>>1100815Honestly when I got out of the military I decided to just buy all the shit I was used to using in the field for weeks at a time because I knew exactly how to use it and knew it would work great.
Now I am slowly changing a lot of it out because it weighs a A LOT compared to civilian stuff. I'm not an UL person either.
Though I may need the gear to perform the same for periods of time it does not have to do this over and over again with minimal repair opportunists, cleaning, etc.
Ie: living in a fighting whole for 2 months in Afghanistan and then humping to a """rented""" compound of some local villager and using hte same gear for many more weeks, and ten repeating this type of thing over and over takes a tole on gear and you can't risk it getting fucked up.
But now though I may need that same performance for periods of time, there isn't that same amount of pressure and reliance over long periods of time so a lot of the 'heavy duty' stuff is not necessary For example my current tarp, the same USMC one I used in the infantry, weighs friggin' almost 3 pounds. It is a great tarp and has served very well but it is definite overkill right now.
Also to clarify I am not talking about 'military surplus' old fashioned stuff; for example the ILBE pack I'm using right now is technically just a reasonably priced Arc'Tyrx pack and it is great, I know how to pack it from lots and lots of experience, etc. but I will be changing it out because of the way it is built: to get through deployments to warzones were it will be tossed into trucks, humped around in the desert, taken on and off over and over, etc. then passed on to other infantryman for years and years.
tl;dr Military gear is actually pretty good and especially for veterans who are used to it it can be useful; but I do think that civilian stuff is better in the long run for almost all activities that aren't warfare; and even for warfare it is often better.
