Now THAT is a squared away rack! That poncho liner is the greatest invention in the world but I still don’t understand why it doesn’t have a head hole. I LOVE the ALICE packs. I once had one get blown off an LAV-AT near AL Qaim Iraq as a Marine Infantryman (0352/51). Everything I owned was Swiss cheese. Ruck shackled on the left front headlight cluster and that’s the tire that hit the mine. It blew that tire off and it made the brake drum look like the hammer of Thor had smashed it flat. Plus it flattened four other wheels and punctured a differential among other things. This was right when the Corps kept switching packs every single year. From the Alice in MCRD to the MOLEE then the ILBE or whatever that abortion was. I always just deployed with the ALICE and never had any regrets. It was just a hands down better design. In LAR we needed the metal pack frame to shackle onto the hulls. Even then occasionally you would “throw” or otherwise manage to rip the packs off. But that was the greatest strength of the Alice. It was so modular that you could do anything and if you did manage to really damage it… you could sew or just replace and swap our almost all of it and you were off and running again. I remember using just the frame and straps to haul ammo cans or jerry cans of POL or water using just the frame and waist pad and straps and a small length of 550 cord for lashing. That mine strike pack… i still have it and if I wanted I could have sewn it up and used it. I had a “combat loss” for that ruck… which was on paper the stuff I was issued from the CIF… so… I got to keep all the stuff I left at home for that deployment plus the divisions supply gave me a whole bunch of stuff they didn’t even try to get back… lol. I recently just bought this new Marine Ruck from the surplus store. So far I like it. It’s not overly complex. There is a lot of weight in miscelaneous PALS webbing sewn over every inch but I suppose that make it more customizable for various users. I ruck and carry every single piece of food I consume or beverage I drink… I have for years. It really isn’t that hard to get close to the breaking point of this old infantryman with bags of potatos and gallons of milk and OJ and whatever else. When you get close to that 80+ lb range… it becomes misery. It really doesn’t matter what the ruck is from my experience. When you do any substantial distance you soon realize how awesome the internal combustion engine is. Like a Weapons Company march carrying the TOW systems (minus ammo) for a nice 15 K up the Mountains. It’s an acquired misery that only a few will ever really truly know and love or accept. Like the Corps in General. CHEERS and Semper Fi
Ended up with with what I’m assuming is an early version with a molle belt around the waist and some Alice style adjustment straps in the back. I also acquired molle to Alice adapter plates. I centered the adapter plates in the back and attached an Alice buttpack, using the aforementioned FLIC adjustment straps to support the buttpack keeping it from flopping backwards. I then flanked the buttpack with two molle Nalgene water bottle carriers. I was trying to make a civilian survival vest and the setup worked okay for that purpose, but the front could certainly be adapted to a magazine carrying load. I had an excess number of molle frag grenade pouches. They will hold a Vortex Laser rangefinder, but the dust intrusion sucked so I switched out for a zipper pouch. I also found that a frag grenade pouch fits exactly two cans of Copenhagen, but ya’ll probably figured that out already. During testing I thought the width of the vest negated the need for padded shoulders, but in use it got heavy and everything went back in an Alice pack (molle straps and waist belt).
Awesome job! I see everyone replacing their zipper pull with paracord for noise. All the buckle clicks Velcro pulls and gear rattling seems like zipper pull would be the least of someone’s worries. Not being negative just trying to see what I’m missing
Generally speaking everything should be as noise-proofed as possible. Buckles can be clipped and unclipped silently, and I personally keep most of my pouches either with no velcro or install velcro silencers. The obvious exception being magazines, grenades and signaling ordnance. If I have to reach for those, I'm not worried about noise anymore. Thanks for watching.
USMC Vet we are issued these. When I got out I grabbed a few to have around the house never turned one into a chest rig k will be doing this but honestly I’ve never had an issues with adjusting or just running it as a plain ol LBE vest. Great gear inexpensive and tough as nails. You can grab the drag handle and drag a 180 lbs dood with easy love cheap inexpensive milsurp gear like this everyone who is a “minuteman” type should have one or even a few of these they are super modular I have kits to make DMR setups, regular AR-15 setups and shotgun loads hell I even have a “squad lead” setup that k just use to run my beretta m9 with extra admin pouches
So you are firmly in the "Can't save the world if you aren't color coordinated" camp huh? LOL I can see the usefulness of this mod but it also has some downsides. You loose the weight of canteens/butt pack on the rear counter balancing the weight of mags/ammo in front.
I got a KRYDEX H-Harness kit with back strap and replacement Fastex buckles off of Amazon for like $20. Looks exactly like the Spiritus Systems harness kit.
Haley strategic MP2 mag inserts work great, just tuck thr nylon flaps inside and push the inserts in. Come in packs of 4, perfect for me. I'm planning on running 4 mags in the middle and extraneous items on the outer 4 pouches.
I know the ice plate wasn't around 3 years ago, but I run the FILBE pack's main bag on a tactical tailor MALICE frame and that gives me room to run a Qore Performance Iceplate (1.5L hard case for water that matches the profile of a medium ESAPI) integrated between the rails on the frame so I have water that won't burst close to my body that's gonna help cool my body if I fill it with cold water/freeze it or heat my body if I fill it with hot water
I'm doing something similar right now, but am gonna go a bit further with the harness and sew new, wider-set loops on the front. They're too close together, and an inch or two closer together than industry standard for clipping onto PCs. Setting them a bit wider will keep the straps out of my neck, I hope.
