[alright4u]

Originally Posted by lksteve

i liked the old mountain rucks, somewhat like the Brits' Bergen...it had a lot of the favorable attributes of the ALICE, in my opinion, the weight of the ruck was better distributed and the frame hardly ever bent or deformed...for awhile, i used the frame for an ALICE but some AH with nothing better to worry about than uniformity put the brakes on that endeavor...when i was in BT, we tried the Lowe's system, with detachable pockets, zip-on, zip off stuff, an internal frame, somewhat akin to the SPEARS in appearance....stuff dropped off when going through the woods, it was hard to rig for airborne operations and the zippers rarely worked in cold, icy weather...we gravitated back to the ALICE because, while it didn't hold enough stuff, it was reliable...yeah, i bent my share of frames over the years, but compared to having a pocket with your dry socks in it drop off in the Isar River, it was worth the trade off...

when i was a company commander in Alaska, Natick came up to do a study on soldiers' load...our average ruck, moving about in the Arctic, was around100 pounds...basically, a troop carried his MOPP stuff, two sleeping bags, ammo, socks, food, dry clothes, ponchos, etc...the ALICE packs were filled to the bursting point and they were looking for a solution...it seems, 16 years later, they are still looking...

I recall the Mountain, the Jungle, and; the Indig. That is all I recall. We carried the INDIG in our unit on combat OPS. Frankly, I would pay $30 + now for one PIR with shrimp, mushrooms , hot pepper flakes and plus the" fresh bamboo shoots" the yards cut from young bamboo when we were relatively safe. I cannot recall the PIR 's #'s and contents from 1-5, I seem to recall. I was no fan of the mutton PIR. I would trade a yard or any SF to take my PIR mutton.