Good golly, Miss MOLLE!
What’s the deal with M
OLLE gear?
Recently MOLLE has become to tactical fashion what modular rails are to AR15s. They’re everywhere. Vests, holsters, body armor, sheathes, bags, tactical tomahawks, and a Christmas stocking that makes me weep for humanity. You might have some and not even know it. Take a look at that “tacticool” rifle case you bought for your AR15. Does it have a bunch of nylon loops sewn into it about an inch-and-a-half wide? Congratulations, you have a place to strap frag pouches.
MOLLE stands for MOdular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment, and you pronounce it like the girl’s name, “Molly.” Basically, it’s a series of rows of heavy-duty nylon sewn into bags, tactical vests and body armor, and it allows a person to customize where they attach and store their gear. So, for instance, if you’re a left-hander, you want your magazines stowed somewhere near your right hand. You just loop the straps of your mag pouches through the loops on the right side your vest and voila, convenience!
I learned the advantages of MOLLE gear during my deployment in 2007. When I was in Afghanistan, I was a Fobbit for pretty much 90 percent of the time, but I was like the Bilbo Baggins of Fobbits. Every so often, while enjoying my eggs and bacon at the DFAC, some old guy everyone in Fobbiton was afraid of (because he was a master sergeant, not a wizard) would make me saddle up and go outside the wire with some dwarves from the 82nd Airborne.
The greatest adventure...is what lies ahead…
Don’t fall behind… ’cause we’ll leave you for dead…
Seriously, don’t go to A-Stan if you can at all help it.
Anyway, my body armor had PALS (Pouch Attachment Ladder System) webbing for MOLLE gear, and getting geared up to go outside taught me a few things about MOLLE.
1. Less is more. Body armor is heavy, so why are you going to make it heavier with crap you don’t need? Just because you have seven acres of webbing on your gear doesn’t mean you have to use it all.
2. Experiment with it. Just because it looks like you can reach something doesn’t mean you’ll be able to when you put it on. Next thing you know you’re spinning around in a circle like a dog chasing its tail trying to undo the snaps on your canteen pouch.
3. An M4 magazine pouch will hold three 30-round magazines or one canned beverage. A frag pouch will hold either a back-up point-and-shoot camera or a wide-angle lens for a Nikon D2x. I don’t know how many grenades it’ll hold. I don’t mess with that stuff. They explode and in all honesty… F that.
4. Carabiners are a good way to turn your rifle’s sling into a lanyard. Just connect the two to your armor or vest and you’re good to go.
As far as civilian use goes, I’ve never seen a need for it, hence why I think of it as more a fashion thing than anything else. If they’re on your rifle soft case, you can attach extra mag pouches to them. If you have a tactical vest for emergency bug-out situations, they’ll come in handy then.
If, however, you’re just a Fobbit like me, they make great places to hold beer and snacks.
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