View Poll Results: Have you bought your own kit in the last year?
YES
65
89.04%
NO
8
10.96%
Voters: 73. This poll is closed
Good Quality Kit
No - finally the new style ones came along! Stil in the box though, as I've got used to the non-lightweight ones once again!
But I've now got some well 'ard bovver boots ter go wiv' me CS95! Wicked, mate! The odd thing is that they needed hardly any 'breaking in' - and are quite easy to get used to. Nah ven - where's an 'ed wot needs kickin'?
But I've now got some well 'ard bovver boots ter go wiv' me CS95! Wicked, mate! The odd thing is that they needed hardly any 'breaking in' - and are quite easy to get used to. Nah ven - where's an 'ed wot needs kickin'?
Lupus Domesticus
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: NZ
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Beg pardon for butting in, I'm a civilian, but I am on your side.
In business and industry these days, it is commonplace for materiel procurement issues and questions to be run past those personnel who will actually be using the said materiel.
This is part of a commonsense process intended to ensure that the tool purchased for the job is actually the best one, and/or the most appropriate.
Could this way of thinking have any relevance to the military, and if so, should we suggest it to the MoD?
Just a thought.
In business and industry these days, it is commonplace for materiel procurement issues and questions to be run past those personnel who will actually be using the said materiel.
This is part of a commonsense process intended to ensure that the tool purchased for the job is actually the best one, and/or the most appropriate.
Could this way of thinking have any relevance to the military, and if so, should we suggest it to the MoD?
Just a thought.
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Floatin' on th' Black Pig, Yarr!
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God forbid, Blue Wolf, if they did that then there would be no need for most of the shiny trousered tea creatures that suck away most of the funding.
Now, let me think how procurement goes....
A civil service engineer is in charge
An RAF engineering officer sits next to him so that the RAF have a representative on the team.
Then they have a Warrant Officer or two Flight Sergeants who do the job.
The WO /FSgts are paired with a civil servant who is called "The Supplier" who does exactly the same job but ensures that the Civil Service aren't to blame when the wrong thing is bought.
The Supplier has two or three junior civil servants who shuffle paper. This lot are tasked with finding out what type of batteries the Services want.
When they have got a list of batteries by phoning OC Stores and the QM at various units they then write a list.
They all sit and look at the list then write a more formal list requisitioning the batteries.
This goes round the building to OIC every department that has a use for batteries who copy it and send it back to every OC Stores and QM.
When it comes back they then ignore the amendments because they didn't think of them and then they try and place the order with the vendor who offers the best dinner at Paris Airshow [Only joking, becuase our civil service are beyond corruption :-) ]
After that it goes downstairs to Contracts Branch who refuse to issue a contract because it isn't a competitive tender. Contracts have a team of highly trained Tea Drinkers, normally ten to a room with little visible reason for existing but a hell of a lot better quality furniture because they placed the order. Supply upstairs explain that it is a single source item toi which Contracts demand that it is placed in the MOD Contracts Bulletin.
3 months later every chancer and shark has registered an interest and Contracts then go upstairs to Supply, photocopy the proprietary drawings for your new wonder battery and send them to your competitor so he can bid against you at a far cheaper price because he hasn't spent 3 million quid developing a new torch battery.
The contarct is finally placed with Large Aircraft PLC who then come back to the vendor and ask them to supply it at 1/3 list price and in the meantime the Units that need the battery have been to halfords with a local purchase order.
Now, let me think how procurement goes....
A civil service engineer is in charge
An RAF engineering officer sits next to him so that the RAF have a representative on the team.
Then they have a Warrant Officer or two Flight Sergeants who do the job.
The WO /FSgts are paired with a civil servant who is called "The Supplier" who does exactly the same job but ensures that the Civil Service aren't to blame when the wrong thing is bought.
The Supplier has two or three junior civil servants who shuffle paper. This lot are tasked with finding out what type of batteries the Services want.
When they have got a list of batteries by phoning OC Stores and the QM at various units they then write a list.
They all sit and look at the list then write a more formal list requisitioning the batteries.
This goes round the building to OIC every department that has a use for batteries who copy it and send it back to every OC Stores and QM.
When it comes back they then ignore the amendments because they didn't think of them and then they try and place the order with the vendor who offers the best dinner at Paris Airshow [Only joking, becuase our civil service are beyond corruption :-) ]
After that it goes downstairs to Contracts Branch who refuse to issue a contract because it isn't a competitive tender. Contracts have a team of highly trained Tea Drinkers, normally ten to a room with little visible reason for existing but a hell of a lot better quality furniture because they placed the order. Supply upstairs explain that it is a single source item toi which Contracts demand that it is placed in the MOD Contracts Bulletin.
3 months later every chancer and shark has registered an interest and Contracts then go upstairs to Supply, photocopy the proprietary drawings for your new wonder battery and send them to your competitor so he can bid against you at a far cheaper price because he hasn't spent 3 million quid developing a new torch battery.
The contarct is finally placed with Large Aircraft PLC who then come back to the vendor and ask them to supply it at 1/3 list price and in the meantime the Units that need the battery have been to halfords with a local purchase order.
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: UK
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I bought a pair of Altbergs about 5 years ago, and I can still remember the feeling of swapping them over against the 'old' highleg combat boot - it was like walking on air! Well worth the investment. Got mine for about £80 at the RAF Regiment shop at Honington when on a Range Cse. Don't even know if they still have a shop - but it might be worth ringing around to find out.
Just my .02!
(edit - note to self - read second page before posting - won't make the post look completely out of context!)
Just my .02!
(edit - note to self - read second page before posting - won't make the post look completely out of context!)
With the improving exchange rate of the Pound to the Dollar....purchases in the USA might be cheaper than in the UK. The investment of a few pints of the foaming ale with a US Serviceman at the pub might also get you access to the US Postal system and no VAT. Think aggressively here guys....plus the cross national liasion might be beneficial. Several good outlets in the States for military gear...will be glad to give you a list of top notch places if you are interested.....ask by email or PM and I will send them to you.
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: uk
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Whenever I find myself on US bases (which is quite alot) I always have a trawl around there uniform dept, bought lots of T- shirts for those hot dets, a headset bag etc. Some of the T shirts, I think I got them in Bahrain, are excellent nice and soft and smooth....ahh!
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Europe
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If you cant get proboots through the system try here:
http://www.milisupply.com/footwear.htm
Good for anything military including Desert Combats and Flying Boots
http://www.milisupply.com/footwear.htm
Good for anything military including Desert Combats and Flying Boots
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: mage Frais, Rodney
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Can anyone recommend some US style flying boot, and where I can get some. As the 1965 pattern ones are so sh*te I had a look at some on the internet (Corcoran, Bates and Belleville) but thought someone might know where I can get them with military discount. Only the Belleville ones wee advertised as USAF flight certified.
Cheers
Cheers
Join Date: Jun 2000
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If you're after a gucci pair of boots the pro-boots are ok, but if you're set on buying your own pair I would reccomend a pair of Danner acadias of the 1/2 cordura, 1/2 leather variety. I've been using the same pair for the past 8 years, had them re-soled once but they're still going strong, didn't need breaking in and my feet don't get cold unless the conditions are really extreme.
Just to keep the whole 'what kit I've had to buy' thread going - North Face Superlight sleeping bag - 1/2 size, 2/3 weight and twice as good as the issue bag.
American Cot
Solar Shower
US dessie boots
decent socks, shreddies and thermals
sleeka jacket
dessie windproof smock (why aren't these even in the supply system?)
Chest rig
Mag pouches for 9mm which I had a friendly squipper make for me. This is a joke - there is nosuch thing as an issue pistol mag pouch in our inventory, they give you 3 mags, one holster (with a pouch for one mag on it) and a weapon (which obviously takes another mag - if you're loaded) but no mag pouches! Where the hell are you meant to put them? Loose in your trouser pocket?!
Plus loads of other gubbins too trivial to mention.
Thats all just in the last 6 months or so and supplements the kit I've built up over the years. Here's something to think about - of all the kit I have packed the only issue bits of kit are: 3 x desert combats (new lightweight ones - yay!), Helmet & cover, Respirator and haversack, IPE. That's it - everything else is my own, which is a little scary when I think how much of my own money is on my back, but hey - if you want to be comfy it's worth spending the cash on decent kit. I just feel sorry for the lads who don't have the readdies to afford the kit they need.
Just to keep the whole 'what kit I've had to buy' thread going - North Face Superlight sleeping bag - 1/2 size, 2/3 weight and twice as good as the issue bag.
American Cot
Solar Shower
US dessie boots
decent socks, shreddies and thermals
sleeka jacket
dessie windproof smock (why aren't these even in the supply system?)
Chest rig
Mag pouches for 9mm which I had a friendly squipper make for me. This is a joke - there is nosuch thing as an issue pistol mag pouch in our inventory, they give you 3 mags, one holster (with a pouch for one mag on it) and a weapon (which obviously takes another mag - if you're loaded) but no mag pouches! Where the hell are you meant to put them? Loose in your trouser pocket?!
Plus loads of other gubbins too trivial to mention.
Thats all just in the last 6 months or so and supplements the kit I've built up over the years. Here's something to think about - of all the kit I have packed the only issue bits of kit are: 3 x desert combats (new lightweight ones - yay!), Helmet & cover, Respirator and haversack, IPE. That's it - everything else is my own, which is a little scary when I think how much of my own money is on my back, but hey - if you want to be comfy it's worth spending the cash on decent kit. I just feel sorry for the lads who don't have the readdies to afford the kit they need.
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: UK
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Agree with your last bit, its all well and good the civvy shops having lovely nice desert gear, stocking up and feeling good in your top notch gear IF you can afford it. It sickens me to think what some squadie families are going without just so Tom Squadie has the kit he should have been issued with when he goes off to the sandpit.
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: UK
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It's not all doom and gloom. At least our rat packs are world renowned cuisine. (Nice to see you as Slop-Jockey-in-Chief, Gareth 
) :
The Times February 22, 2003
The British squaddie is well fed on £1.75 a day
IF BRITISH squaddies end up fighting alongside GIs in Iraq they will have one strong bargaining counter. British Army field rations, they say, are the best in the world — and easily traded for any essentials the Americans might care to swap.
The British soldier has to be fed on no more than £1.75 a day, which allows 26p for breakfast, 61p for lunch and 88p for the evening meal.
But it is by no means a subsistence diet. The daily rations provide a minimum of 4,300 calories compared with a standard Nato requirement of only 3,500.
“Nobody can eat all of their 24-hour ration,” said WO2 Mark Staples, Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant of 23 Pioneer Regiment, whose 640 soldiers are already in Kuwait. “Everybody scrapes something off the plate, and usually it’s the chocolate pudding. The officers like it, but the lower ranks don’t go for it. A spoonful or two is all right, but it’s difficult to finish a whole portion.” The fighting soldier’s favourites include bacon and beans, corned beef hash, beef stew and dumplings and rice pudding. For service in the Gulf, rice pudding is thought a little heavy going, and has been replaced with Italian fruit salad.
The Iraqi crisis has the Army’s caterers facing a big logistical problem. “We have gone from expecting to supply 40,000 sets of 24-hour rations to now having to provide two million,” said Wing Commander Gareth Williams, of Food Supply Management for the Defence Catering Group.
On the other hand, by good fortune, last April the defence caterers reinstituted the ten-man catering box which supplies cooked meals when troops are in a position to enjoy “steady state feeding”. “Otherwise troops would have been left living on 24-hour packed rations for much longer than the two or three days we like to regard as the maximum,” Wing Commander Williams said. The 24-hour individual rations are, nonetheless, being packed in Portsmouth at a rate of 110,000 a week, double the rate when the operation started.
The troops have a far from unvarying diet. There are dietary requirements to be met, so that 8,500 vegetarians, 3,500 Halal eaters, 3,700 Sikhs and Hindus and 50 Jews requiring Kosher meals have to be provided for.
“Everybody barters bits of their meals for part of someone else’s,” Quartermaster Sergeant Staples said. “Meat-eaters will trade a pudding for a vegetarian main course just to get a bit of extra variety.”
Some notorious elements of the British catering packs, such as the “cheese, possessed” which littered the Falklands for months after hostilities ended, are a thing of the past. The processed cheese, which deteriorated so quickly that most of it had to be discarded, has now been replaced with a Dutch cheese in tins.
“It makes a very good cheese sauce,” Staff Sergeant Steve Mitchell said, “and you can even eat it uncooked.”
The caterers admit that the British soldiers’ attitude to rations is determined as much by weight and convenience as by taste. “The beauty of MREs (meals ready to eat, in army parlance, but sometimes known as “meals rejected by everyone”) is that you can eat them straight from the pack. They are light to carry and you don’t have a mess tin to wash afterwards.” On the other hand, MREs tend to come in large numbers of one particular dish. “You might end up with chicken a la king for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
The Army is proud enough of its food to have offered samples for The Times to taste. The burger and beans turned out to be a compact and sturdy, even resilient, puck of ground beef smothered in under-sized baked beans. The taste was unobjectionable, the texture tolerable, and the tomato sauce even mildly tasty. Corned beef hash had a curious taste of swede and reheating.
The caterers had managed to round up samples of American field fodder. None looked appetising enough to taste.
) :The Times February 22, 2003
The British squaddie is well fed on £1.75 a day
IF BRITISH squaddies end up fighting alongside GIs in Iraq they will have one strong bargaining counter. British Army field rations, they say, are the best in the world — and easily traded for any essentials the Americans might care to swap.
The British soldier has to be fed on no more than £1.75 a day, which allows 26p for breakfast, 61p for lunch and 88p for the evening meal.
But it is by no means a subsistence diet. The daily rations provide a minimum of 4,300 calories compared with a standard Nato requirement of only 3,500.
“Nobody can eat all of their 24-hour ration,” said WO2 Mark Staples, Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant of 23 Pioneer Regiment, whose 640 soldiers are already in Kuwait. “Everybody scrapes something off the plate, and usually it’s the chocolate pudding. The officers like it, but the lower ranks don’t go for it. A spoonful or two is all right, but it’s difficult to finish a whole portion.” The fighting soldier’s favourites include bacon and beans, corned beef hash, beef stew and dumplings and rice pudding. For service in the Gulf, rice pudding is thought a little heavy going, and has been replaced with Italian fruit salad.
The Iraqi crisis has the Army’s caterers facing a big logistical problem. “We have gone from expecting to supply 40,000 sets of 24-hour rations to now having to provide two million,” said Wing Commander Gareth Williams, of Food Supply Management for the Defence Catering Group.
On the other hand, by good fortune, last April the defence caterers reinstituted the ten-man catering box which supplies cooked meals when troops are in a position to enjoy “steady state feeding”. “Otherwise troops would have been left living on 24-hour packed rations for much longer than the two or three days we like to regard as the maximum,” Wing Commander Williams said. The 24-hour individual rations are, nonetheless, being packed in Portsmouth at a rate of 110,000 a week, double the rate when the operation started.
The troops have a far from unvarying diet. There are dietary requirements to be met, so that 8,500 vegetarians, 3,500 Halal eaters, 3,700 Sikhs and Hindus and 50 Jews requiring Kosher meals have to be provided for.
“Everybody barters bits of their meals for part of someone else’s,” Quartermaster Sergeant Staples said. “Meat-eaters will trade a pudding for a vegetarian main course just to get a bit of extra variety.”
Some notorious elements of the British catering packs, such as the “cheese, possessed” which littered the Falklands for months after hostilities ended, are a thing of the past. The processed cheese, which deteriorated so quickly that most of it had to be discarded, has now been replaced with a Dutch cheese in tins.
“It makes a very good cheese sauce,” Staff Sergeant Steve Mitchell said, “and you can even eat it uncooked.”
The caterers admit that the British soldiers’ attitude to rations is determined as much by weight and convenience as by taste. “The beauty of MREs (meals ready to eat, in army parlance, but sometimes known as “meals rejected by everyone”) is that you can eat them straight from the pack. They are light to carry and you don’t have a mess tin to wash afterwards.” On the other hand, MREs tend to come in large numbers of one particular dish. “You might end up with chicken a la king for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
The Army is proud enough of its food to have offered samples for The Times to taste. The burger and beans turned out to be a compact and sturdy, even resilient, puck of ground beef smothered in under-sized baked beans. The taste was unobjectionable, the texture tolerable, and the tomato sauce even mildly tasty. Corned beef hash had a curious taste of swede and reheating.
The caterers had managed to round up samples of American field fodder. None looked appetising enough to taste.
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: roughly near Everleigh DZ
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Beagle,
Ref your comment about CS95 belt loops hindering the egress from a burning wreck, the gentleman concerned is a mate but if he'd been naked and rubbbed in baby oil it would have still been a tight fit thru' the DV window, if you try and stuff a marshmallow thru a keyhole beltloops don't come into it fella.
now of course it would have been a different story in a Hunter......................
Ref your comment about CS95 belt loops hindering the egress from a burning wreck, the gentleman concerned is a mate but if he'd been naked and rubbbed in baby oil it would have still been a tight fit thru' the DV window, if you try and stuff a marshmallow thru a keyhole beltloops don't come into it fella.
now of course it would have been a different story in a Hunter......................
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Wilts, England
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My thanks to Dummy Run for describing me as, a gentleman and a mate. He then seems to refer to me as a marshmallow!! I was hung up in the wreck by my belt. That belt and lots of other "non-aircrew" kit and civie kit had been issued by the system and the system had known that we were wearing it on certain tasks for years but turned a blind eye to it. When it all turned to rats**** the pain from sloping shoulders must have kept lots of guys away from their desks for weeks.
