load carriage

[burny123]

I am doing a dissertation on the design of military load carriage. Has anyone got any destails and pics on how they are designed and made?

I am doing specifically on the buckles on British webbing (spanish type), but if anyone has any info onother countires that would be useful.

any thoughts?

cheers[/img]

[Aussie Digger]

I can't help much with the design of load carriage equipment, but I can make a few comments about it, I've worn it long enough... The normal webbing I carried, comprised a British 6 point "H" Harness in normal Australian Army DPCU,

http://www.kitbag.com.au/images/har_sml.jpg

When I served in the recon platoon 2RAR, I usually added a Chest rig for extra ammo, this connected directly to the H Harness. Here's a pic of the type of chest webbing I used.

http://www.kitbag.com.au/images/x8101.jpg

Other than these "special" bits of webbing. I simply wore standard Australian army issue. I wore the normal webbing belt, a "double" belt comforter and 5x Minimi pouches, 2x water bottles and a bayonet. This was all held together with "fastex" plastic clips and DPCU tape:

http://www.kitbag.com.au/images/hpcammotape.jpg

The normal Australian Army webbing looks like this:

http://www.defence.gov.au/army/equipment/images/equipment012.jpg

Most of the guys in Infantry and Armoured units are starting to use "Chest Webbing" styles of webbing with DPCU variants of the South African Mk 83 being the most popular. Here's a pic of the vest I'm talking about. Different variants of chest webbing were actually officially trialled in East Timor recently during 1 RAR's last tour. It won't be too long I shouldn't think before an "official" Australian Army Chest webbing is issued, besides Special Forces equipment, that is...

http://www.kitbag.com.au/images/x8116a.jpg

Hope this helps in some way. Cheers.