The bane of every old school Command Sergeant Major in the United States Army is seeing a salty Specialist wearing some new fangled piece of kit in the field. Thoughts of the old Army, with ALICE packs and LBV kit all worn exactly the same way are enough to make this senior noncom mourn the loss of professionalism within his beloved Corps of Noncommission Officers. Inevitably that dry piece of toasts’ eyes will narrow, his jaw will set, and he will bound up to that young soldier and demand he get his squad leader.

“Can’t have you wearing your own gear, stud. We are not Special Forces, and this is completely unsat.”

Knowing that he can’t begin to fight the ignorance of this dinosaur, our hero will run off to find his squad leader in hopes that maybe he can ward off this archaic relic of the past.

“I don’t understand why I can’t buy my own gear, it’s not hard to improve on the garbage we are issued,” he thinks to himself.

Finding his squad leader amongst his peers, sipping coffee and talking about some other hobby he pursues outside of Drill (probably bow hunting or whiskey sniffing, all squad leaders are nerds, SGT V), this young Specialist tells him that the CSM came up to him and told him to grab his SL.

“Ah fuck man,” his SL moans. “What did you do?”

“Nothing, Sarn’t! He said something about my gear and mumbled about standards.”

Most of us with some time in the infantry have seen this sort of thing before. SL finds the CSM, CSM tells him he can’t be letting his troopers run amok, that allowing personally owned gear is tantamount to anarchy, blah blah blah. Even as you read this you are reminded of a similar situation, maybe it wasn’t a CSM, maybe it was a 1SG or a CO or whoever. By now, with the proliferation of gear companies out their waiting to separate a soldier from his hard earned cash, this isn’t an uncommon occurrence.

The outcome is usually never in doubt. The average small unit leader can mount a valiant defense against the forces of ignorance, but because of this thing called rank, that defense is in vain. The CSM, or CO, or whoever will get their way regardless of how silly their argument against personal gear is. This is even more common in the National Guard, where senior NCOs can be five to ten years older than their average active duty counterparts, and therefore further away from what is considered cutting edge and far less likely to embrace necessary change. This is applicable to warfighting as well, but I can only write one piece picking on senior NCOs per month, so you’ll have to wait for that critique.

The most common arguments I have heard over the last decade against soldiers using their own gear also happen to be the most shallow. I’m not going to straw-man the arguments against using your own gear, frankly the opponents of personal gear do that themselves.

“The Army issues you all you need.”

“You have better stuff than what I took into Iraq in 2004.”

“If you use your own stuff you won’t match the rest of your unit and will look sloppy”.

Most of us younger NCOs hear this and just roll our eyes because the logic behind these arguments is so inherently flawed that it’s obvious the people making them aren’t using their God given brain to think before they speak, I guess probably because that brain wasn’t issued at any Army CIF facility. If they took a second to consider those arguments, they might make some interesting observations.

First and foremost, all of us know some unlucky Jungleer that got their initial issue from CIF and realized later, often right before some critical task on a drill weekend, that they didn’t have critical PPE, if they had received their initial issue at all. I know of 6 solders in my company short on equipment, and at least 3 that have yet to receive a single piece of kit outside what they got at Basic Training. The notion that the Army issues us with everything we need is frankly absurd, and anyone paying attention knows that.

Second, while crusty ‘ol Jungleer is probably right, what the Army is issuing these days is likely better than what he took to Iraq, that gear is still a decade old in design and getting older by the month. Our helmets, body armor, TAPs, boots, and uniforms are all outdated designs. The gap between what we are issued and what can be found for reasonable prices from a variety of American manufactures is increasing, and we as our nations soldiers are being left behind. The only piece of kit the Army has adopted recently that is likely better than most of its commercial, off the shelf (COTS) competitors is the hot weather uniform. No, not the combat uniform, the hot weathers with the buttons and no zippers. Besides that, most of us are still issued ACU IOTVs from the surge in Iraq, along with helmets that are likely no longer rated for proper ballistic protection because Kevlar has a short service life. Don’t get me started on the TAPS, a good design in 2008 but woefully inadequate in the modern era of quality chest rigs at an affordable price.

The third and arguably most common argument against personally owned gear is that soldiers won’t match each other. This argument would have had legs pre-GWOT when strict uniformity was required. Units published standard operating procedures, because whit-less young privates and incompetent NCOs needed to be told where to put everything from magazines to spare batteries for the L-shaped flashlights. Twenty-one years and a whole lot of collective experience later, uniformity in combat has been refined to a common camouflage pattern and the proper unit patches. The term “shooters preference” is most commonly used to denote that the shooters on the ground should determine where they should be carrying their combat load, not some battalion commander or CSM that is no longer running and gunning with the lads in the field.

Now, let’s be honest; there is at least one decent argument to be made for only using issued kit.

In units that allow soldiers to use their own gear, everyone knows that one PFC that ordered all his gear off Wish.com, from his hard-knuckle gloves to his four admin pouches (seriously, is he carrying his virginity in there? SGT V). This is the kid that gives everyone else who spends a couple extra bucks on good gear a bad name, partially because he buys China-tier gear that falls apart and doesn’t even know how to use it anyhow. These are most often the soldiers a senior Jungleer NCO will point out as the reason why we can’t have nice things, as if one or two soldiers not being corrected by their leadership is a good enough reason to deny the rest of us the ability to choose our own kit.

As Noncommissioned Officers in one of the most decorated National Guard brigades in the country, it is our job to make sure our soldiers have everything they need to accomplish the mission. Part of that responsibility, is and should always be, making sure that what our soldiers take out into the field is good quality and in good order. As leaders, we should not just be enabling our soldiers to invest into their career to make their job easier, we should be providing left and right limits to guide them towards what will work best. This isn’t a big ask, it’s a reasonable requirement if we are going to advocate for personally owned equipment.

For example:

If a soldier wants to invest in a helmet for use in inform, he should have that right so long as the helmet he purchases meets a baseline standard. Helmets are rated for ballistic protection and vary in quality based on the manufacturer. If a young Jungleer asks his SL if he can purchase a helmet from, say, CPG, his SL should inform him of the fact that said company makes their helmets in China and is assembled using subpar equipment, therefore he won’t be able to use it in uniform. But if that same Jungleer says he wants to buy an Opscore SF Super High Cut, that SL should remind him to verify he is getting the right size and in tan or Multicam, because that piece of kit is issued to units in the Army and passes the quality test.

You can apply the same approach for boots, plate carriers, chest rigs and rucks. There are plenty of COTS options out there that far surpass any of the issued options, and while they won’t make soldiers “better”, they sure as hell won’t hinder them the way bad gear will. Poor quality issued boots chew up a soldiers feet during long movements, while good quality civilian boots offer the same support at a fraction of the weight and with enhanced materials. Bulky body armor degrades flexibility and maneuverability under load, slowing down soldiers and making them work harder to maintain pace when compared to well designed plate carriers. A older, bulkier helmet leads to greater strain on the neck and denies the user the ability to comfortably fit communications headsets while modern high cut designs not only offer better ballistic protection in many case they enable a wider array of accessory use.

If we as leaders are going to request the right to use our own gear, not just at local training areas like Biak or Rilea but JRTC and XCTC, then we have a duty to vet the equipment our soldiers want to purchase so that they get equipment that is better than what they are issued but also so that they don’t waste their money on something that isn’t up to snuff. In the modern era of combat operations, small unit leaders should be demanding more responsibility within the formations we lead, because the world we soldier in is increasingly decentralized and inherently dispersed. Simply put, I should not have a 1SG telling me that I cannot allow my soldiers to wear a plate carrier that accepts the issued plates when that plate carrier is two decades ahead of the garbage the Army issues us currently, especially when that 1SG isn’t the one leading or training my squad, I am.

The best part about allowing soldiers to use their own equipment is IT SAVES THE ARMY MONEY. Less of the garbage we are issued going to the field means less of it is breaking and requiring replacement, it also means that older issued gear is there as a back up in case someone needs it another soldier isn’t issued equipment from CIF.

One weird and exceptionally lazy argument I heard recently is we can’t use personal gear at Big Army training events. This simply isn’t true, and while I hesitate to call a PSG, 1SG, or CSM a liar, at the very least it’s indicative of someone way behind the times. For example, many of us who spent years on active duty know that places like NTC, JRTC, Ft. Campbell and JBLM require body armor during live fires, but were often allowed to use personal plate carriers so long as they took the issued SAPI plates. It’s almost like some people are afraid that our Active Duty peers will look upon us with nonstandard plate carriers and boots and clutch their pearls in horror, when in reality they get to do the very thing I am advocating for here.

Obviously, Some commanders are afraid to assume any risk, but if they trusted the NCOs in their unit to PMCS their rifles, optics, promasks and vehicles to ensure it is in good working order, why can’t those same NCOs be trusted to verify that soldiers have good quality equipment? I know that Jungleers leading small units are often robbed of their responsibility by overbearing micromanagers, but usually that is because we do not step back and remind our superiors of the responsibilities we have to our own formations. If I can be trusted to take an nine soldier infantry squad into combat where the chances of death are high, I think I can handle the responsibility of making sure my soldiers are adequately equipped.

I implore my peers in the combat battalions to step up and be the leaders our soldiers need us to be. We all fall short at times, but the goal is be better every time we lace up our boots and take on the mantle of responsibility. Sure, this isn’t the professional Army, and at least once a drill some soldier utters the phrase “don’t mistake my hobby for your job”, but we owe it to not on the soldiers under us but the leadership above to operate as independent of their management as possible so they can focus on their piece of the pie.

To that same end, I implore senior Jungleers to employ common sense the same way we employ pre-assault supporting fires, liberally and often. In the modern era, the question of personally owned equipment is silly and shouldn’t need to be asked, soldiers should be enabled to invest in their time in service and make decisions about the gear that is supposed to serve them, not serve the guy looking at them.

I will say this now so that no one misinterprets my point of view: high tier gear is not a replacement for fieldcraft and fitness. Your equipment is an enabler, but without a deep understanding of the profession of arms, strength, and endurance, you are just a loot drop for a Russian or Chinese soldier who gets the drop on you.

Craft your skillset, get stronger, apply the fifth-element of patrolling and build your team.