Frag Out! Magazine

– currently, the cost of the most basic devices is so low that one has to be aware that even poorly equipped enemies might be able to conduct observations at night (e.g. with a camera that has a Night Shot mode). systems The more and more popular tendency of armies around the world is the implementation of solutions concerning equipment and uniforms. They solutions differ in level of complexity, pur- pose, and quality, but all have one common feature – they are elements of one puzzle and are perfectly complementary with each other. The first complex system developed completely from scratch, for the military, was the American program for special forces SOF PCU initiated in 2002, when it appeared that the pro- vided clothing for difficult weather conditions, ECWCS designed in the 1980s, was obsolete in comparison to equipment available in stores with mountain gear. American infantry uses ECWCS Gen III that consists of seven layers of clothes, including underwear, warmers, softshells, hardshells, or even down clothing. The elements might be set in various configurations, depending on terrain requirements and the type of conducted actions. Such system is provided for every soldier. Similar solutions have been introduced by i.a. Canada, Russia, Latvia. Those are sets of gear designed for infantry oper- ating under difficult weather conditions. A system that has been specially developed for mountain operations is the Mountain/ Cold Weather Clothing System of American marines. And what is the situation in Poland? Except for special forces that introduce various elements of clothing based on modern mate- rials (unfortunately, the quality and the design of some elements are of low-quality, while materials not always the best. Welcome to the world of tenders) that are more or less complementary, Polish Army does not have system solutions concerning clothing for difficult weather conditions – of course, there is protective clothing wz. 128, which finally, after a dozen of years, has been improved with sleeve pockets. However, the quality of materials is very low. The phrase "bed pads instead of gore-tex" must have had its reason. 128/MON and 128Z/MON are complemented with warmers (it used to be Windstopper, but now… hard to tell). Not only they have a nonsense feature of being used as lining, but they also are made of laminate with a membrane. The user, then, wears to membranes with, usually, poor properties that suc- cessfully limit transpiration of moisture. In Polish Armed Forces, there is no softshells – no light sets made of good breathable materials that are perfect for most of scenarios for operations in the mountains. Seriously, hardshell clothing (i.e. 128/MON) is www.fragoutmag.com

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