If I do need to go into the prone position, which is more often than you would at the range, being able to lay down flat is super important for me to do it for a certain period of time to be comfortable. I'm actually also running the S-TACs. These are the standard with the hard inserts. I can't remember the name of them, but they're great. I ran them for a minute. They have really good retention. These are new inserts because I wore my other ones out. It takes a little bit to break in, flip it upside down, and it will not go anywhere. The next ones I have are my rifle mags. These are high-speed gear. This is their double mag folder. One good thing about these, as they wear out, you're able to tighten your mag pouch down so you can retain those mags better. This is more of if I'm going somewhere for a long time and I want the ability to carry more mags. If I'm out somewhere for two, three weeks, you're going to want more mags. I'll run this. I don't walk with this all day, every day. Usually, I'll have this in my pack or something. Going to my IFAK, this is the oldest thing that I have on this belt. I don't know how old this is. I got this from a buddy. He traded me some food for it whenever he was in a reconnaissance sniper's course. He was like, dude, bring me some food. I'm going to give you my IFAK. I was like, all right. I got this IFAK from him. I don't know where it's been, but it's treated me well. It's jerry-rigged because it's getting to the point where it's falling off. I got bungee cord holding it in. I keep a similar setup in here as him. I have some packing gauze, hemostatic bandage, chest seal. I have a needle D gloves, MPA. I also carry trauma shears and a tourniquet on my rear. Don't have my holster on at the moment because I don't own my holster, but I prefer when I'm using a holster at the range, I prefer the safari land. I have my carabiners for my gloves. New gloves, by the way. Yeah, it's $25 gloves, mainly because I had to burn a hole through my last ones. I have, similar to him, he has the giant carabiner. I have a small carabiner to attach my chem light bundle to. I also have a Cobra buckle. Now you'll see a lot of people with some sort of... This is a ratcheting system on mine. So this is the actual Cobra buckle. They're a phenomenal company. Their buckles are rated, and you'll see this little thing on the Cobra buckle. This is so you can lock into a helicopter or if you're spy lining, I would not spy line off of this. That would be absolutely horrifying, but I'm pretty confident it would save my life. This is not a rated belt. However, these are tested to the same capacity as a rated belt. However, it is not actually rated. So if you were to attach yourself to a helicopter, fall out, and this belt fail, you're not getting any money from whatever organization that you're with because they're going to be like, dude, that's on you. You're dumb. But no, this is a phenomenal belt. Once again, they made the new one, the Bora belt. I haven't gotten to test it out yet, but this is just what I run. This is what I love. I put... My gear is pretty clean, but because I try to keep my gear... He doesn't use his gear, guys. He's just a gear whore. But this is a new belt. I got this one about nine months ago. This is my inner belt. I've used this forever, so it's a little dinged up. This is just a core inner belt. So if you guys don't know how to use an inner belt, I'll take this. Yeah, as you can see, it's just falling off. So we'll go in with it. We'll go into like a normal belt, completely normal belt. So I have my inner installed. That's why I think the bison belt's better. Yeah, well, he's an idiot. So he's stupid. So anyways, there's a way that I've learned to apply a belt perfectly every time, right? And it's to align your holster. So I'll take my belt right here, my right arm, right? And I know where my holster is. I know where I want it on my leg, right? So I'm going to wrap it around, pick it up, right? Take my belt. I'm going to align my holster first, and then I'll align the rest of my belt. That way, I get perfect belt placement every single time. And then I'll go in with my leg strap. One thing that I do like to do because, you know, with gear, you don't like a lot of moving parts. I don't like moving parts. You know, nobody likes moving parts. I like to keep everything slimline. I like to keep everything tucked and good to go. So I'll actually run my gloves right here, right? And then I'll run my belt just like this, right? So now my gloves are tucked. Everything's tucked on me. I can take my firearm, clear, right? And I can run it just how I need to run it. My Turner kit's not in the way. I have easy access to everything. Firearm, right? And the holster, mags. I have easy access to all of this. Mags, mags. I have easy access to my IFAK, right? That is how I run mine. And Gabe will go through and he'll put on his and he'll show you guys how he wears his on the body. So I have two different inner belts here. I have something similar to what he has with his core belt. This is not the belt that comes with this. This is a more structural belt. I kind of run both usually on the looser belt that comes with the Bora belt. But this is similar to what he has. I'm not going to show y'all what this looks on me because you already see a similar belt to that. I'm going to show you this instead. It's kind of a different form of inner belt. So by trade, I'm a machine gunner. As a machine gunner, we carry a lot of weight, including mainly ammo. Ammo weighs a lot. Obviously, our weapon system weighs a lot. So what this is, this is instead of an actual belt loop inner belt, this is a padded inner belt so that I would go on like this and I have straps that will connect kind of like a harness system that will go underneath my plate carrier and hold up more weight. So I could put like some general purpose pouches so I can hold like some 762 links if I'm running a 240 or a 556 links if I'm running a 249, which we don't really run 249s anymore. It would look more like this. This is also, you know, if you don't have belt loops, you can also kind of run this system where I have that padding. You know, I'm not going to get a lot of chafing and it's able to support more weight more comfortably. And especially with those straps, it's going to perform a lot better, be better for my back, better for my hips. Obviously, I don't have my holster on right now. I will retain this strap usually through here. So obviously, prevent all snag hazards we can. And yeah, this is just another form of how you can run a belt. I make sure when I'm putting on my belt, I do it opposite to how he does it. I place my belt, if I'm running an inner belt, I place my IFAK on the bottom, small on my back, and then I will put my belt on. That's just because whenever you're sitting down, if your IFAK is like off to the side like this, you're going to have a miserable time. You're like in a vehicle, you're not going to have a good time. I don't even know why. It's just significantly less comfortable than running it center. And then I align my holster from there. We're going over plates, pretty essential part to your gear. You know, there's people that run plate carriers without plates because they look cool. And then they realize this sucks to wear in general. So either 75% of Marines on a rifle range or So we're going to be going over plates. Don't laugh. Obviously these are the only plates we have at hand. These are military plates, probably. So I want to go over by starting by the brands of plates. The ones that I stand by, the ones that I live by, the ones that I would trust to take a bullet in. I prefer HESCO and Angel Armor. I believe that those two are the best two plate brands in the market right now. HESCO is definitely on top. Then again, like I said, personal opinion, all this stuff is personal. I'm sure we're going to have a 45-year-old Desert Storm veteran in the comments. If you're getting plates though, the only thing that's necessary, NIJ is the certified all plates that you get. So if you're getting a plate that is not NIJ certified, just don't get the plate. It's stupid. You're literally putting your life into these plates and who wants to put their life into something that is literally not even tested? Yeah. Don't get TEMU plates. Don't get steel plates either. I mean, listen, you could run some TEMU plates. If you run TEMU plates- You only run them once. Yeah. Put your suicide note on the inside and we'll be sure to read it when we drag your dead body. These are multi-curve plates. They're called a shooter's cut. That means is there are cutouts for your shoulders, right? For you to shoulder a rifle, for you to move, maneuver, however you need to maneuver when you're wearing that plate carrier. These are 5.5 pounds a piece. I know that HESCO makes a lighter plate. I know that Angel Armor does also as well make a lighter plate. We're talking about personal experience and personal gear experiences coming from a more higher tier community in the Marine Corps was running soft armor over these plates, right? So we would take a soft armor, put it on top and then duct tape it over this plate, level two soft armor. And so what that would do is help prevent spalling. So like if I were to ever get shot, right? You know, I don't have the bullet flying up into my neck, things like that. I mean, obviously it's still possible, but it reduces your chances of having spalling flying to your good body parts. That's also one thing that you want to focus on or think about whenever you're thinking about getting like steel plates, right? This will absorb a round. So you're going to get hit. You're going to get some shrapnel, but for the most part, it's absorbing the round versus a steel plate. You might look at them and be like, oh, they're a little heavier, but they're rated much higher. That does not matter. When a steel plate gets hit, you're going to just have shrapnel just burst everywhere, mainly up into your neck area, into your arms and stuff like that. It's going to be a terrible time. You'd probably wish that you just got shot through the weight in the first place because you're dying anyways, slower. But you know, obviously the goal is not to die. You know what? Run your Amazon plate carriers, run your Airsoft plate carriers, but please invest money into things that are created to save your life. This is not created for you to go on a run. This is not created for you to look cool. This is not created for you to show your friends. This is created to save your life. So put your money into it. If you're going to, I think my personal opinion, if you're going to invest your money into any part of your kit, it should be your armor. Armor and med kit. Yeah, a hundred percent armor and med kit. This is rated for 7.62 black tip. Can it stop a 7.62 black tip? I don't want to find out. They're only meant to stop a certain amount of rounds. So 7.62 black tip or more comparable round 30 out of six, slightly more powerful that it will take like one. Some plates, like I believe Lockheed Martin's plates can, they're- Level fives. Yeah. They're going to take like, they're like four grand a pop and they're going to take like three rounds of that. But we don't want you guys to go out there and buy level four plates and then try and get into a fight with someone who has 7.62 black tips. Because I will tell you that even with around, you know, like you know, a 5.56 if it hits you right, for example, you're going to break some ribs. This is to eliminate penetration on your body, not to stop the round. You're not going to get hit. And then, you know, just, you know, yeah, get back up and tank it and get back in the fight. No, you're going to be on the ground. You're going to be knocked out. Don't do like the Russian guys on YouTube. Yeah. Let's not do that. You know, but we'll go ahead and get into kit. So this is my kit. Some of you may recognize this plate carrier. This is not Beardus, this is not Shaw, Cry, anything like that. This is a Marine Corps issue plate carrier. You know how much I paid for this? Four years of my life and then some. So not technically acquired gear, I promise. Not yet, at least. On my plate carrier, I'm running, this is the Shaw ARC placard. This is the V3. They have a V4 now, which has a lot of better features. This I have triple 5.56. And you can also do a quad 5.56. This is all bungee. So you can, it has a lot of room for expansion. My current buttons attached to my placard. I use a sandwich pouch just so if you ever had one of these plate carriers before, you know, there's like this weird little pouch here that nobody knows what it does. Well, you could put a little sandwich pouch. Map gear is usually what I put in it, but, you know, whatever you really want. So here I have my Agilite dangler. So what I keep in here, I love the Agilite dangler. Shaw actually took some inspiration from Agilite whenever they're making their, I think it's the V4 dangler. On Agilites, you have a, this little flap here where you can keep tourniquets. I keep tourniquets and I also have prepped chemlights to do chemlight halos with. If you don't know what a halo is, it's a chemlight tied to like a string and you can usually like IR, you can do standard chemlights, spin them in the air, makes a big halo. Good for helicopters. It's good for just general signaling. Usually keep supplementary. Holy. Yeah. You never heard this on camera, Tony. A glow belt? Yeah. What a Marine. Oh my God. Ever seen Signal before? Oh yeah. Yeah. Hey guys, he wears this plate carrier because he's road guard. He has to have a glow belt on him, guys. A lot of people use these as IFACs. I have my IFAC on my belt, so I don't use this as an IFAC. I keep different things for storage. I have a Ipro. I keep a QB sleeve. So right now I have the warm formula written out on it for support by fires. I keep an extra pair of trauma shears. I don't really use trauma shears. These are more like everyday shears. I also usually have my own multi-tool in here. And then in the front, I have writing utensils. Obviously got to have that. I keep a glow belt also for signaling. You're going to notice a lot of this is like purpose built. It's for, you know, throwing this on for a quick assault. I do have, I'm going to show you some modifications that I've done to my plate carrier. One thing that me and Rod are both real big on is you make, you get gear, as he was saying earlier, you get gear and you have to make it adapt to you, right? So you're not going to, don't expect that all your gear is going to be perfect. You know, you, I don't, I don't give a, you buy the most expensive Crye Precision. You can buy the most expensive stuff. That doesn't mean it's going to work better for you than somebody who knows how their kit works and as it works with them. So some modifications I have on here is obviously I have my, my actual advanced placard adapter to make these adapters for the front, because mine was just Molle. Obviously my sandwich pouch. This is part of the placard adapter. I have my normal shoulder straps are tucked in, tucked away and cut. The reason that I had, I just saw the tie downs. I have my plate carrier tied tight to my plates. I recommend if you don't have a real form-fitting plate carrier of any type, you'll see like Crye JPCs real form-fitting. The Crye JPCs real form-fitting, you have some that are not, right? It's usually like your stuff that's meant to carry more weight. Like the ABS is a little less form-fitting, I would say. I, I like to keep it tight to my plates. And the reason is whenever I'm shooting, I can get a good shoulder position with my rifle, right? So when I'm in my shooting stance, I have a strong shoulder position, you know, versus if I have a flap of material here, you know, I'm kind of like unstable, you know, don't really know what's going on. And then same thing where like in a night situation, I don't aim down my sights at night. Some people do. I don't, I don't see the point of it, especially when I have mainly when I have an IR device, I'm just low on my IR device and I get, I can actually see that rifle for good control of it. And I'm on my IR device point shoot, you know. I also have my upgraded cummerbunds. So these are BDS tactical cummerbunds. They make a couple different types. I recommend BDS, Axial makes good ones. I like the Spiritus ones. The Spiritus ones are really nice. And these are kind of customized a little bit. Once again, you make the gear work to you. So on these, I have this kind of weird janky bungee system. This is like one eighth inch or 116 on the bungee cord. So it's really easy to flex, which helps a lot with my breathing, but still keeps it, in my opinion, good and strong on my chest. Some people run back panels. I run a water source. You can also put other stuff in here. If you're doing a raid or something like that. A lot of guys run back panels where you'll have like if me and Rod were doing a raid together and I'm first in stack and he's about to breach, he can reach on my back panel, grab a flashbang, you know, show like, Hey, flashing door. Or like he has, if I have breaching devices, I can have breaching devices on my back. Same thing. He can grab a breaching device. Mainly, I'm not running in mountain environments where we're going to be doing a lot of CQB. I'm more like that. I'll steer like out in the wilderness, you know, enjoying nature, you know, little nature walks every day. So this is kind of what works for me, but everything, everybody has a different use purpose. You'll see commonly in like the Russo-Ukrainian war, they'll have kind of how you say and how you wrap soft armor around your plate carrier to avoid that shrapnel from coming up and getting you. I don't like to run hard armor on my side. It's super uncomfortable because there's my movement a lot. A lot of people will get soft armor to go inside. So you keep that flexibility, keep that range of movement, but you're also protected, especially in places where artillery is super high, where you could get hit. And you obviously want to protect as much as you can. It's all, you know, situation dependent, make the gear work to your mission, make the gear work to you. A lot of you guys watching are not going to be running military codependent plate carriers, right? So Savoy obviously has his setup primarily for military because he uses it for military applications. Right. And this is all personal opinion. You I see a lot of guys and they're civilians, right? And they show me your kit. You know, these guys, they have kit for, you know, like prepping reasons. You got to hit the fan apocalypse, whatever. There's a lot of those guys out there and you know, I'm not denying that it could ever happen. It very well could. Right. One of the things that I see a lot that kind of irks me is that they run a triple mag placard. This is not how to look like an operator 101. You know, whenever you're building this plate carrier, this needs to protect you. Okay. So you don't need to look like DJ Shipley. You don't need to look like Robert O'Neill. You don't need to look like these guys. Okay. Because these guys are doing 30 minute force raid missions. Like that's it. Right. So they don't need all that stuff on their plate carrier. So don't be afraid of the weight. Okay. Obviously weight is bad. Right. But don't be afraid of it. Be a man, carry your weight on my personal plate carrier. I run six mags in the front because if anything were to happen to me and I need to leave my house and I need to protect my family, I want to have as much ammo on me as possible. Right. I'm not going to carry 90 rounds on my front chest because I'm not doing force raid missions. So obviously this is more of a military built plate carrier. So you guys will get to see the military aspect of it. But I want to talk to you more about the civilian aspect of it. Right. Carry your ammo. You know, they have multiple placard systems where you can carry anywhere from three to six, uh, mags on your chest. I don't recommend the carry three. I mean, you could, you could be slicked out. You know, another thing you have to think about is going in the prone position. If you feel like you will struggle in the prone position with six mags on your chest, probably better to run three. I just don't like seeing civilian kits that are loaded out and they're not prepared in any kind of situation like that, where I have to go out and scope out a Walmart or I have to go scope out uncharted land, whatever I need, everything I need. So on my personal back panel, I don't run anything. It's completely slicked out because I carry a backpack. Um, so, you know, for hit the fan apocalypse scenario for a civilian defense scenario, you're more than likely going to have a backpack so you can store food, more medical equipment, you know, signaling equipment, map equipment, whatever. Um, and, uh, I don't need anything on my back panel to interfere with my backpack. I like it to be cool, streamlining coast. So most people you'll see, like they make them like the back panels where nine out of 10 times people are making the mistake of like look cool when they're training by themselves for an environment that they're by themselves. And it's like, okay, midway through you're going into, I don't know, get supplies somewheres. Right. How are you going to get to your back panel? That makes no sense, right? Unless you're using the Shaw one where you can like wrap around, which is still like cumbersome, right? Just get a backpack. It's going to do more than what you need. Uh, and it's going to fit the mission set better versus like, I'll have this in my pack and then I'll have like my chest rig, which my chest rig can carry eight max. That's a lot of max. You know what I mean? Versus like, I'll put this on right before an assault. Yeah. Go towards your purpose for your build. You know, don't just look cool. God forbid. But if you were to have to use this play carrier and a self-defense scenario, I promise you the last thing you're worried about is whether you look cool. Middle of a firefight. Nobody's going to look at you and be like, man, that guy looks like DJ Shipley, dude. That guy looks like Rob O'Neill out there. You know, that's not a thing. Make your gear work for you and be prepared. Everything that you might need, chlorine tablets, uh, food, MREs, IFAC, you know, medical equipment, things like that. Pack it on, wear it, be a man, carry your weight. A lot of these bigger YouTubers, like, like the GBRS guys, for example, right. And, you know, they'll go over their gear reviews and, and, you know, they'll talk about these things, but, and people will follow it. But I don't understand because they go over more of a military aspect of it. They're all operators. Yeah. They're all operators when in reality we're not operators, you know? So we need to act like that. You know, we're not doing 32nd force raid missions. You know, we're going to be out in the woods two, three weeks at a time. So you need to act like it and you'd be ready for it. This is a great plate carrier system. One thing that I think he did very well was eliminate moving weight. Right. So like, you know, tying up your, you know, your shoulder pads that are in the way, things like that, right. Streamline everything. Yeah. You want to be completely streamlined, everything coast, everything, you know, it's not hard. You can change your configuration. You know, this is a typical configuration, but I usually do have like a Shawshank radio pouch, right? Some people like Air Force, you see like Air Force special reconnaissance are going to like commonly be running like ATAC and stuff like that. This is very low Sigman. There's something big in the, in the Marine Corps these days is signature management. You don't need an encrypted radio, 99 times out of a hundred. Most people in the military don't even know how to encrypt a radio, except this dude can definitely do it better than me. I'm not even legally able to steal the money. Good for you. I mean, look, if it works for you, run it, you know, and I think that's what the purpose of this video is, is to really connect with more of the civilians and show these guys that, you know, it doesn't take a lot of money to protect yourself. It doesn't take a lot of training, very minimal, slimline training will protect you and your family. Whenever you're actually using your firearm and doing your job and your plate carrier, and you'll learn to change these things, right? Because if you build your plate carrier and it sits in your room in the corner of your room for until something happens and you put it on, now you're in a scenario where you're like, I have three mags, I'm out. So, so please buy your gear. Doesn't need to be crazy expensive. Make it work for you. Train with it and assess from there. I'm also strong. Make sure your gear is comfortable, especially if, you know, it is like a grab and go situation and that's all you're going to have. And you're going to be sleeping in it. You're going to be living in it. You're going to be walking really long times in it. You want to keep your gear tight, make sure things can't just fall out. I'm not going to lie. My IFAK kind of falls out. That's why I have a backup for everything in my pack with me at all times. Think about what you're doing. You know, if you live in a mountainous regions, you probably want to go a little bit lighter because hiking up mountains sucks. Thank you guys for watching. And, uh, this is an open environment. Um, you know, the hate's obviously going to come. But roast us in the comments. Yeah. Roast us in the comments. Tell us what we're doing wrong. I really want more of you in the comments of these videos, especially more knowledgeable people. You know, uh, if you think we're wrong, cool, man, you know, tell us, uh, I'd like to learn. He'd like to learn. Give us tips. Like if you found something, tricks. Yeah, man. Just, you know, uh, uh, we're all learning here and we're all getting better every day. So thank you guys for watching. Uh, please like comment and subscribe and we'll see you guys in the next one.